Monday, October 28, 2013

A visit to Butterfield Dairy

IMG_4861

Over the summer, we were at Lowe’s looking for paint and we ran into Tommy, Katie and their dog Tucker.  Actually, Abbie ran in to Tucker and wanted to pet him, and that’s how the conversation was started.  We ended up talking with them for a while in Lowe’s and they said that Tommy’s family owned a big dairy farm a little west of town and invited us to come out and take a tour.  Fast forward a few months, we finally found time to go take a tour, and it did not disappoint!

IMG_4871

Butterfield Dairy is a HUGE dairy farm west of Phoenix.  Growing up in the mid-west, I’ve been around farms and cows before, but NOTHING like this.  This place was really, really big, and fascinating to learn about!

IMG_4875

My favorite was the calf barn.  There were LOTS of calves – I think they said at least a couple hundred.  It was funny how some of them were so shy and skitterish, and some were so curious and friendly.  They all had their ID # tags and then another tag with their birthdays on them.  So the calf below was about 2 weeks old.  I think calves are ADORABLE.  Their stick out ears and big eyes get me every time.

IMG_4878IMG_4884

Ben and Tucker decided to go off on their own little adventure.  That boy is fearless and just wanders off by himself all the time!  Abbie never did that!  She usually stuck pretty close to us!

IMG_4901IMG_4893

When we met Tommy and Katie at Lowe’s, Katie was pregnant, but now Brynn is a few months old!  Such a cutie!

IMG_4905

We got to drive through a few of the barns, which I thought was pretty darn cool.  These cows are well taken care of.  There are fans all over the place and they are pretty clean also, considering they’re full of cows.

IMG_4916

I had no clue that cows needed their hooves trimmed also.  I mean, I knew horses did since I’ve paid for that many times in my horse owning days, but it never occurred to me that cows would also need trims, or how they’d do it.  Well here you go.  This is how they do it!  Pretty crazy huh?

IMG_4923IMG_4924

This is the cow holding area – where they go before they all line up to go on the milker.  These things spray them off underneath to clean them up a little bit and then they all file on to get milked.

IMG_4928IMG_4948

The cows were just as curious about us as we were about them.  I love how interested they are in humans.  Abbie LOVED the farm.

IMG_4935IMG_4947

We put Ben to work closing gates and stuff and Abbie got to stand in the huge condenser thing.  (??I can’t remember what it was, but it was REALLY windy in there.)

IMG_4942IMG_4952

Next we got to see the cows on the rotary milker.  They can milk 80 (EIGHTY!!!) cows every 6 minutes and they do it 24 hours a day.  They shut the thing down to clean it every 8 hours for 1 hour, but other than that, this thing goes all the time.  I’d never seen a rotary milker, but they walk on to this thing, and a scanner scans their ear tag and the stall they’re in for milking and that’s how they track how much the cow produces.

IMG_4960IMG_4963

IMG_4966

We got to go underneath the milker and see the cows from the inside and they’re just hanging out enjoying the ride pretty much.  It was kind of funny!  Ben found a huge beetle to check out and he thought that was pretty great.  Tucker was always close by too.

IMG_4968IMG_4972

Our little loner boy, wandering off, as usual.

IMG_4982

Next we got to go to the maternity barn where all the pregnant cows were and we got to see some minutes old calves!  (No, this isn’t some weird 1 head/2 body calf.  One of them is laying on top of the other one.  He got off the other one shortly after I took this picture.)

IMG_4997IMG_5001

This calf had JUST been born and the mama was licking him off.  I love how all the other mama cows stand close by and protect the baby also, although they let us get right up next to him.  I think they were most leary about Tucker, who was also with us.

IMG_5044IMG_5036

The entire farm (which they call a dairy, not a farm) has a natural cleaning system that automatically comes on.  The entire place is built on a slope, so when they turn these things on, all the water flows downhill and washes all the dirt and stuff away, and they come on quite frequently.  These cows were walking by and stopped dead in their tracks when they spotted Ben.  They wanted to get close, but were a little scared.  It was pretty funny.

IMG_5051IMG_5054

We also got to see one cow being born, which a little help.  It was coming out wrong and they had to push it back in and then rearrange it and pull it out.  Fascinating, but sad also.  And I won’t gross you out with all of the pictures of that, but it was interesting to see.

IMG_5060

We loved our day at the farm.  Tommy and Katie were great and we learned a lot.  And I also thought it was amazing that they said that his dad has over 50 (I think it was 50, might have been 75) relatives throughout the US and they are all dairy farmers.  His family owns 3 of them in this area alone.  So interesting to see what other people’s “normal” are and how different it is from our own.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Last night in San Diego

IMG_4688
Our last night in San Diego, we went to the downtown area to Harbor Village.  We ate dinner at a restaurant down there that Mark and I have eaten at a few times, although this time I was served pretty much raw chicken.  Yikes…  Not sure I’ll be eating there again.  But the view was pretty anyway, and it’s fun to watch people walk by as you eat.
IMG_4695IMG_4697
I love being out after dark these days.  It seems like a rare treat since my kids go to bed at 7:30pm.  Most of the time we’re in way before it gets dark, so it’s fun when we are actually out past sunset.  I remember when we lived in Italy, I was very rarely out past dark because of bed times and I always thought it was weird to not be at home when it was dark on the few occasions I drove home in the dark.
IMG_4703
I really wanted to find the park on Coronado Island that we had taken pictures at in 2009 right after Abbie was born.  I knew there was a pretty view of downtown and luckily we found it.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my tripod with me and my camera is REALLY bad in low light, so it was a bit tricky to get halfway decent pictures that weren’t completely blurry.  But here are a few of them that I liked.
IMG_4709IMG_4725IMG_4720

Saturday, October 19, 2013

La Jolla, CA

IMG_4683
One of the days we were in CA, we drove up to La Jolla to check out the beach and see if we could see any sea life.  We saw a few seals and a chipmunk and birds, but that was about it.  I got some pretty good shots though!
IMG_4642IMG_4659IMG_4662IMG_4664
See the seals on the rocks and in the water?
IMG_4676IMG_4650
I really do love taking photos.  I wish I had more time to mess around with my camera and learn how to edit better, but I have fun with what I do have time for.
IMG_4685IMG_4671
I think I could easily live near San Diego, provided we could afford it.  It’s really expensive, but it’s also very pretty.  I love that there is lots of green in the area and the climate is more mild than here in Phoenix.  It was definitely fun to visit.
IMG_4673IMG_4680

Friday, October 18, 2013

An evening at Coronado Beach

IMG_4595
We had a squadron barbeque/campfire on the beach one of the nights we were in San Diego over Labor Day.  It was a nice night and that beach is always pretty.  Ben liked checking out the girls at the beach.
IMG_4597
We ate and then they started a big fire after the sun went down, but we didn’t stay for much of that since the kiddos were ready for bed.
IMG_4602IMG_4609
We walked down to the water just as the sun was setting and I could totally kick myself for leaving my camera back by the campfire.  The photos would have been AMAZING, but I had decided to just enjoy the walk and leave my camera behind.  Big mistake.  I won’t be doing that again…
IMG_4611IMG_4614
The kids all ran around and played together and had fun.
IMG_4636
Here’s a good way to get sand out of a kiddos hair.  =)
IMG_4638