Knolltop Farm Wife

 By Melissa HartIt is not lost on me that I have one of the best jobs in the world. Traveling is fun but traveling to so many state fairs and cattle shows is something I have enjoyed my entire life.  I think I inherited the love of a cattle show from my mom, who would have spent her entire summer on the road showing something anywhere she could if she had not been busy with a family and a farm. When I interviewed Alta Mae Core of Salvisa, Kentucky for our DAT Extra podcast, I realized she lived that life with her parents.  They went from show to show all summer long and last weekend, as a grandmother, I followed her into Broadbent Arena with a spring calf and followed her out with the Supreme Champion of the Kentucky State Fair. There is just something about the smell of shavings and the sound of clippers with hair flying that reminds us that we are near people we can relate to….we are home. We started our state fair coverage in Columbus at the Ohio State Fair. This f...

By Melissa Hart On the cover of the recent Michigan Dairy Cattle News is a photo of the Wolverine Purebred Livestock Sales Pavilion, a massive sales arena that sat on Grand River between Williamston and Okemos in the 1950s and 60s.  This same photo was on the cover of the 1955 Holstein Michigander, the predecessor of the Michigan-Indiana Holstein News and the Michigan Dairy Cattle News. I put that photo on the cover because it harkened back to a time when the Registered Holstein business was thriving in Michigan.  There were sales in every corner of the state and Michigan Holstien genetics were sought after by breeders from across the country. The Wolverine Sales Pavilion was built by Clarence B. Smith after World War II who came north from Kentucky as an auto worker.  His love for cattle led him to manage Baynewood owned by E.M. Bayne at Romeo, MI. There he developed the great Royal Ormsby, the 141 st cow of the breed to produce over 1000 pounds of fat in one ye...

 Green Meadow Farms turns 100 years old this year and, in their generosity, they invited everyone to the farm to celebrate. As they prepared for this day of celebration cleaning up the old barns and pulling out their historical photos and memorials of milestones, they discovered an entire side of Merle Green they had never seen before. According to a feature in the Michigan Dairy Cattle News, Merle Green was the organization’s founding father, purchasing the original farm at 18 years old with co-signing from his father, who owned a lumberyard. He joined the Holstein Association in 1919 at the age of 14, buying his first heifer calf at 13 when the transaction - including calf shipment - was made through the mail. As they sifted through records, photos, and transactions, they found letters written by Merle for all of his livestock pursuits. On his Greendale Stock Farm letterhead, a 14-year-old Merle Green wrote a letter to M.J. Prince in Bloomer, Wisconsin trying to sell a choice b...