Cold Hollow Career Center

Kelsey Jacobs
C.H.C.C
9th Grade
Haying: Blood, Sweat
And Tears Read more »

Cold Hollow Career Center
9th Grade.
Farming Through The Generations
“Things change and people change”. This is a perfect quote to describe how farming has changed from my Pepe’s to my generation. As my Pepe and dad say “People change” meaning not only the people but their personalities and their attitudes around farming. The “things” in that quote is relating to the equipment, the barns, and the prices of everything needed to farm. From my grandfathers to my generation all these have changed drastically. Read more »

Cody St. Francis
149 Berkshire Center Rd Enosburg Falls VT 05450
Age 15
Grade 9th

Mike was packing bunk on a 1994 Ford tractor on a hill when the hill gave out. A bunk silo is where you store your chopped hay and corn. They vary in size, depending on how many cows you have. The bunk is made out of cement and is a three-sided box which can get as high as fifty feet. Read more »

Cold Hollow Career Center Haying Devon Goss Age 15 Read more »

Eric Benneig
Cold Hollow Career Center
11th grade
Dangerous milking

To milk cows you have to be alert milking and getting the cows ready to milk. Milking cows is easy and simple because the machines do most of the work and yet it is still dangerous to get the cows ready to milk Read more »

Travis Driver
Cold Hollow Career Center
Grade 10
A Day on the Milk Truck
Riding with my dad on the milk truck I learned all the roads of Franklin County, and where the Hinesburg creamery it is located. My dad drove milk truck for Vaillancourt milk transportation. My brothers and I used to take turns riding with him when he did not have to take a load of milk out-of-state. Read more »

Cold Hollow Career Center
My Farm Dylan Madison Age 15 Read more »

HIGH SCHOOL FARMER

Brandon Langdell Cold Hollow Career Center age:17
How does a high school farmer start his day off? A day in the life of a high school farmer is a long tiring day. When I get up in the morning I get ready for school. I go to school at 8:15 and get done at 2:46. After school I get ready to go to the barn. Read more »

Brett Langdell
COLD HOLLOW CAREER CENTER
Age 15

Life of an Artificial Inseminator

My dad visits most of the farms in Franklin County every month. My dad is an Artificial Inseminator, which means he breeds the cows artificially instead of having the bull breed the cow. The farmer has a wider variety of bulls and a choice of the best bulls. Read more »

Packing a silage bunk looks easy right? Well I can tell you that it is not as easy it looks. It's probably one of the hardest things I’ve done. I’ve been working on the bunk for about six years. Packing the bunk is hard because you have to be watching every part of the tractor and bunk at the same time.
A bunk is a huge cement box with big cinderblock walls that you put haylage or corn into. When we put our corn in we usually pack the bunk so high that when I look down from the top the cars going by look like Tonka toys. Read more »

Showing

By Becca Westcom
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

Have you never shown a cow before? I've shown cows a lot. I spend the whole summer showing and hanging with friends. I have such a good time; it's my favorite part of the year. I get to win money, ribbons and trophies. While I prepare for shows I learn important lessons, such as responsibility and being able to talk to anyone.

To get ready for shows there are many steps you need to follow. You need to pick out the best calf you can. You teach it to lead. You need to lead it a lot so that your calf gets used to being led. You walk it backwards or sideways in the ring. You need to walk clockwise. That's how you win in the ring. Read more »

Farming in my life

By Matthew Leach
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

Many of my friends live on farms so when I go to the farms I always help out with chores. These chores are usually milking or feeding.

When I help out with milking I hook up the milker to the vacuum line and make sure the cow's teats are clean. Then I put iodine on the teats to kill the bacteria and then I wipe it off. Next I hook the milker up to the cow. After there is no more milk coming out of the cow I know that the milker is ready to be taken off because the cow is all done milking.

When I feed cows, first I fill the grain cart. Then I fill the feed cart with silage. After they are all filled I feed the silage in front of the cows and we give each cow approximately a hundred pounds of silage a day. After that I give each cow half a scoop of grain. Read more »

Farming

By Devin Parent
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

People say farmers don't work a lot and have a lot of time off. They have a lot of land but can't farm it all. You only have a limited amount of feed and you are lucky if you can sell any of it. The money milk brings in doesn't cover a lot of grain, farm mortgage, tractor parts and other stuff you need. Many people do something else because farming can't pay for it all unless the farm is big. My grandfather has farmed his whole life. He was born on the farm he still farms. Read more »

Farming

By Dakota Larson
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

I work on a farm five days a week. I have been farming since I was 11 years old. I like farming because it keeps me busy and not bored. It also keeps me in good shape.

During the night chores I used to milk the cows but now I mostly move cows and clean the barn. I keep the feed pushed up to the cows. I take care of all the stalls. I scrape the stalls and bed them with sawdust or bedding. Bedding is two very dry round bales put into our mixer wagon and chopped up into little pieces and spread throughout the stall for the cows to lie on. I usually take care of the cows that are calving. We take them into a stall in a corner where the other cows can't bother them. I give them fresh bedding, feed and water. The privacy helps the cow because she can ben alone and worry about what she has to do. Read more »

By Conner St. Pierre
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

I live on a farm in Enosburg. We own about 550 acres and about 250 of it is tillable. We milk about 110 cows in a tie-stall barn. Because this is not like a parlor it is a lot more manual work. We also raise about 120 heifers. We sell some of them and milk the rest. We start milking at 4:30 a.m. and at 4:00 p.m.

It usually takes between 2 and 3 hours to milk. It takes a little longer at night because we have to feed the cows, which we only do at night. We raise all of our own animals. Read more »

By Derek Jettie
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 10

I work on an organic farm in Fairfield. We milk 50-55 cows each day from 5:30 - 7:00 a.m. and 4 - 5:30 p.m. We feed them hay, grain, cornmeal and kelp made from ground up seaweed.

In the summer we hay. To get the hay you first have to mow the field, then ted the hay a few times to help try it. We rake the hay into rows for square baling. The baler kicks each bale of hay into a hay wagon. When the wagon is full we pull it up to the barn to unload it. We unload the hay from the wagon to the conveyor, which brings it up to the top of the barn. Then we stack the hay. We bale three times from our fields. After each cut we spread manure. First we have to agitate the pit, then we pump it into a spreader and then bring it to the field and spread it out to fertilize the land. Read more »

Living next to a farm in Vermont

By Alyssa Couture
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 12

My favorite part of living next to a farm is the summertime, when you get to have your windows open. You have the smell of fresh-cut hay blowing in and you hear cows mooing. I mean who needs to count sheep when you can just listen to mooing cows as you fall asleep? When we are outside swimming or doing laundry and the neighbors go by int he tractors we know that a hand wave of hello is coming. There are always tractors going by in the summer. Read more »

Farming

By Sean Stanley
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

I live on a farm in Franklin that has been in my family for at least 5 generations. We own over 1,000 acres. 280 acres of it is tillable, which means that we crop. My grandfather milked registered jerseys. We now raise and sell heifers to local farmers. The family business, M and M Livestock, picks up beef from farmers. This means we go from farm to farm and pick up old cows that don't produce enough milk. We charge $25 to pick up culled dairy cows or beef at farms. Beef prices are like milk prices, which is not good because it means they go up and down. Read more »

Agriculture

By Greg Perrotte
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

I live about two miles away from a large farm. There are some good ways it affects my life as well as some bad ones.

I grew up in Colchester. I didn't like the fact that there are so many buildings and they were so close together.

One thing agriculture does to affect my life is it keeps the landscape rural, which I like. With a large farm so near, and fields all up and down my road, it keeps development away. The property owned by the farm that is not fields is most likely forest. This is often used as a sugar bush. Sugar bushes have a dual purpose. They are used for sugaring, of course, but they can also be used to make flooring and other hardwood products. Read more »

Living and working in a farming community

By Brandon Perry
Cold Hollow Career Center, Grade 9

Living in a farming community is very interesting. I live in Bakersfield, Vermont. Having a lot of farms in one little town it's fine.

I have a friend named Rosalie who got me to try farming for the first time. I liked it because she made it fun. I helped her lay bedding down and fed hay to the cattle. I work for her and her daughter in the summer doing gardening. She makes that fun as well. Read more »