Page 19 - BCHNews-122023-Web

CHRISTMAS 2023  WC DAIRY NEWS 19
Merry Christmas!
Thanks for another great year!
“For unto us a child is born”
Spring Auction: April 4th
Mainland Milk Producers Association
Notice of
Annual General Meeting
Friday, January 12, 2024
NEW TIME
9:30AM - 12:30PM (LUNCH PROVIDED) Clarion Hotel and Conference Centre
36035 North Parallel Rd, Abbotsford, BC
UPDATES FROM the BC Milk Marketing Board, BC Dairy Association, Dairy Farmers of Canada, BC Agriculture Council, and Mainland Young Milk Producers
For more information, contact Christine Koch - koch.c@telus.net
he says. “She’s built very strong. Made a point to design it that way.” The engineer added in some extra metal supports and buttresses to anchor the rafters. “I think we have probably a better facility than we did before,” he says. “It’s not the way we wanted to get it, but we wouldn’t have been able to do that if we were still milking in our parlour.”
It would have been impossible to build the new barn around the cows. Other pluses come from the change to robotic milkers. It gives his dad time to focus on other things around the farm and allows Jewell to take his sons to the barn because he’s observing rather than milking.
In Nova Scotia, as Jack Thompson of West River Holsteins “looks out the dooryard,” he sees that everyone knew it would take time to get to the new normal and there was a sense of working together. His phrase a year ago was, “Us Maritimers, we’ll tough it out,” and that’s definitely what he’s seen.
“There was a concerted effort with our
provincial government and the federal government to help where insurance couldn’t,” he says. “It’s really hard to prepare for when a natural disaster comes. It’s just reducing the risks for when it does come. It’s a tough lesson. You just make sure you have insurance
and maybe build things differently.”
The roof on his own home took a year and a week to replace due to the excessive demands on skilled labour. He also had some damage to his tarp barn. It was repaired until the new one can be installed, which he expects in spring 2024.
“There’s not an infinite capacity of the workforce to get the work done,” he says. “You wait your turn and everybody pulls the rope in the same direction. We’re very good at doing that here and that way, things get done.”
He sees some losses that will take time to make up, but feels that most dairy farms have rebuilt while others are still getting back into their barns and adapting.
“We have to do things a little differently given how some weather extremes are affecting us,” he says. “If those keep happening, it’s going to be a challenge to do things the way we’ve always done them.”