Minnesota Farm Guide: Leading Farm Newspaper

FREEPORT, Minn. - A city girl who fell in love with a dairy farmer and his family will be featured in Minnesota Farm Guide's Producer Progress reports this winter.

Over the years, many within the dairy industry have recommended Michele Rohe for these reports.

This winter, Michele, 44, finally agreed to provide reports from Rohe Dairy of Stearns County. She and her husband, Marvin, have twin boys, Dustin and Cody, 11.

Rohe Dairy is a partnership owned and operated by Marvin, 44, president and general manager, and brothers, Mike, 45, and Jim, 41, serving as vice presidents. Michele is employed as Rohe Dairy's secretary and bookkeeper.

“As general manager, Marvin takes care of repairs and requests, fixes things and makes all the contacts with the right people for the right job,” said Michele.

Jim is in charge of all the feeding and fieldwork. Mike is the herdsman, does all the AI breeding, freshens the cows and treats the sick animals.

Parents, Har-vey and Rose Mary Rohe were the second generation at Rohe Dairy. Harvey quit school early to begin farming when his father passed away.

Rose Mary has helped on the farm since their marriage in 1961. She kept the books on the farm, until she was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. That's when Michele started in her position. Everything is well today with Rose Mary.

Harvey feeds calves every morning and most evenings.

“He still helps with a lot of the work around the farm, especially during harvesting,” said Michele.

The partnership raises 225 acres of corn and alfalfa as feedstuffs for the dairy.

Rohe Dairy owns and operates three building sites where over 500 head of dairy animals are managed.

The home farm is used primarily for breeding and calving purposes. Another farm site is used for raising heifers.

The free stall barn is a quarter mile south of the home farm, and holds about 250 milking cows. The cows are milked in an adjacent double 12 parallel milking parlor connected by a breezeway.

Michele is originally from St. Cloud, and she got to know Marvin when they both worked for Pepsi. She worked for the St. Cloud-based bottling company for 18 years.

“I started when I was 17 and I worked from the bottom up,” she said. “I started with the Pepsi Challenge, and then sorted bottles, drove a forklift, did shipping and receiving, learned customer service, was a secretary, and finally ended up in accounts receivable.

“It was nice, because looking back now I have so many resources to draw from in doing this job.”

Her job includes keeping track of over 500 cows and heifers at all times.

One of her favorite farm tools is the three-ring binder.

At various locations on all three farms, three ring binders are placed with charts that Michele adapted or created.

Here's a small portion of how the three-ring bin-der system works: At least daily, Mike writes down any new information regarding any cow.

Some cows are brought to the free stall barn, and some receive treatments.

Michele gets the information and enters it into her computer, so she knows where any animal is located on any given day.

On a monthly basis, the milking cows are tested through the Dairy Herd Improvement As-sociation. Michele created charts to follow along with the DHIA testing.

Milking weights are transferred to individual charts. She records how much milk each cow gave, as well as the somatic cell count, butterfat, protein level and more.

Every other day, milk from Rohe Dairy is hauled to Melrose Dairy Pro-tein through Land O' Lakes Coopera-tive.

Michele looks up the collective milk somatic cell count via the Land O' Lakes producer website.

She enters the data into the computer, along with information regarding any farm activities or pertinent weather events that could affect milking.

The information becomes a snapshot of the farming operation for the day.

Every Tuesday, Rohe Dairy partners, as well as Michele and another brother, Melvin Rohe of St. Cloud, meet in the parlor break room.

Michele reports on any cow not milking up to their expectations.

The information is also used for herd health visits.

If someone wants to know what's changed on the farm, she can look that up too.

“We can coincide our activities with how each cow is milking,” said Michele. “Did you open up a new bag of haylage or silage? That could make a big difference if the moisture is higher or lower.”

Dedication

All members of Rohe Dairy are very dedicated to the business.

The times are few and far apart when one of the Rohe partners is not on the farm.

The last time was when Mike got married about four years ago.

Each partner tries to take at least one weekend off per month, but that doesn't always happen.

The cows need to be milked at 4:45 a.m. and 4:45 p.m., and the cows come first.

Rohe Dairy includes 8-10 part-time employees that milk the cows, feed and bed the pens, clean up and assist with herd health.

There is no 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job on the farm.

Marvin is at the barns at 4:30 a.m. to make sure milking can progress easily.

“Currently I'm at the farm at 4:45 a.m. to help feed calves,” said Michele. “Otherwise, my farm day starts once the boys are on the bus for school.”

Mike and his wife, Debra, a Freeport business owner, also have two children, Katie, 3, and Emma, 1.

Mike is at the farm before 4:45 each morning and Jim is getting busy starting the skid steer to feed the livestock.

Dairy farmers still need three square meals a day, so there are dinners and suppers to fix.

The lights in the houses and the barns come on early in the morning, and early in the evening through November and December.

When there is work to be done, everyone pitches in, including cousins, friends and neighbors.

The Rohes do what they can to also be good relatives, friends and neighbors to others.

“The Rohes are wonderful,” Michele said. “They are there to help anybody at anytime. That's what it's all about.”