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Farm Beginnings™ Profile: Aimee Finley
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Aimee Finley |
If successful farming is a walk upon a taunt tightrope, then Aimee Finley is an agronomic acrobat. The 25-year-old woman has taken two seemingly opposing forces—stubbornness and a willingness to ask for help—and blended them into one effective management strategy. Bringing two opposites together can be tricky, but it can also result in a kind of creative, productive tension. In Finley’s case, she now has a dairy operation that just three years out of the chute is growing much faster than she ever imagined. Her original goal of milking around 70 cows has had to be ramped up to fit the reality of a 90-cow milking herd that looks to pass 100 by fall.
“I didn’t know we would grow as fast as we did,” says Finley as she takes a break from the morning chores on the 200 acres she rents from her grandparents near St. Charles, in southeast Minnesota.
First the role of stubbornness in getting it done: When Finley was in high school, her family moved from the St. Charles area to Wisconsin. The Finleys had always been dairy farmers and Aimee had gotten deeply involved in showing dairy cattle at 4-H shows. She wasn’t willing to give up the show animals she had grown attached to, and she took them with her, eventually placing the 10 animals on a farm where they were milked and Aimee helped with the chores. Those original “pets” served as the germ of her current herd, and she still milks some of them today. Finley went on to college at University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where she got a degree in agricultural educational, and was one course shy of a double major in dairy science. After graduation in 2003, she was offered a handful of jobs that would have provided all the things that are supposed to make a college degree worth the trouble: regular salary, benefits, vacation. But Finley still had those cows, as well as a nagging desire to farm.
“I like knowing I determine my own success,” she says. “I like setting my own goals. If you’re working for someone else, you’re working for someone else’s goals.”
She also had an opportunity to rent her grandparents’ land back in her hometown. She didn’t know how long that opportunity would exist, since the farm is within the city limits of a town that is becoming a bedroom community for Rochester, just 20 minutes away. Subdivisions, Interstate Highway 90 and State Highway 14 hem the farm in on three sides. And another experience gave her the idea that farming was a realistic career option. While in college, Finley took the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings™ course. The program provides participants an opportunity to learn firsthand about low-cost, sustainable methods of farming. Students take part in a course that teaches goal setting, financial planning, business plan creation, alternative marketing and innovative farming techniques. Established farmers and other professionals present at the seminars and provide a strong foundation of resources and networks for those interested in farming.
Finley was encouraged to take the course by her father, Joe, who has long been associated with LSP and who ended up attending most of the classes with her. In addition, a Minnesota Farm Business Management instructor she is working with was impressed with the financial planning aspect of the course and recommended taking the class.
“I think anytime you sit down and look at and go through the numbers, the more realistic it becomes,” Finley says. “You have a better feel of how you’re running your business.”
Finley also learned through the classes and the course’s on-farm field days the nuts and bolts of setting up a grass-based grazing operation. She isn’t a fan of operating and maintaining a lot of field equipment, a must when producing milk using a system of housing the cows inside year-round and hauling feed to them. Her grandparents’ farm is hilly and has wet spots that have claimed more than their share of stuck tractors. Finley feels pasture is the best use for this rugged land. She also finds the cows are healthier out on rotationally grazed paddocks.
A support network
Hard work and grit have gotten Finley off to a good start, but she knows sweat equity will only take one so far. While in Farm Beginnings, she saw the benefits of networking with other farmers.
Finley started milking 65 to 70 cows in 2003. The farm had not had milk cows on it for at least seven years, so some upgrades had to be made to the milking parlor and barn. In addition, converting the corn and soybean fields to pasture was a lot of work. By the end of 2004, she had her rotational grazing system going full steam and the cows where calving a lot of heifers, which was conducive to growing the milking herd. In 2005, she was milking 90 cows, and the workload was getting a little overwhelming.
Joe Finley, who had a town job back in the St. Charles area at the time, had been helping on the farm. As the herd grew, Aimee asked if he would be interested in working fulltime on the operation. He was. These days, Finley is striking another balancing act of trying to determine how big to grow the herd, and how much to invest in her grandparents’ farm. She’s considering options to increase profitability without getting much bigger, such as accessing premium milk prices by organically certifying the herd or selling to a grass-fed specialty market. Lurking in the background is the thought that someday development will engulf the neighborhood and she will need to move her operation to a permanent location.
Farm Beginnings and the first few years of fulltime farming have also taught Aimee where the best use of her and Joe’s time and labor lie. Sometimes it’s better to just hire out certain jobs. During the growing season, the cows get most of their nutrition from the grazing paddocks, but in the winter they rely on stored feed such as haylage and corn silage. That feed must be cut and stored during the summer—it’s a lot of work and requires a major investment in time and equipment.
These days the Finleys have the haymaking done by a neighbor, who also makes a total mix ration for the cattle. It costs money to have others do these jobs, but Aimee feels it’s a good investment, allowing her to focus on the herd. It’s also fun to see how much her neighbors, some of them former dairy farmers, enjoy helping a young producer.
“Obviously you have those people who say you’re never going to make it,” says Finley. “But I’d say everybody we work with, whether it be our nutritionist, or the vet, or the banker, even the community people say, ‘We really love that you’re trying to do it, even though it’s not the easiest lifestyle.’ As a community they’ve been very supportive.”
Thanks to her growing herd, Finley has even had a chance to give back to the farming community already. She has sold a few of her heifers to a couple who recently graduated from Farm Beginnings and are getting started in their own dairy operation. She also is considered a role model for young women who would like to farm but have gotten the message it’s not the right career choice for them.
“There are actually a lot of young women my age who really, really want to farm but everyone’s telling them there’s no way they can do it, there’s no way it’s possible,” says Finley as she heads out to check on her grazing herd. “It’s obviously possible, or I wouldn’t be doing it.”
—Originally published in the April/May/June 2006 Land Stewardship Letter.
To listen to an audio podcast featuring Aimee Finley (Ear to the Ground No. 21), see http://www.thepodlounge.com/listfeed.php?feed=34810.
Click here for more on Farm Beginnings™. You can also call 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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