High Grove Farm Journal – April 2025

May 06, 2025 (Westby, WI)

As spring awakens, our farm comes alive! Through cracked open windows, the sounds of birds chirping before the dawn and fresh air is a welcome change from winter’s chill. I’m Jessica, and I’m thrilled you’re joining us here at High Grove! Our family farm is where we live, work and thrive – milking cows and tending to our crops on our grazing-focused dairy. Come along and see what springtime on the farm is all about!

Sarati getting some comforting words from our son Carter, while Tom prepares to trim her hooves. Cows hooves grow continuously and trimming them helps promote good hoof shape. This helps with their balance and distributes their weight evenly, reducing the risk of foot problems in the future. Sarati has never had hers done before and did a great job!

Green grass sprouting up, trees budding open and new life on farm, all signs that Winter has gone for good and we can prepare the fields for another season of growing our cows feed. Calculating how much feed and what types we need for a continually growing herd to feed for the next year, is one of the most important tasks each spring. Field work and planting has begun for Drew and while the rain has kept us from finishing, but he has a good start on it. Once the weather allows for driving in the fields and winter cleanup around the farm is almost done, hauling manure from our stored pile becomes a continuous job.

We’ve survived our first days of spring storms with the warning of tornadoes and high winds – all of which thankfully missed the farm. The dry cows and heifers have been eating the grass in the side pasture as soon as it grows and they will soon be moved to the back pastures thanks to all of the rain showers helping everything grow so fast!

The dairy cows will go out to graze any day as well! It’ll be great to let the cows stay outside all night to eat and sleep once we do. They love being outside to stretch out and fill their bellies on as much grass as they can! Plus, it saves so much barn cleanup the next day. I also love walking down to bring cows up for morning milking and finding new calves that were born over night.

Last spring our baby girl, Tulsie, was only just a few months old. This year she’s running around, talking and petting the cows and kittens and trying to keep up with her older siblings! It’s so fun to see her experiencing new things but time sure goes by too quickly!

All of the kids have been enjoying the warm weather, and it’s made spring cleaning around the farm and in the house easy for me to get done in between daily chores. Nothing motivates me like a warm sunny spring day! I planted cold weather vegetables like onions, kale and lettuce in my garden. And next week finally looks like beautiful sunny weather after a week of gloom and rain, so I’ll plant the rest of my gardens and check that off my spring to-do list!

Thanks for visiting the farm, and I hope you are enjoying this beautiful spring weather as much as we are! See you next month!

– Jessica Rogers is a Westby Creamery farmer-owner who is sharing glimpses of farm life with us.