Wilson Dairy Farm MD

Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm MD. You can also follow on Facebook. www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead Muck Boots Calendars.Com If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Haley at Wilson Dairy Farm in Maryland, I think it is. Good afternoon, Hayley, how are you? Good afternoon, I'm great. And yes, you're right, we are in Maryland here, Baltimore County. All right, and you guys are a dairy farm and 00:27 I've actually been really looking forward to this because I don't talk to people who do dairy. I talk to people who do cattle for eating the meat more often. So, uh number one, how's the weather in Maryland today? Today is absolutely gorgeous. We hit 50 degrees and it's been sunny and just a light breeze and it feels like a nice spring day in January. Yeah, oh in Minnesota it is pushing 40 degrees. Everything is melting. There's no wind. 00:56 It's sunny, it's gorgeous. It feels like April, not January. Yes, I'll take it though. Yeah, me too, because I figure two weeks from now it'll be minus 20 with a wind chill of minus 40. Exactly, we don't quite get that cold, but anything under 30 degrees is cold for me. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here in Minnesota for sure. 01:21 We had a night last winter that was pushing minus 50 windchill and I thought you know, maybe the northern tier states aren't as much fun as I as I think they are so I bet All right. So tell me about yourself and about your dairy farm because I am so excited to hear your story Sure. So my name is Haley Wilson. I grew up on a commercial dairy farm My dad milked around 220 Holsteins at our biggest 01:50 So we were a small commercial dairy farm because there are a thousand head dairy farms out west. There's much bigger farms than that. for us, that was a lot. We milked 200 cows a day. It was about three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We had some family trouble over the property about six years ago. My dad's siblings had all left the farm when they were young. 02:15 like a lot of small family farm disputes go, they came back and they wanted their inheritance. we were in a lawsuit during the COVID timeframe between 2018 and 2021. And um because of COVID, we actually never got to see a jury trial. We had a judge who just decided everything. And because my grandfather's notes that said what he wanted to happen with the land were not notarized, he said none of them could be 02:43 admitted as evidence. So we actually ended up losing everything. had around 350 acres. it was all, yeah, it was all gone to my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia. They're not even local. So that was something we went through a couple of years ago that was really heartbreaking. And there were a lot of emotions surrounding the lawsuit, know, anger, frustration, just disappointment all around. My dad really took it hard. 03:09 And my sister and I kind of felt the weight of the family and we kind of had to figure out how to keep things moving. As far as the dairy cows go, I was able to keep a couple of my nice show animals. I just kind of took them to different dairy farms around the state of Maryland, actually. People were very generous and would house them for me. Just last year, I found this farm about 10 minutes away from my home farm where I grew up. 03:33 and the people who own it were renting it out to a family who were moving and I reached out and everything worked out perfectly. I was able to move in last fall. I brought all of my young animals, so like my little calves and my breeding age heifers, no one who's in milk yet. I brought all them home here about a year ago. And for the last year, I've been working on fixing up the farm and getting a parlor built. 03:58 When you're going to milk more than just two or three cows, you've really got to have the facility for it. And since I planned on shipping milk grade A to a cooperative, like my dad did, I had to have the facility to match their standards. So I just accomplished that here in November, and I'm shipping milk for 25 cows for the last 60 days. So that's catch up to where I'm at. Is it just you? It's just me. 04:24 Yeah, it's just me. My parents live in a house that they rent down the road. My sister has a little farm she does ag tourism business with, but I'm the only one that lives here. So whenever I say we, I mean me and the dogs, me and the animals. We is a me and my animals concept. I um don't have anybody that lives with me or helps me. It's just me. Wow. Haley, I am so impressed and so proud of you. Thank you. 04:53 That is a lot to take on as one person. It is definitely a lot. Once I got a routine, know, things have...