Rural Living

Ryan shows his Hampshire gilt.

What did you do over the holiday weekend? Cookout? Swimming at the lake? Sitting in a pig barn in Kentucky? Oh, wait. That last one was me.

While springtime is for auctions and piglets, summertime on our Farmersville farm means traveling to state fairs and national pig shows.

We just returned from the National Swine Registry’s Summer Type Conference and National Junior Swine Spectacular in Louisville. This is just a fancy way of saying we loaded some of our best purebred hogs on our trailer and headed to Kentucky for five days of pig-related competition.

So what happens at a pig show? This is my husband’s version of an industry trade show. He picks out his best pigs–looking for pigs that are muscular, among other qualities. At the show, each pig is washed up and put on display in a pen, usually bedded with wood shavings. The event organizers bring in a judge, usually another pig farmer who is held in high regard, who evaluates the pigs in a show ring. Breeding stock pigs, like the kind we show, are in classes based on age and breed.

For pros like my husband, the event culminates in big business–the auction of breeding stock pigs to other farmers. The better your pig does in the show, the earlier in the auction your pig sells.

My husband sells his Yorkshire boar at the auction.

In addition to showing their gilts (young female pigs), all three of our kids participated in a number of youth activities designed to develop young people’s knowledge of the swine industry. At the event, there was a pig poster contest, pig photo contest, pig skillathon (a test of swine knowledge) and a judging contest where young people learned how to evaluate and rank hogs like a judge.

Justin and Morgan both won ribbons with their pig posters.

The event in Louisville is one of the biggest of the summer, along with the World Pork Expo (yes, this is a real thing), which we skipped this year. Our summer will include multiple hog-showing trips to the Ohio State Fair, Indiana State Fair and conclude with the Montgomery County Fair in Dayton.

So while most people won’t choose to spend their summer vacation time bathing pigs or unloading trailers, we do bring home a lot of family memories, hard-earned ribbons and, yes, crap on our shoes.

My Best of Show cookies from the 2009 Montgomery County Fair

And guess what! You don’t have to be a farmer to participate in the fair and even earn some blue ribbons.

Photos, antiques and more on display in the historic Roundhouse at the Montgomery County Fair

The Montgomery County Fair is currently accepting entries for everything from cakes and pies to giant pumpkins; antique collections to photography; crocheting to quilts. Entries are a bargain at $1 each (although, if you get ambitious like me, the one-dollar entries start to add up) and pay out premiums for first through fourth place (this varies by category).

So even if you don’t have three barrows (boy pigs), two gilts (girl pigs) and two dairy heifers (girl cows) to enter, you can still take on the Michael family with a scarecrow, decorated cupcakes or photos.

Visit the Montgomery County Fair website to download the fair book PDF. Mail-in entries are due by August 16. Walk-in entries are accepted August 12, 13, 16, &17, 9 am – 5 pm. NOTE: you don’t actually take your goods to the fairgrounds until fair time—see the book for details.

If you are a regular fair-goer or have never checked it out, try making an entry this year. The fair is an important part of downtown Dayton and nothing beats the thrill of seeing your chocolate cake take the top prize (trust me, I’ve done it!)

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

Much to the chagrin of some of you, especially the guy who occasionally buys pizza for the DMM contributors, I haven’t posted much this summer. But I have an excuse. I’ve been saving the planet.

Oh, and I’ve been hot. Real hot.  Eighty-four degrees in my kitchen H-O-T. Why? Well, we don’t have air conditioning. I’ll let that sink in. We. Don’t. Have. ANY. Air Conditioning. In 2010.

Our decision is one part economics (the cost to retrofit our old farmhouse would be high), one part physical (Husband works outside, so coming in and out of the AC would make him feel sick on hot days), and two parts stubborn (we didn’t have AC growing up and we do fine without it now).

I thought we were just sweaty country bumpkins who prefer to keep the windows open, but it turns out we have been saving the planet—who knew?

Salon published a great article in early July about Stan Cox’s new book titled “Losing our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths about our Air-Conditioned World.” According to Salon, Cox’s book points out the “dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price. We stay inside longer, exercise less, and get sick more often — and the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming…”

See, every morning when I get up and attempt to apply makeup to an already sweaty face, I am saving the planet.

I do find it interesting that people consider air conditioning to be an essential home amenity.  I consider not being able to look in your neighbor’s windows from the kitchen table an essential home amenity—but I don’t usually say, as people do when they hear I don’t have AC, How do you stand it?

I do agree that people with asthma, people in the hospital, people in movie theatres , people in airplanes and elderly people of poor health really do need air conditioning (there are lots of other situations, of course) but I do agree with Stan Cox that all this AC is making us soft.

When the National Academy of Engineering picked its 20 greatest engineering achievements of the twentieth century, they ranked air conditioning above the Internet, space travel and the mass production of antibiotics. I’m just not sure how the technology that made it possible for people to live comfortably in Phoenix is more important than, say,  penicillin—but obviously, I don’t get it.

So come visit me in Farmersville, we’ll sit under the ceiling fan and drink a long, tall lemonade while the kids play outside (yes, my tough little farm kids play outside in this weather).  You might be surprised how comfortable it can be.

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to

Our young but enthusiastic barn crew

It’s absolutely incredible but the farmer I married, a man who can visit the entire grocery and emerge only with the food he needs for the next 20 minutes of his life, chose gilts in August to breed in September to birth in February to sell in April–all so they can be shown at the county fair again in September. Whew.

The output of all that planning ahead culminated in our annual spring pig sale (auction) last weekend. We sell young pigs (about 30-80 pounds) to 4-H members and their parents from across the country. After they leave our sale, the pigs are raised all summer by 4-H kids and then shown at county or state fairs.

As I mentioned above, ensuring you have the right pigs on hand for the sale  involves months of pre-planning. In the weeks leading up to the auction, we also had a lot of work to do. And when I say “we,” I really mean my husband and his helpers.

Each pig selected for the sale was groomed beforehand. My husband and his pig clipping guru, Claude’, gave each pig a haircut. Yes, pigs have coarse hair that is clipped short to make them look more appealing to pig buyers.

My husband and Claude’ spent the week leading up to the sale giving 125 pig haircuts. The morning of the auction, a crew of farmers came over to load five trailers full of pigs to head to the Preble County Fairgrounds. Once they arrived, my husband, kids, nephews and other 4-H members washed all 125 pigs.

Washing a pig is kind of like washing a car–if the car was running in circles and pooping on your boots.

Spring Spectacular Club Pig Sale

By afternoon, customers started arriving to check out the pigs and make notes on which ones they want to bid on. I arrived about two hours before the sale to set up my 20 year-old laptop and dot matrix printer that I use, along with a great team of family and friends, to clerk the sale. We give out buyers numbers and take the money as people cash out.

We hire an auctioneer, although, my son is getting pretty good at selling pigs to his brother in the play room.

The sale was a huge success. We sold pigs for $100 to $1,000 each.

Unbelievably, selling 125 pigs didn’t really make a dent in the number of pigs we have here on the farm. My husband still has all the sows (mothers) that had these little pigs. Once we see how they did at the pig shows this summer and fall, it will be time to start this process over again and the man who starts his Christmas shopping on December 21 will plan ahead for yet another spring sale.

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

Our son joins the farm marketing team. He's our direct mail guru.

Farming is hard work and most people understand this. But farming is also a business.  My farmer husband is worried about the same things as most small family businesses: inventory, keeping the bills paid, retaining and gaining new customers, the competitive landscape, business growth, profits and the price of pig semen. OK, maybe not that last one. While farming isn’t something you do casually—it’s a lifestyle—it is still an occupation.

The point is that our farm needs to market itself and we use some of the same tools that businesses use to reach our customers, find new ones, beat out the competition and generate demand for our products.

We have a pig sale (auction) coming up April 24 in Eaton. Please come and wave your arms around frantically every time you hear that guy talking way too fast.  Also, bring your check book.

Just joking. The auction is geared to young people and parents who are shopping for a pig to take as a 4-H project to the county or state fairs. There are several auctions just like ours that also offer pigs for the fair.

To stand out, we advertise our sale in pig magazines. Yes, there are pig magazines. We also have a Web site: www.bonavistafarm.com that has seen its traffic significantly increase since we started buying Google ads and placed a banner ad at www.showpig.com.

We not only advertise the date of our sale but we use customer testimonials. Photos of smiling kids holding a trophy next to their pig goes a long way to letting customers know that buying at our sale gives you the opportunity to become a champion.

Behind the scenes at our high-tech marketing operation.

We are also sending out a direct mail to our customer database.  As sophisticated as that sounds, let’s not get carried away, the mailer consists of a copy of one of our ads folded by my husband and labeled by his two chief helpers.

I just think it’s important to point out that farming is a business.  Like any industry, there are trade shows, fierce competition, influential leaders and controversy. So if your annual budget has a line item for boar studs and you get up in the night to check and make sure your inventory hasn’t run off, then you know what it’s like to run a small business like ours.

Agricultural Terminology 101

Hello, I’m Holly Michael – farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

Every industry has its own lingo. Let me take you behind the scenes of agriculture to better understand our language and culture. This way, you’ll have something to say to that guy who shows up on the undeveloped edge of your cul de sac with a tractor.

Livestock:
Cattle – cow (female that has had a calf), heifer (virgin cow), steer (future steaks), bull (big daddy with all his parts intact), also bovine

Sheep – ewe (female), weather (future gyro), ram (see bull), also dumbest animals ever

Pigs/hogs – sow (female that has had a litter of pigs), gilt (virgin pig), barrow (future sausage), boar (see bull), also swine

Crops:
Corn – grown in fields to be used as livestock feed and for commercial products. Field corn is vastly different from sweet corn grown in gardens.

Soybeans – short bushy green plants that produce pods. Harvested in the fall for livestock feed. Endamame is the name of the fresh green soybeans eaten in Asian cooking – they are a separate plant, not commonly raised in greater Dayton.

Wheat – grain harvested on the hottest day of the summer when the term “amber waves of grain” starts to apply. Straw is the stem of the wheat plant, commonly baled and used as livestock bedding or to keep your grass seed from blowing away.

Hay – grasses and clover grown in fields and mowed and baled multiple times over the summer. Each harvest is referred to as a “cutting.”

Equipment:
Livestock Trailer – used to haul farm animals. Farmers are contractually obligated to peer inside trailers they pass on the highway to see what’s inside.

Combine – harvester used for corn, soybeans and wheat. Uses different heads, depending on the crop. Some combines are so large that they haul their head behind them on a trailer when they use the roads.

Gravity wagon – tall-sided wagon built wide at the top and narrow on the bottom—uses gravity to dump its cargo of grain at the elevator.

Where to find a farmer:
Grain elevator – easily located facility, the hub of small town America, where farmers bring their grain to be stored in giant bins. The elevator usually sells feed and serves as a local hangout for farmers, offering free pancake breakfasts and celebrating “poop day.” (A real event I did not make up.)

County Fair – A weeklong celebration of all things agriculture. Farm families don’t visit the fair—they live it. An important time for farm families to celebrate their heritage and show off their livestock, crops and gardens. The Montgomery County Fair is always on Labor Day weekend.

4-H Meeting – Most farm kids are involved in 4-H, a national youth organization founded in Ohio more than 100 years ago. The four H’s are head, heart, hands and health – part of the 4-H pledge. 4-H’ers are not only farmers these days, including kids who take a variety of projects like art, cooking, sewing, and science to be evaluated at the fair.

You might not be ready for the Farm Science Review but this guide should help you converse with any farmers you run into while waiting in line to buy organic couscous at Dorothy Lane Market.

So just remember, during harvest you can dump your gravity wagon at the elevator, but follow this advice: never stay for the pancake breakfast when it falls on poop day.

Hampshire piglets stay warm under a heat lamp.

Answers to your most pressing agricultural questions from a real Dayton area farm wife

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

So how did you end up living on a farm near Dayton? Where did you meet a farmer?
I grew up in Jackson Township (contrary to popular belief, people living on the outskirts of Centerville did not invent townships), which is near Farmersville and Valley View Schools. I was a 4-H member but didn’t live on a real farm. I met my husband, a full-time farmer, where else, but the Montgomery County Fair. We live on a 100-acre crop and hog farm only 15 miles from the Dayton Marriott. We have three adorable children who have long ago gotten over giggling every time a pig poops.

How many pigs do you have on your farm? Do you sell them to Bob Evans?
The number of pigs on the farm varies by season. In the winter, many of the piglets are being born, so we swell to about 500 pigs. We raise purebred hogs that have papers through a registry, just like dogs or horses. Farms like ours are the “quality control” of the swine industry. We focus on raising lean, muscular, easy-moving hogs that we sell to other farmers and exhibit at the State Fair and other national shows. These pigs will go on to be the breeding stock (parents) that produce the pigs that end up in the grocery.

I love pigs. Will you let me have a baby pig to be my pet?
Pigs grow fast. They weigh about two pounds when they are born but in six months, with proper nutrition, they are fully mature and weigh 250-280 pounds.

Why are pigs always so muddy?
Pigs are actually quite neat and can be easily trained. If they have a basically clean pen, pigs will designate one area for sleeping, one for eating and one for pooping. Unlike sheep and cattle, pigs can be trained to open their own feeder to eat when they wish and push on a nozzle with their nose to get water. Pigs can’t sweat, so when they get hot they need to cool off and get their skin wet. When pigs were kept outdoors in open lots, the best thing they had was shade and a mud hole. Our pigs love to get sprayed with the hose when they are really hot and so do the farm kids.

What do you raise on your farm besides pigs?
We raise corn to use in making our own pig feed and we raise soybeans as a cash crop. We also grow hay. Note that hay is clover and other grasses, grown in a field and mowed and baled multiple times over the summer. Hay should not be confused with straw which is a by-product of wheat and by some unwritten law of agriculture must be harvested on the hottest day of the year.

Is it difficult to work in a corporate environment by day and be a farm wife on evenings and weekends?
I try to be an ambassador of agriculture as the “token farmer” that many people have ever met. Once I held a contest among my co-workers in three states to name our new boar (male pig). I have had many bosses who were puzzled when I said I needed time off to travel to the World Pork Expo. My kids love living on a farm and I can’t think of any better environment to raise them to be curious and independent.

That’s all the time we have folks. Tune in next time when we will  have the balls to discuss the difference between a boar, a ram and a steer. Got any pressing agricultural questions? Leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them as honestly and humorously as I can.

Wait! Before you go, who is having sex with the chicken?
The rooster has sex with all of them.

My thanks to Seinfeld’s Mr. Costanza for the inspiration for this column and confirmation that no agricultural fact is too minor to share.