Today we took a trip to the Stensland Farm and the kids had a blast! The farm just opened up an ice cream shop in Sioux Falls, which is BEYOND delicious, so we have been anxious to go see the whole process and take a tour of the farm. Stensland Family Farms was established in 1915, and is a family owned and operated, multi-generational farm located near Larchwood, Iowa. They have almost 200+ cows and they also farm 1500 acres of organic cropland. All of the forage the cows eat, comes from the non-GMO crops they grow! Read more about the farm here and see more on their facebook page here.

Today was so nice to take my mind off of things with this baby coming! I’ve just been keeping busy keeping these kids busy… just waiting for baby! So this was a perfect opportunity to get outside and walk around hoping to induce some labor! :) Due on Sunday, June 4th! EEEK!

Leo could be a total farm boy after seeing him out there today! He loved to see all the cows, tractors, and there were tons rocks to throw around to keep him busy. He had so much fun! The kids got to pet and feed the baby cows a bottle of milk, so cute!

The tour also took us to see the cows getting milked, all by machines, which was crazy! The cows just go in there on their own when they want to be milked (I hear ya on relieving that pressure!!). The machine puts a collar on the cow and it begins sending information straight to the farm’s computer.  The collar identifies each cow and relays weight, temperature, activity, and rumination. So high tech! Then it cleans the utters and uses lasers to find the utters to milk them! So neat! Each cow produces about 9 gallons of milk each time! Wow!

Then we got to also see the cheese making factory. Cheese production wasn’t taking place at the time, but neat to watch the video, and I LOVE CHEESE! The curds are amazing!

Lastly, they brought us through to see where all the mama cows hang out. They lay on water beds and are very well taken care of with a self-grooming station in there too! The kids loved to try to feed them and get close!

At the end we got to go have samples of their milk, cheese curds, and ice cream! Their chocolate milk was amazing! And I don’t even like chocolate OR milk really!! Leo had three cups, haha. It was the perfect way to end the tour.

I think Leo would have preferred if I would have left him there! :) He LOVED it! Thank you for the great day Stensland!

Here’s a video to see more of the farm