HENDRICKS COUNTY — During a cold, snowy week, the last thing you probably want to do is spend time outdoors. Farmers cannot afford to take a day off work, as their animals depend on them.
Farm work follows the seasons.
"The winter time, we're a little bit way more focused on the cattle than we are the row crops," said Katie Brock Pennington. "Especially days like today, getting them through the cold."
Katie is a fourth-generation farmer. Brock Farms in Stilesville has been in the cattle business since 1990.
"We call this our survival mode," she explained. "We need to make sure that we're doing everything we can for the cows."
Survival mode means everyone in the family is on the farm to help.
A normal day (when the weather is mild) would start with feeding. On snow days, other chores become priorities.
"We'll bust ice," Brock Pennington said. "Make sure everybody has water, good fresh water to drink."
To get there, the family also needs to dig out paths for the cows to walk through the pasture.
"We had to, this week during the snow, dig everything out and make them a spot to lay," she continued. "We bedded some straw down for the cows to lay in, so they had a dry, warm place to lay."
One of these areas with bedding is in a bit of a valley so that the cows can stay out of the cold wind.
"They are built for the outside," she said. "You start to see them get a whole lot more hairy and a whole lot more wooly."
Feeding the cows also looks different in the cold. They are fed later in the day instead of in the morning.
"As cattle digest carbohydrates, that creates heat in their body," Brock Pennington explained. "We want them to have that heat through the coldest part of the night."
They are fed a mixture of corn silage and haylage, with extra shelled corn added when it is cold.
It's a lot of tough work, but it's just another day's work for Katie and her family.
"It can be catastrophic if you miss something or take a day off," she said. "I really do feel like we've been entrusted with something."
If that isn't enough, beyond caring for the cattle, the farm also uses the winter to catch up on tractor and machinery maintenance.
The family takes steps to ensure their equipment doesn't freeze during extreme cold.
"We won't get anything out that we don't absolutely have to," Brock Pennington shared. "We're lucky enough to have somewhere to park it in the heat."
These are all the steps to ensure this farm makes it to the next generation.
"It's an honor and a passion of all of ours," Brock Pennington said proudly.
