Seven Pines is a grass-based dairy farm owned by one of my professors, Kent Solberg, and his wife Linda. In addition to dairy cows, they also have pigs, laying hens, and bull calves.
On November 5th, our class visited Seven Pines for the second time to learn about castration. We started by listening to Dr. Tom Prieve (a veterinarian and one of our professors) explain several methods of, and tools for, castration. Then, we castrated about a dozen young barrows and one bull calf. We also watched Dr. Prieve do pregnancy checks on several heifers and treat the foot of another. Finally, we took a pasture walk with Kent, checking in on his dairy herd grazing the neighboring corn and soybean field.
Visiting Seven Pines for the second time, I noticed more about Kent and Linda's approach to farming. Specifically, I observed the tenderness they showed their animals and their focus on responsible stewardship.
When we walked over to the calves in fenced-in circles, Linda introduced the calves by name. “This is Sven,” she said. “We're thinking of keeping him as a breeding bull.” Another bull calf, Zeke, we were there to castrate. However, while trying to wrangle him from the fenced circle, he escaped out the back. Stephanie and I gently coaxed him back towards the group. He didn't seem to be afraid of people and handled the castration quite well – no yelling or kicking.
Kent and Linda's cattle all appeared to be very tame. When Dr. Prieve did pregnancy tests and examined one cow's foot, Kent was able to get the heifers in the holding frame by just calling their names and walking with them in the right direction. He was gentle with them; no paddles or electric prods, like I had witnessed at a larger farm that Dr. Prieve visited to do pregnancy tests a couple weeks ago.
Some of the calves were set apart from the herd, because they appeared sickly after a rain. Linda said they needed special monitoring and attention. I felt like their care of these cattle came from a place of empathy and love; the calves were not simply “investments,” they were living beings with personalities and names.
When we went to castrate the piglets, Kent secured the mother hogs in a trailer. They were hollering, and Kent said to them, “yes I know you're mad,” in an understanding tone. He did not complain about them at all, but rather complemented them on being great mothers. After we were done with the castration, he let out the hogs saying “go comfort your babies.” The mother hogs did not appear aggressive after being penned up, as some hogs might; they seemed tame and relatively mellow. Some actually went back into the trailer to sniff around. Kent kept urging them to go see their babies, and eventually they did. The hogs seemed to trust Kent; or at least, they were familiar with him and did not consider him to be any kind of threat.
While the pigs were being castrated, Dr. Prieve handed a baby gilt to me and said she needed comforting. This seemed perfectly natural in the context of Seven Pines; comforting gilts seemed in keeping with Kent and Linda's approach to farming.
The way Kent and Linda talked to, and about, their animals, was gentle and caring. They seemed to think of the animals as an important, contributing part of their farm who deserved care and respect. The animals were not treated as “property,” but as dedicated workers or family-member employees.
Before we left, Linda offered us homemade pumpkin bars, and Kent invited us to come back individually, spend the night, and experience milking. This hospitality went far beyond “educating students on business practices.” Kent and Linda genuinely care about community, relationships, and nurturing a new generation of farmers.
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