A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Students meet calves, tour barns, learn about milk

Follow the Mitchell family throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the family members and the decisions they make on their farm.

WINNEBAGO, Ill. — Enthusiastic fifth-grade students from the Whitehead Elementary School learned about dairy cows, the feed the cows eat and spent time petting calves during a tour of a farm.

“We want this to be a positive experience with a farm and help the kids understand where their food comes from,” said John Mitchell, who together with his brother, Aaron, are partners in Mitchell Dairy and Grain LLC.

“Even if the kids don’t remember any of the specifics, we want this to be a fun day they remember for the rest of their lives.”

“Some of the parents that have always lived in Rockford are surprised there’s a farm 15 minutes from their house,” Aaron said. “And the kids would be the same way if they didn’t have this opportunity.”

The adopted classroom program is a project organized by the Winnebago-Boone Farm Bureau.

“We adopt one grade level and we’ve been doing this for seven or eight years,” said Diane Cleland, ag literacy coordinator at the Winnebago-Boone Farm Bureau.

The program starts in January with a pizza theme. Each month a farmer visits the classrooms in the Rockford school district to teach the kids about the different types of agricultural products that are important for making a pizza.

“It starts with a wheat farmer, then John talks about dairy, we have a hog farmer with a baby pig and then a fruit and vegetable farmer,” Cleland said. “The culmination of the program is the field trip to the dairy farm and we treat the kids to a pizza lunch.”

The four classes of fifth-graders, totaling 114 kids, were taken on a tour of the farm by John and Aaron.

“The main thing we’re trying to get across to the kids is how their food gets to them,” Cleland said. “Many of these kids hardly ever get out of the Rockford city limits, so we really want to get them out on the farm.”

There are areas in Rockford that are food deserts, Cleland said.

“Their food might come from a convenience store or a gas station,” she said. “They don’t see anything besides their neighborhood, so we’re happy we can provide them an opportunity and they remember it for years, even if I see them at a different school.”

The tour of the 400-cow registered Holstein herd included stops in the milking parlor, freestall barn, commodity shed and calf barn. Walking into the commodity shed, several kids commented that it smelled like bread.

“You’re pretty close because this is distillers grains and that is what is left over when corn is turned into ethanol,” John said. “This is corn gluten feed and that is what remains after making high fructose corn syrup.”

John explained to the students how cows can eat things that people can not.

“Cows turn something you can’t eat into milk you can drink or cheese to eat,” he said.

“Soybeans are used to make cooking oils and we feed the soyhulls to the cows, which is what’s left after making the oil,” John said.

“The wheat straw is the plant part that’s left after you take the heads of the wheat off,” he said. “The straw is lower in energy and good to feed to the cows that are not milking because we don’t want them to get overweight.”

“When Mr. Mitchell gets the recipe from his nutritionist, he puts all the feeds into that mixer,” Cleland added. “The mixer is like a big blender.”

In the calf barn, students learned about caring for the calves.

“Calves stay in this barn for about a month,” John said. “Calves are fed milk twice a day and after two months they are weaned and then they eat calf starter.”

One of the students asked John if the calves have names.

“All our cattle have names because they are registered,” he replied. “But I use the ear tag numbers to keep track of them.”

“It’s cool visiting the farm,” said Emma Medears, one of the fifth-grade students. “But it is weird how the calves suck your fingers.”

“It is generally chaos when you get in the calf barn because the cuteness overwhelms the kids,” John said. “But after 15 or 20 minutes they calm down, so I can actually tell them about the calves.”

John told the students that the calves are in individual pens, so they don’t pass disease from calf to calf.

“When calves are born they don’t have an immune system, so they can get sick really easy,” he said. “So, we try to keep it really clean — all the pens are power washed between every calf.”

Students asked a variety of questions during their morning tour of the Mitchell farm.

“I had one girl who wanted to buy a calf,” John said. “Another girl asked if she could come back next year.”

“One kid asked how many times a cow poops a day,” Aaron noted. “Another kid asked me in the calf barn why it was so cold.”

A couple of the students asked about working on the dairy farm.

“I told them when they can drive to come out and apply for a job,” John said.

“Towards the end of the tour kids kept coming up and asking more questions,” he said. “You could tell the wheels in their heads were spinning as they kept thinking about something else about the farm.”

Farmers talking to the students is a really important part of the adopted classroom project, Cleland stressed.

“Mr. Mitchell can tell them what time he gets up in the morning and everything he has to do in a day,” she said. “The kids light up and ask different questions when it’s somebody talking about their own operation.”

As Cleland was handing out pizza to the students, one of the girls asked a question about something the fruit and vegetable farmer had talked about.

“That farmer was at the school a month ago, so it was a question the student had pondered for a month,” she said.

“I’m pretty convinced the farm information sticks with them and we hope they take the message home and they tell their families what they learned.”

“I enjoy working with this program because it is something different,” John said. “And I feed off the energy of the kids.”

“They think what we’re doing is cool,” Aaron said. “But since we do it day after day, it’s old hat for us.”

Teachers are also grateful for the program, Cleland said.

“I just sent out a year-end thank you to the teachers,” she said. “One of the teachers emailed back within two minutes and said I sure hope you ask me to be an adopted classroom next year.”

“We’re trying to paint agriculture in a positive light and provide some education along the way,” Cleland said.