[upbeat folk music]
- About a year ago, Chance and I lost our barn
to a horrible barn fire.
We woke up, and the whole thing was just engulfed in flames.
[flames roaring]
It was one of the hardest days of being a farmer.
We lost all of our young stock.
The fire was too great by the time we could get out here,
we couldn't get the calves out, so we lost them.
Luckily, all the milk cows were outside on pasture,
so we still have the cows.
We lost so much; we lost all of our--
That was where we had our first date.
That was where I've made so many memories over the last 14 years
of milking cows alongside of our friends.
Chance and I got married inside there.
- Officiant: I now pronounce you husband and wife.
You may kiss the bride. [crowd cheering]
And I'm sure a lot of you have come along with us inside
when we've been milking cows
and doing all the wonderful things we did on the farm.
[gentle acoustic music]
But over the last year, we've done a lot of cleanup.
We got rid of our silo, [silo crashing]
we cleaned up all the debris from the fire.
And now, almost a year later, we finally got the barn back up,
we're ready for business,
we're feeling more optimistic every day.
So we have the shell of the barn up,
we're finishing with those details inside, and soon,
we'll have a full creamery inside,
so I can't wait for next summer
when we'll be back up milking cows and making cheese.
But now, it's time for me to go
take care of those little cows and feed 'em a bale of hay.
[tractor engine roaring]
[upbeat folk music]
I love the summer and the springtime
when I'm grazing every day,
switching those cows to different paddocks
every 12 hours.
In the wintertime, I can still kind of graze by bale grazing,
so the cows are still out on the pasture.
I'll bring 'em in once there's too much snow out here
for me to get here with my skidsteer, but in the meantime,
I can feed their hay out here; this saves a lot of labor.
I don't have to haul manure every day,
I don't have to scrape manure every day,
and the best part is I can pick those spots on my farm
where I might need that extra nutrients from the manure.
That's where I'm gonna put that bale of hay.
The cows are gonna stand around that,
they're gonna eat that hay bale,
and then they're gonna put their manure everywhere
where I need it.
And then you can take your bale feeder and your bales of hay
and go wherever it is on your farm that you might need it.
It's also great to do maybe on hillsides
where you don't want to take that tractor
and the manure spreader.
I love farming this way, [chuckling]
and I wanna check out some more farming.
So why don't you head down with me to Dairy Expo?
[upbeat folk music]