A couple weeks ago visiting my son and family after returning from Florida, they told me they were on vacation this week and were going to visit a dairy farm for a little day trip the next day. Well I have missed so many trips to that dairy farm in the past couple years always hearing about it the day after a group visited that I kind of invited myself along and they said that would be great and let me tag along the next morning....
It is open to the public all day every day and located at Fair Oaks Indiana about an hour north of Lafayette on I-65 leading to Chicago at exit 220, it is the only thing at the exit so its hard to miss it...
But what a stop it is you need at least 3 hours to do it justice...Great stop with the kids or grand kids. There are 10 diary farms there within just a few miles but the one close to the interchange is the one open for viewing. There is a birthing barn off to the side where about 6 to 8 times a day a new calf is born. They alert you while you are there that it is about to happen and then everyone goes over and takes it all in. You set on a seating balcony kind of like sea world and watch the show live as it happens. There are always two cows there about to have calves. As soon as she does they give them an hour to bond and out they go to the real cow world and in comes another expecting momma moo.
And unlike see world she does not splash you but it is a nice thing to watch as the calf is being born and how she then stands up and licks the baby and then the calf gets to its feet and drinks its first milk...Then they load you on a bus and take you on a tour of the other barns the most spectacular of which is the milking parlor turnstyle. I am still seaching my files for my photo of the turn style that holds maybe 100 cows at a time. It is amazing it is a huge wheel turn style that the cows all by themselves are trained to get on it and be milked three times a day in the time it takes it to make one revolution. Then they back out and head on back to the barn where they eat more feed drink lots of water and make us more milk....
I tell you God did have an imagination when he designed us and all these things of this world.. And I will tell you also that only a fool would even consider for a moment that all of this crawled up out of the slime and just happened...Just a little wisdom for you today now back to the story.
They have shows to watch, they have a gift shop, they have a restaurant and an ice cream parlor all of which you will enjoy with your family or by yourself. I passed out a few of my blog addresses to some employees and told them I would make them famous and to them sorry I was so long in getting this story posted...The phone number for the dairy is 877 536 1194 if you have any questions about anything.
Gosh I wish I had written this story the next day as I did not take notes but I think this one farm maybe milks a couple thousand cows maybe three times a day. Every hour the turn style produces 2000 gallons of milk. It goes through a big pipe into a big holding tank is then loaded on semi trailers that within 24 hours of leaving the cow delivers it to far away places like Atlanta or even Miami...Which reminds me I need to go get a half gallon today sometime. The milks leaves the cow at 101 degrees and then is chilled to 34.5 in just minutes..they said the tankers that transport it are insulated so well that it only rises to 35 degrees when it arrives at a processor plant maybe 1000 miles away. There it is pasturized and processed into the cartons that you grab to wet down your cereal each day...or make that milk shake...
OK wish my memory was better but anyway you have a taste of the diary to savor. Oh they have a cheese factory there also and first hand my friend and I can attest it is 'good'........
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