This is Amanda, our #1 employee in so many ways!  Not only is she our first employee ever, she is passionate about our farm, committed to doing the job right, and she’s always up for a new challenge. 

We’ve had many fun conversations about what her title should be - she plays many roles in our operation.  Her main responsibility is yogurt delivery, so that makes her our ”Product Logistics Specialist”.  She is a speedy and careful delivery person - and she has great intuition about what to do when something doesn’t go exactly as planned (as is often the case!). 

You might also meet her at one of our yogurt tastings, when she’s wearing the hat of ”Salesperson Extraordianaire”.  She’s cheerful, helpful, and never pushy - she likes to think of our demos as “sharing” our yogurt with potential customers.

Add to the list “Technology Expert”, because she knows a lot more about this stuff than I ever will!  Currently, she’s working on backing up our hard drive and getting our laptop setup for a wireless connection.

Among the hundreds of other roles Amanda plays on our farm,  she’s also a wonderful friend and sounding board.  We call ourselves “A Family Farm”, and we’re proud to say that Amanda really is family - she’s my cousin!

She is always encouraging, positive, and supportive, which are traits that we really value.  She can often be found tickling Hugh, kissing a calf, or enjoying some Maple Yogurt.  We appreciate the joy and tremendous help that Amanda brings to us, and we hope to keep her around for a very long time!

We have a garden this year - and I love pulling weeds again!  Hugh and I have spent countless afternoons working in the garden this season.  Today we harvested all of our carrots, and let the thunderstorms wash them.

It is a joy to grow vegetables and not have to make a living selling them!  We are loving the process again, and it brings back wonderful memories of meeting Bruce, bringing Hugh out into the vegetable fields in a high chair, and of all the wonderful people we met during our CSA years. 

Our vegetable farming friends tease us about becoming their competition again.  No worries  on that - we have too much invested in the dairy now (and besides, we’ve handed all of our equipment down to them)!  They’ll have to watch out for Hugh in a few years though- I think he may have vegetable growing tendencies!

I couldn’t wait to get home from market and have lunch today, because I got some organic strawberries from Brian at Stones Throw Farm (Nedrow), who picked them up at Cobblestone Valley Farm (Preble).  A dish full of strawberries, our vanilla yogurt and Mountain Rise Granola (Naples) was my personal version of heaven! 

U-pick strawberries opened today at Cobblestone Valley Farm!  For more info, visit our friends Paul & Maureen Knapp’s website: http://www.cobblestonevalley.com/

I wish every day could end like this…

We are now set up for on-farm sales!  Open everyday from 8 am to 8 pm, and offering the same line-up as at the farmers market: our milk, cheese curds, and yogurts – plus free views of brown cows grazing in the lush pasture! Hope to see you soon!

Hugh and I will be off to Regional Market tomorrow morning for the first time this season.  We have decided to sell milk again, and will also be offering fresh cheese curds (along with yogurt, of course!). 

If you didn’t want to trek into Syracuse to buy directly from us, just stop by the farm - we’re now set up to sell our dairy products here too!

We’re really looking forward to connecting with customers we haven’t seen since last fall!

Amazing - 2 calves in 1 day, on our little 10 (now 11) cow farm - what are the odds?  Both Regy and Betsy gave birth to beautiful little bull calves today, each sired by a bull called Nicholas (via artificial insemination).  We’ve dubbed the little ones “Nick” and “Burke”.  When Burke was half-born, Hugh exclaimed - “Mommy, we have a Holstein calf!”, due to the striking white markings all over his body - we kind of wish he was a girl, so we could keep him!

Regy’s calf, Nick,  is remarkable because he is the first of  our second generation animals - his mother, Regy,  was born on our farm two years ago, when our adventure in dairy farming began.  We look forward to many more generations of Wake Robin calves!

Our creamery is now full of boxes upon boxes of yogurt cups, printed with our logo, and ready to be filled with yogurt!  For the past 16 months, we have been applying labels (2 per quart) by hand, which has occupied a lot of our time!  Often, we label a batch of yogurt immediately before we deliver it, and since it took about an hour and a half to label a batch, this has made for some very rushed mornings!

Thanks to the help of a FarmStart investment, a new program for beginning farmers, we were able to buy thousands of  printed cups, saving us not only time, but in the long run, money too! 

Printing our cups allows us to use more space on the container, so you’ll find more info about our farm and yogurt now too!  Many thanks to all our partners who helped to make this happen, from our graphic designer, to the guys in the shipping department at the plastics company who loaded the truck we rented today! 

We are so excited - we know we’ll  find more creative things to do with the many hours per week previously devoted to labelling yogurt cups (like making cheese?)!

Here’s our newest addition- Nadia!  I haven’t written in a while, so she’s nearly a month old now.  Nadia is the sister of Rosie, and the second daughter of Ann born on our farm.

She was named by my best cousin in the world, Amanda, who is always happy to help on our farm.  Amanda really saved me last month, when Bruce herniated a disc and was flat on his back for days (he probably did it by carrying Nadia in from the pasture, as you can see in this picture!). 

Amanda showed up for every milking, fed Nadia, shovelled manure, helped make yogurt, and did anything else she could do to help us through that challenging week.  She deserves much more than a calf named in her honor - thanks for everything, Amanda!

Wow! We just got home from The State Fair, where we gave out over 2000 samples in about 5 hours today!  Wish we had more time to talk to everyone - it was just non-stop!  

Huge thanks to my mom and cousin Amanda, who helped us dish and serve.  Also to our son Hugh, who worked like the Energizer Bunny!