Photos, from Top: Indiana State Line, bottle feeding the calves, 10 at a time, same thing, view from the bottom, Traders Point Creamery from the upper field, Indiana countryside, Fritz and Ollie, Elena, 3 month old calves, 18-hour old bull calf, milking parlor, waiting to enter the parlor, A reminder of a "cool guy I know", and a corn-ish pit stop :-)
Michael's Diary, continued from Illinois...
After three or four days Bob gave me a ride out of Chicago into Indiana as the southern part of Chicago is debatably worse for roads and a bit unsafe in areas for slow moving strangers. After saying good by I headed off on the sidewalk as there were still no shoulders. I finally ran into a group of bike guys and one of them, Dan Green, who was wearing a neon green shirt that had Dan in large letters on the front rode with me for about ten miles to show me the way. I said "see you later to Dan" and headed of on wonderful low traffic shoulder swollen country roads. When it was starting to get nearer stopping time I grabbed a bite to eat.
I meet a group of locals mostly in their seventies that were really nice and very inquisitive about what I was doing. So I told them and was quickly caught up on the local goings ons, which included that the area was to be the home of the countries largest wind farm, which explained all of the wind turbines I saw being erected. These things were huge and numerous. I was then given directions to a campground about 15 miles away on a scrap piece of paper that were let us say more artistic than clear. I did find the campground that was about a mile down a deep gravel road. I was sitting at my picnic table when the guy at the campground to my right came over and offered me a hamburger. I of course said yes and ended up hanging out with him and his wife and son (their names were Brian, Jessica and Jack) for the next two and a half hours around a campfire. Jack was probably the most inquisitive kid I have ever met. He never stopped asking questions about everything from what I was doing, and why to movie trivia to scientific enquiries to how I like my smores cooked and why. He is six. After he had two smores he really got rolling and jumping and running. I let him play with my headlamp and it was like being in a light show at a disco. He was a cool kid. In the morning the two ladies to my left came over and said hello and gave me a huge plate of scrambled eggs.
At the end of the day I had made my way to Zionsville were I was to visit an organic grass feed dairy that a friend of mine had told me about several months earlier. The dairy or creamery is called Traders Point Creamery. I ended up staying at the creamery for the next six days working around 70 hours. I did everything from moving the cows, which happened at least once a day. There were four different groups of cows ranging from the milking herd complete with three bulls one of which was named Denise, pregnant and younger cows, all younger cows and lastly calves. I think somewhere around 160 to 200 in all. I fixed fences, bottle fed calves, scooped poop, sprayed poop, loaded hay, fixed water tanks, feed chickens, chased cows as they escaped at times, removed old fences, reworked an irrigation system, milked cows and gave a very brief management training work shop and learned a great deal about electric fences. It was a good time and I learned a ton. I also was able to hang out with the owners Fritz and Jane. They were both very nice and very committed to the sustainable Agricultural movement. I actually meet probably 20 different people who worked either on the farm, in the creamery (they make cheese, yogurt, ice cream) the restaurant on site, the retail store on site as well as sales reps for the creamery who happened to be on site while I was there. The variety of people was amazing. The interim farm manager Serge and his wife Letsia were from the Ukraine, my super cool house mate and guide Ollie was from England and France (he split his time), the person in charge of poultry, Elena was from Panama, two guys in the creamery who’s names escape me where from the Dominican Republic and Egypt, one of the hay guys, Alfonso was from Mexico and another hay guy, Glen was a Mennonite. There were also three or four high school students working on the farm. The creamery had an exchange student program with Ohio State.
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