ELORA - An early morning downpour didn't stop people from learning a little bit about farming and enjoying a great breakfast Saturday just north of Elora.
The second annual Beakfast on the Farm drew a fine crowd to Birkstead farm on Sideroad 5 where the Alma Optimist Club cooked up a tasty breakfast and the farm and its animals supplied the education.
The Birkstead farm milks 250 cows a day, using a sate-of-the art fully-automated milking set-up as part of their 250-acre farm.
Tom Wantenaar and his wife Holly now run the farm, with help from Tom's parents who came to Canada in 1985 from the Netherlands and bought the farm.
Wantenaar said a neighbour asked him if he was interested in hosting the Breakfast on a Farm event and he thought "why not?"
"What I like about this event is that it gets people out who aren't familiar with animals and how animals behave," he said. "There's a lot of misconceptions about what we do on the farm. If they come to the farm and see what we do, it gives them the true story."
Saturday's event was put on by the Fergus Fall Fair committee and the Alma Optimists, who shared in the proceeds from the breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and sausages.
Denise Kankainan said she heard about Breakfast on a Farm being done by another fair committee as a fundraiser and thought it was a great idea for the Fergus fair, which is Sept. 14, 15 and 16.
Apparently people agree. Last year's event saw 800 people attend. Saturday, Kankainan said she was hoping to attract 1,200 people and despite the rain, 400 had arrived in the first hour.
"The whole idea is to open the doors and let people see where their milk comes from ... it lets people see how the animals are treated and that the farmers are very compassionate toward their animals.
In addition to the breakfast, people could tour most of the farm, seeing how barns operate, checking out the cows and other animals and getting an explanation of the automated milking mechanism as it milked cows.
There were also information displays from other agricultural organizations and fact sheets placed strategically throughout the farm.
Basically, the cows are trained to enter the chute of one of six GEH Monobox Robotic Milking Systems in search of a tasty 'cow candy' that they find there. Once in the machine takes over, finding the teats, milking the cow, stopping when there is no more milk and releasing the cow from the device.
Wantenaar said some of the cows can be trained in one day to enter the machine, others take a month.
The Wantenaars switched to fully automated 18 months ago.
"It's productive in that you're not tied to a schedule any more," he said of the benefits of fully automated milking. "It frees you up to do all the other jobs you've got to get done on the farm.
"Most of the work is observing and making sure things go as planned."
Milk production is currently the same, "but every year it will get a little bit easier. They get more used to it, the offspring get trained right off the bat."
