Jack of our Hearts

Everyone knows football in Nebraska is kind of a big deal.. DUH. They drew 60,000 fans for their spring game this last Saturday, people enjoy going because Nebraska wins. The usual talk after the spring game is how Taylor Martinez looked, how the running backs look to do without Rex Burkhead, or if the Offensive and Deffensive lines could look more aggressive this year (lets pray!). There has been no such talk this year, not one mention. because something even more amazing happened... a slight return of faith in humanity and college athletics. In recent years we have seen college athletics really go down hill, football especially, problems with drugs, grades, staff, etc.  However, Husker nation has once again found a reason to be so very proud of this program and this university.

Meet Jack Hoffman, if you're a Husker fan you've heard of him I'm sure and he's won over your heart. He's a six year old that has been battling pediatric brain cancer for about 2 years. He was born and raised in Nebraska and found a passion for football just like any one else in this state. His favorite player was always Rex Burkhead and got the chance to meet him in 2011. Every since then Jack has been seen hanging around with Rex and the team at various games and events. He's also beloved by Husker fans all over the world, they sell 'Team Jack' t-shirts, as you can see from their facebook page, people love wearing them.

Well on Saturday Jack and the football team had a little surprise for fans.. I'll just let you watch the video to find out what happened.





Simply amazing! This is just one of the many reasons I'm a Husker fan.. how can you not be? Spring games are usually not remembered but I assure you this one will be for a long time! It was the game that the good of the team was put second to one little boy and his cause.. inspiring! 

Omaha Adventure

This past weekend we had yet another dairy event here in Nebraska, Moo at the Zoo! It is an event held in Omaha at the Henry Doorly Zoo in partnership with the Nebraska Midwest Dairy Association. It is a fairly new event and I was pretty impressed seeing it for the first time.



Moo at the Zoo



Henry Doorly is one of the top zoo’s in the U.S. (depending on the person you talk to of course). But it really is impressive how progressive and realistic the zoo is. They are always pushing to do new things that no one else has done. But this last weekend was a sort of Ag weekend at the zoo. They brought in tractors and ag promotion groups (pork producers etc) to set up booths and interact with people. And they also set up a huge tent to bring some dairy animals in. They decided they wanted to bring six of the dairy breeds in for people to see and pet. So they had contacted my family about a month ago to get a Guernsey heifer, so we gave them one of my brother’s yearlings “Mini”. Mini was a twin, so she was a little thing, but the other twin was stillborn. My brother would let her out during chores and she would follow him around all afternoon so she became kind of a pet so we hoped she would be social enough to let people pet her.



Nebraska Dairy Princess with 'Mini' talking to
people about dairy



So as a member of the Dairy Ambassador program and a pretty active dairy advocate in Nebraska they asked me to work a few hours. So I convinced my sister, Andi, and brother Vin (Vince) to come to Omaha with me for the afternoon. So Andi and I spent Saturday afternoon just walking around handing out ‘I met a Dairy Farmer’ stickers to little kids, Vin kind of just walked around and stared at people (typical high school boy). We would use this opportunity to answer any questions about the cows or just share some fun facts with them! We got some pretty interesting questions like “Why are these cows anorexic?” or “This cow here (a Brown Swiss) has got to be an ox?” It was actually a really cool event to get so many inner city Omaha people out to see these cows and feel free to ask questions. It was also great that there were over 10 Nebraska dairy families that worked over the weekend talking to people, 60 people total. And it was also a great weekend to have it because the Olympic Swim trials were just a little ways down the road so there were some visitors at the zoo from that event.



Andi handing out stickers and talking to some little kids



Kids trying not to scare away the Holstein



The 'cheesy' sign outside the tent






Moo at the Zoo crew (from left): Vin, Andi,
Anastasia, Me, Emma, Emma's sister



Speaking of Swim trials, two of my favorite aunts (and an uncle) took me to the trial on Saturday night and holy smokes it was awesome!! Firstly these swimmers are sooooo freaking fast, it just blows my mind. Secondly some of the guys are incredibly good looking, I always appreciate a sport where the guys don’t wear shirts and don’t really need to haha. But I do have a favorite (I think he’s probably most girl’s favorites)  Ryan Lochte. But I was impressed with him for a couple of different reasons. One was that after he won one of his events he gave away his flowers, bear, and medal to random kids in the crowd. How awesome is that? Another reason is that on national TV he promoted dairy (it’s not hard to win over my heart haha). So that was a pretty cool experience, can’t wait until London!!

A couple fun facts for you!

- Henry Doorly Zoo draws 1.6 million people per year

-The swim trials had 167,000 people at 15 sessions in 8 days. A new record for the trials (yay Omaha)!

Dairy Dream Day



When Melissa and I are together it's
usually something else!


Did you know Nebraska has 230 dairy farms in the state, making it the 5th largest agribusiness?

That’s not a very big number so that usually means that dairy is kind of overlooked, especially because we are the Cornhusker state and a beef connoisseur (which I love of course!). That was not the case this past Saturday, Melissa Keyes and myself attended one of the biggest event ag promotion events in the state; Prairieland Dairy Day. And what a great day it was.

Prairieland is located about 20 minutes south of Lincoln, and has been a leader for sustainability and new dairy practices for some time now. The dairy itself is owned by 4 different families who decided to coop together. They have grown their farm to about 1,500 cows and have started marketing their own dairy products locally and have found success! You can find 2%, 1%, skim, and chocolate milk in stores across of most Lincoln and Eastern Nebraska. They also have season milk flavors including strawberry, cotton candy, and root beer for the summer months! But that is not the only cool thing that they are doing. They recycle almost everything; the sand for bedding, the lagoon water is treated so that it can be used again, and they also make compost from the manure solid and sell it to whoever wants it. Now if that isn’t innovation I don’t know what is!

So it’s not only great that this dairy is doing all those thing for the industry and the environment but they also completely open themselves up to the public for visits, they want to be completely transparent for consumers! So every year in June they have Prairieland Dairy Day, a day people can bring their families and just enjoy a day out at the farm. The really awesome thing about it is that it’s completely free! The food, milk, ice cream and activities are all free, that is so awesome! This is the 9th year that they have hosted the event, each year better than the last! They were expected to have 6,000 people attend this year but I think they were a little under that number, but not much! This year’s activities included:

People enjoying their free lunch farmer style (dirt and straw included)

The straw castle which was a hit!

The Nebraska Dairy Princess's were even present to
take pictures with kids and cows!

Annabelle is one tricky bovine to milk, but an extra set of hands never hurt!

The corn pit was a huge success, corn was flying EVERYWHERE!

The petting zoo was popular. Kids and parents were able to pet
a calf and milking cow.

The Prairieland Gold (compost) tent. I don't know
if people realized what they were playing with but
they didn't seem to care. You could even take a
bag homewith you!

Just a few of the people that were visting Dairy Day 2012!

Prairieland is a leader in Nebraska Dairy industry for sure and are a great model for a successful business! Midwest Dairy has done a great job though with really promoting Nebraska Dairy’s. There were 2 other farms; Temme Dairy near Wayne and Wolfden Dairy near Kearney that both had open houses in the month of June! And to wrap up Dairy Month there will be a huge event at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo this Saturday called Moo at the Zoo. I’ll be attending so sure enough there will be a blog to follow!