Ber months

My daughter-in-law Libby calls these next few months the “ber” months: September, October, November and December. It’s not just because they are the only months that end in “ber” but because in a “blur” we’ll be saying “brrr.” Of course, if you’re of German descent, October might slip more to a “beer” month.

It is a blur time of year, with shifting seasons, loss of daylight, kids settling into a school routine intermingled with football, volleyball and harvest schedules. The calendar becomes so packed with deadlines that we will slide into the “brrr” of winter before we’re even halfway done checking off our list.

I realized we were in the “ber” months this morning when I had to slip on a pair of jeans. It was finally too cold for the official dress code of the Minnesota State Fair: shorts and sweatshirts. Time to shift summer clothes to the back of the closet and bring forward the piles of sweaters and fleece-lined pants.

I’ll also have to shift my routine of opening and closing windows. Now, I’ll have to open them in the afternoon to bring warmer air into the house, then close them at night to keep the chilled air out. I want to delay turning on the furnace as long as possible with these extreme heating fuel prices.

We’ll also try to leave the corn in the fields for a natural dry down as long as possible. With the drying fuel costs exploding, we won’t want to combine any sooner than needed.

Our first official run through the harvest season will be some corn silage to feed our remaining Holstein heifers and Austin’s fats. It’s nice still having animals around the farm, but it is such a different vibe not housing them in the tiestall barn.

We hosted a Schmitt Cousins Family Reunion on the farm this past weekend. It was a drippy morning, just as it was 39 years earlier when Mark and I were married. Many of the nieces and nephews hadn’t been on the farm for a number of years and were flooded with memories of how things used to be. They noticed missing trees, straw sheds and calf domes.

A couple of boys said it was strange to walk into the milking barn without cows. It was so quiet and so dry. Even though the stalls were empty of cows, memories filled the barn back up in an instant as they remembered where their favorite cows stood. Paper airplanes were sucked out of the feed manger by exhaust fans. Bales of straw were rearranged to build tunnels and forts throughout the shed. The farm was back in full dairy production via memories and imagination.

Since the cows were sold last October, we have generally stayed out of the barn. The sadness can be overwhelming at times as quietness smothers you. We all did like milking cows, but our bodies needed a break. Of course, on those 90-degree-plus days with dew points in the 70s, I really didn’t miss squeezing between panting cows to hook up the milking units.

It’s hard to believe that it has almost been a year since our sale. People ask us what we’re doing now that we’re “retired.” We’re still farming, just not milking. We’re still getting up every day but are trying to create a new routine that keeps our bodies moving freely.

We’re still shifting gears to find the right speed for our new journey. I guess you could say we’re in the “ber” months of our lives right now: limber, slumber and sober.

As their four children pursue dairy careers off the family farm, Natalie and Mark Schmitt are exploring new adventures on the farm outside of the milking barn at their farm north of Rice, Minnesota.