Day by Day Dairy

Today I'm talking with Sara and Nick at Day by Day Dairy. 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 Sarah and Nick at Day by Day Dairy in Wisconsin. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good and good morning. Good morning. 00:21 How is the weather in Wisconsin? Snowy. um looks like it's all trying to melt today, but it's going to be like 40 today. Yeah. Not a warm spell before it gets cold again, but never stays cold too long. I'm your, I'm your neighbor in Minnesota and it's supposed to hit 40 today and 45 tomorrow. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, I prefer to stay frozen all winter instead of the thawing and I'm like freezing and muddy mess. 00:51 I'm sure it's not good for the cows feet. They go out on a concrete this time of year. We have them on a concrete cow yard and the ones there in the tie stall barn, they go in and out. They'll go in and out for a little while, but then we put them back in the tie stall. So yeah, they don't see too much mud this time of year. Try to keep them clean and dry as best as we can with the weather, you know. Good, good. 01:15 My husband watches videos of farmers and dairy farmers and cattle, know, steer meat, meat farmers on YouTube all the time. And he's watching, he's always watching these shows where the cows' hooves are all messed up from being out on wet pasture. And I'm like, it's so gross. Why do you have to watch these? I, isn't Nate the hoof guy? I watch his videos. He does, he does pasture or um, hoof trimming. Yeah. He does hoof trimming. 01:44 It heat up pasture and uh a freestyle barn cows. So it's kind of a mix, but I don't know why it's satisfying. like watching it. When we let ours out on the pasture, we rotationally graze all of our, all of our heifers. So they're always on fresh grass from probably beginning of May to almost first a week in December, sometimes a second week in November, depending on the weather. And the cows go out in a dry lot that has some. 02:14 green on it, but um just because they have a totally different ration, the milk cows do. We haven't figured out a way yet to perfect that intakes that they eat out and out if we do rotational grazing. yeah, no, definitely, we do get them outside quite a bit when the weather is appropriate. Good. All right. So since I knew I was going be talking to you, there is a song that I learned in school, I think. 02:42 And it's something about day by day, day by day. Oh dear Lord, three things I pray. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but I had to learn it for a musical chorus thing back in probably sixth grade. So it was a long time ago. And so thank you for sending me into the way back machine by your name. And how did you, how did you get your name? Well, we were trying to think of names for a while. 03:09 And I'm like, Oh, what should we do? We had a lot of different like ideas, none of them just felt right. And one morning Nick woke up and he's like, I think, I don't know he said something about taking things day by day or something. Yeah. We're just trying to take it day by day to get to the next day. So then we're like, Hey, day by day dairy. It just kind of happened. Yeah. It just kind of happened like that. Awesome. Um, and also Wisconsin. 03:38 As far as I know, last time I looked it up, which was a few years back, Wisconsin is the or pretty much the state for milk production in the United States. Is that right? think California passes us in fluid milk production, but I think we're still number one in cheese. ah I believe California, because they have... Yeah, go ahead. Is that how you guys got the cheesehead moniker? 04:07 Yes, yes. Yeah, there's like a cheese store. There's so many cheese stores all over. Yeah. Both proximity. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When my husband and I make road trips to go see my folks in Maine, we go through Wisconsin because we drive and there's a uh Dane DeForge exit and there's a cheese shop there. And the first time we drove to Maine, he was like, we have to stop there. He grew up not far from there. 04:35 Well, he didn't grow up far from there. His family is from there. He grew up in Minnesota, but he used to visit family in Wisconsin. And he's like, we have to stop there. And I said, why? And he said, because they have the most wonderful Granny Smith wine, Granny Smith Apple wine. He said, and they have chocolate cheese. And he was raving about this chocolate cheese. And I was like, okay, so is it like fudge? He said, I can't explain it. You just have to try it. And I'm not a fan. 05:05 It is the weirdest like fudgy cheese thing ever ...