Mackinson Family Dairy Farm

Welcome to Mary Mackinson Faber as she shares with us about her family's dairy farm! 

Hello! My name is Mary (Mackinson) Faber and I am proud of my family’s dairy and grain farm located in Pontiac, Illinois. Where is Pontiac? Pontiac is in Central Illinois about 100 miles south of Chicago on Interstate 55. If you are ever traveling Interstate 55, it cuts our farm in half at mile-marker 203. You can call it living in the country but Interstate 55 and Historic Route 66 are the north and east borders to our home farm. We also have an airport and railroad tracks within 5 miles of our farm.

We cannot talk about where we are today without going to back to how Mackinson Dairy Farm (MDF) was started. MDF began over 100 years ago with a handful of cows and 161 acres. My great-great grandfather Daniel Mackinson was the original owner of our farm. Today our family continues to live and farm those same acres plus about 2,000 more. The dairy has grown to include about 165 milking cows and over 140 head of heifers and calves. We are proud to own a great herd of Holsteins, Ayrshires and one Brown Swiss! In addition to our cows we milk another’s family’s small herd of Milking Shorthorn. 

 
The farming operation is owned by my parents, (Donald & Rita) my uncle (Roy) and my brother (Matt). Donald and Roy are great-grandsons of Daniel, the original owner. I am confident to say that farming is all my Father, Uncle and Brother have wanted to do and they truly have a strong passion for the soil and cows. I am the oldest of three children. While I don’t work on the farm full-time, I am still actively involved. My husband, Jesse and I are proud parent’s of a one-year-old daughter. I work as the controller of a local cooperative that provides farmers in our area with feed, crop inputs and is a grain storage facility. Jesse is from a beef and grain farm and one of the agriculture teachers and FFA advisors at our high school. Matt is the middle child. He married Amy almost one year ago and she is a Registered Nurse and is also from a swine and grain farm. David is the youngest and lives with his partner Pato in Santiago, Chile. David is an economist and recently graduated with his Master’s in economics and Pato works as a family court clerk. We also have two employees. Dan Jones has been with us full-time for over three years and is getting married to Mallory this fall. Aaron Jenson started working for us last fall and just graduated from high school and is starting at the local community college this fall. Both are great assets to our operation!

Rita, Pato, Grandma Theresa, David, Matt holding Ava, Mary, Amy, Jesse, Donald

We milk our cows 2x a day (4:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) every day in a double 6 parlor. The parlor was constructed in 1975 and remodeled in 2001. Our milk is picked up every other day and goes to the fluid milk bottling plant in Peoria, IL. We are proud members of the cooperative, Prairie Farms Dairy. The cows and heifers (older than 6 months) are fed a total mixed ration (TMR). TMR means we mix and blend a certain number of pounds of corn silage, haylage, soybean meal, corn gluten and other necessary minerals together. The milk cow ration consists of 11,600 pounds of feed! Our TMR is just like your Kitchenaid mixer but much bigger! The heifers are grouped according to age. In 2011 we constructed a new heifer barn which has 4 separate areas that can house 70-90 heifers depending on age. In the summer, we are able to utilize some pasture for the heifers, dry cows and milking herd. We have two free stall barns (almost 16,000 square feet) so the cows have a choice of where they choose to spend their time. The newer freestyle barn utilizes sand bedding. Yes, it’s just like the beach and the cows enjoy putting their hooves in the sand. 

 
Our crop rotation is corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa. We do grow a majority of the crops we feed our cows, the only exception would be the soybean meal and additional vitamins and minerals which we purchase. The excess grain is sold to grain storage facilities and is either moved via rail, barge or turned into ethanol. We try to utilizing minimum tillage and no-till on the highly erodible soil. Cover crops have also been implemented into the rotation. In the fall of 2011, we built a manure storage facility that is adjacent to the dairy. This storage facility holds 2.8 million gallons of manure which is applied to our fields in the fall. On a beautiful summer day it is not uncommon to find us baling hay, scouting fields, maintaining equipment or other jobs that require our attention. 

Donald, Matt and Roy

I asked my brother what is a typical day consists of and he laughs and says that every day is different. I will try to offer a glimpse into what we routinely do daily. Milking the cows, feeding animals (calves, heifers and cows), and cleaning the parlor and barns must be done every morning and night. Matt takes responsibility of the mating choices for the cows. A majority of the cows are bred through artificial insemination but we do have a bull if that is necessary. Heifers are bred for feet and legs, the first time around 14 months. All calves are house in individual calf hutches and are vaccinated twice and receive semi-annual boosters. MDF currently works closely with 3 veterinarians and a nutritionist to keep our cows healthy and comfortable. We are currently utilizing embryo transfer with a few of our top cows. Growing up, we showed our cows through 4-H and today are still competing at a few shows. You might see a few of our animals at the Illinois State Fair, All-American Dairy Show in Harrisburg, PA, World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI or the North American Livestock Expo in Louisville, KY. 

 
My Dad, Uncle, Matt and Dan put in a lot of hours every day from sun rise to sun set. Never once have I heard them complain (too much) because they are all doing a job that they love. We are committed to providing the consumer with a safe, high-quality milk and products. Our commitment to quality means taking good care of our cows and the land. Thank you to Faces of Agriculture for asking us to tell our story on your blog. If you are ever in Central Illinois, we would love to meet you and show you our farm. I encourage you to find us on social media - Facebook or on Twitter.

Thanks Mary for the look inside your dairy! Be sure to check Mackinson Dairy out on Facebook and follow Mary on Twitter! 

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Small Town Girl - Rosie Sanderson

Today we welcome small town girl and farm kid Rosie Sanderson who shares her family's proud farming history and tells her story with the hope of educating others about farming and agriculture. 

If I told you I grew up in a town with a population of 48, you would probably assume that I grew up with that typical “small town girl” story… and you would be correct. Anything you can think of to insert into a small town girl story could probably be applied to my childhood: I learned how to drive a Super M tractor before I learned how to drive a car, I crashed a go-kart or two into my dad’s grain bins, I spent my summers showing cattle, was constantly begging my parents for a horse (which I still haven’t gotten, by the way), and I had decided by age 4 that I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up!

I was raised on a livestock and grain farm in northern Illinois. (No, not all of northern Illinois is Chicago! Population 48, remember?) My dad farmed with his dad and brother, so I was lucky enough to grow up with my dad, uncle, and grandpa at our farm every day. When I was little, we always had pigs out on the pasture at our house. I can remember riding out to the pasture in the truck with my dad to check the piglets, but he always made me stay in the truck (much to my dismay) because sows are very protective.

My brother Trent and I checking pigs with dad.

As I got older, our farm shifted from pigs to cattle. I got my first bucket calf when I was 7, and I was in love! I named her Wise-Guy (don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either). To this day, my grandpa tells the story about how sick my Wise-Guy got when she was just a small calf, and how I would lay in her calf hutch and sleep with her because I didn’t want her to be alone. As an experienced livestock farmer, of course my grandpa thought “Great, she is going to get attached to this calf and it’s not going to survive.” Well, she did! In fact, she is the cow that started what is now our herd of over 50 cattle. 15 years later, she is still on pasture at my parent’s farm. 

Me with my 15-year-old cow Wise-Guy.

With the help of Wise-Guy, I started showing cattle in 4-H when I was 8 and continued to show calves from our farm until the summer of 2008 when I moved to central Illinois to attend Illinois State University. Moving to college was a huge change for me. Not because it was away from home, family, friends, and grandma’s cookin’… but because these people had no clue about anything agriculture!

As soon as people found out I was an agricultural animal science major, the first question was always “Wait, you are from a REAL farm???” I thought to myself “Who are these people and where did they come from!” Where I grew up, everyone I knew was another farm kid. I had never met anyone that hadn’t seen a cow before. I thought I must have met the only people on this earth who had never been to a farm. People would ask me about chocolate milk coming from brown cows, brown eggs being healthier than white, if cow-tipping was a real thing… and all I could do was laugh! Were these people serious?

As I made my way through college and met more people, I realized that this wasn’t an exclusive group of people who had never been exposed to farming. In fact, I began to feel like the weird one because I HAD experienced these things first-hand. I started to realize that people wanted to know about farming, but they didn’t know where to go for the information. They didn’t have access to farming like I did growing up. This was a problem, and it was here that my passion for discussing farming and food production with farmers and urban folks alike. So I quit laughing when people asked me what I thought were silly questions, because I was their closest connection to farming. If they couldn’t ask me about these things, where did I expect them to go for their answers? 

My family in front of the house in Norway that our ancestors
left 170 years ago!

In 2011, my family had the amazing opportunity to travel to Norway and go to the farm that our ancestors left in 1843. We feel so lucky that we got the experience to stand in the house that they lived in and explore the farm that they left to bring us to where we are today. Farming has been in the family for longer than record books have been around! It is hard to wrap your head around how far we have come but how much has stayed the same, too.

I still have some cattle on pasture at my parent’s farm today, but I hope to move them to my own farm someday, just like all of my ancestors have done. When I have my own farm, I know that I will take with me the important lessons that I learned growing up on our family farm; including the importance of sustainability. Both crop and livestock production are jobs that come with a responsibility to conserve the environment, and that is a responsibility that my family has always taken seriously. Today our farm is more sustainable than ever with the help of new technologies. If that interests you, you can learn more about what we do at our farm’s website: www.sandersonag.com. In 2010, our farm even received an award for Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Family of the year from Orien Samuelson!

My family receiving a conservation award from Orien Samuelson.

One thing I wish people understood about my farm family is that we want to answer your questions! Farming is our livelihood, our history, and our passion. We take pride in what we do. If you have a question about agriculture, why not go straight to the source and ask a farmer?

I love what I do, and I think most farmers would say the same thing if you asked them. I feel so blessed to have been raised in “God’s Country” where I learned the importance of hard-work, responsibility, and most recently the importance of sharing what I know with people like you! 

Riding my mare, one of the many perks of living in the country!

If you ever have a food-production related question but don’t know where to start, visit my blog, Unpolished Boots, or facebook page and ask me! I will always be happy to answer your questions or get you in contact with someone who can!

Thank you Rosie for the fantastic feature! Remember - if you or someone you know is involved in farming, ranching, or the agricultural industry and would like to share your story here please contact us! YOU could be the next Face of Agriculture!