> Lau Family Farm Idaho | Utah Beef and Lamb

2019 Christmas Letter

written by

Lori Anne Lau

posted on

January 6, 2020

December 2019

We decided that since our Christmas cards would be late (again) why not take the time to write and enclose a bit of a letter to you all.  It has been entirely too many years since we’ve had the opportunity to catch up with many of you, but this at least gives you a sense of what is going on with us.

Tom (20) is enjoying his sophomore year at Utah State Univ in Logan.  He is a mechanical engineering major.  He is exploring changing to computer science or potentially getting a minor in computer science.  He has several great housemates and is enjoying living off campus with his friends.  He is active in his fraternity, and several of his housemates are also members.  He seems to have gotten the hang of being an independent college man in 2019.

In order to get his residency in Utah Tom spent the summer living and working in Logan.  It was very strange to not have him home for the summer and we missed his company and his help.  I don’t imagine the summer of 2019 will go down as one of Tom’s favorites, but we saw a lot of growth as he dealt with the challenges that came his way.

Becca (18) is a senior here at Soda Springs High School.  A position on the student body leadership team, participating in Job’s Daughters as well as her sports and academics keep her super busy.  She has a great group of friends that help keep her grounded (and never home) as well.  She will be graduating in May with quite a few college credit classes under her belt.  She had 4 first semester and will have 3 second semester- several taught online.  She is staying at the top of her class academically – which is paying off as she considers colleges.

On the sports front, Becca is a captain of the varsity cheer team this year.  The team has many underclassmen who have never competed at the level the team aspires to.  The team will compete in February and hopefully qualify for the state competition in March.  In addition to their training for the competition the girls cheer at basically every sports event.  During the winter it is not uncommon for them to cheer at 4 events a week, which is also why we rarely see our daughter.

Becca had a strong cross-country season this year.  Her varsity XC team won the state championship (2A size schools) again this year.  She has been on the championship team all 4 years, and the school’s girls team has won 13 titles in a row.  The boys made a very good showing, getting 2nd at state.  Of particular note is that Bec’s time at state actually improved in her senior year.  Girls tend to slow down over the 4 years of High School, but Becca reversed that trend this year.  As a result, her individual ranking, and ranking on the team also improved.  All this success is slightly marred by the damage she has apparently done to her hip.  We’ll be getting an MRI in January to determine just what is causing her discomfort and then she can assess how much running should be in her future. 

Becca and I went on a whirlwind college tour this summer.  We checked out Carrol College in Helena, Montana, Gonzaga in Spokane, University of Idaho and Montana State University.  A few more tours are in the works, but the first trip helped her get a feel for some of her choices and how they vary by size of student body, size of town, and general feel.  She has been accepted everywhere she has chosen to apply and is being recruited by the College of Idaho in Caldwell to run for them.  Other teams/schools are also sending her reams of mail, so she does have quite a few options to choose from.  Applying for scholarships will likely reach the top of her very full to do list in the new year.  She also had her first regular hours summer job and is enjoying the fruits of her labors.  She worked as a summer nanny for a local family with two school aged kids. 

One of the highlights of our year has been Becca participating in and winning the Caribou County Distinguished Young Women program in May.  She had outstanding showings in the Scholarship, Judges Interview, Physical Fitness and Self Expression categories.  Winning locally provided her with the opportunity to participate at the state level competition in November.  She had a whirlwind week with an awesome bunch of ladies and girls.  The girls further refined their skills, worked their bums off, did an awesome service project and generally had a blast.  The week culminated in 3 performances which highlighted the tremendous talents our state’s girls.

John and I are doing well and staying busy.  John is active in the Soil Conservation District and I continue to serve on the City’s Planning and Zoning commission, as well as being a leader for the County Farm Bureau,  and local Republican Party   We are enjoying having Becca home one last year (she is occasionally home for more than sleeping).   We are enjoying our remodeled kitchen and our new home (John’s childhood home).  After 15 months here we are pretty well settled in and used to having neighbors again.  We still have work to do here – painting the spare bedrooms is a priority, as is finding window treatments.  We also need to tackle preparing the old house for company and sorting thru our family treasures (as well as our parent’s treasures we’ve acquired).

In June I was able to take a week or so cruise to SE Alaska with my Dad, his wife Barbara, and older brother Ian.  It was awesome to take a break from the responsibilities of life, spend time with family and see some beautiful country.

2019 was a good year for the farm and meat business as well.  We managed to get adequate hay put up despite a few frosts prior to and rainstorms during haying season.  Lambing and calving went well even with John and I, and my Mom who was visiting, getting a super horrible bug.  Poor mom ended up in the hospital for several days, I was flat out in bed for several days and somehow John kept nearly all the loose ends gathered up despite being equally sick himself.  We decided this fall to move our meat business website, customer newsletters etc to new systems and to create an online store. This required a lot of learning on my part, but I believe it is paying off in new customers finding us as well as less data entry busy work for me.  I’m hoping to investigate the possibilities of shipping our products throughout the West in early 2020.  Our store needs a lot of TLC- photos of our meats, better descriptions etc but the framework is now established that we can build upon in 2020. 

We hope this letter finds you happy and well, and with a life as full of blessings as our own!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Best wishes for a fabulous 2020!


Lori Anne & John, Tom & Becca

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At long, long last we are in the final countdown to John's hip replacement surgery. Since he has basically zero cartilage left in the joint it will be a real blessing to get the surgery behind us. Our good friend Pat is going to team up with me to make sure all the farm work gets done. I've been getting lessons in various skills and tasks so I'm better prepared to help while John is out for 6 weeks. Today, I got my first lesson in snow moving with the tractor (I am shovel "certified" already) so that in a pinch I can at least make a path to get a vehicle into the farm's driveway. The driveway is along a state highway and it regularly gets a huge berm built up in it from the snow plows. It's pretty normal to need 4-wheel drive to get in and out of there after a fresh snow or a snowplow pass. Pat and John have decided that plowing snow with the tractor is largely "above by pay grade" so Pat is going to take point when it comes to keeping the farm drive open as well as the access to the sheep's pasture open. He is also willing to take on the snow-machining out to the cows every other day to feed the mother cows. I'll be in charge of keeping the ewes, lambs and meat steers fed, watered and in where they belong. Multiple additional friends have offered their help and some have been out to see how our equipment works etc so they can be back ups to Pat and I. Later this week, John and Pat are replacing a weak spot in the forks that we use to poke and pick up ton hay bales. Hopefully by doing the work now, instead of waiting for it to wear all the way out, we can avoid it breaking while I'm feeding and creating a bit of a crisis. If it broke when John was up and running he could deal with it pretty easily, but me, not so much...I know which machine is the welder but not how to use it! This year we are having a real winter, with an abundance of snow and several very cold spells. John says we have about 3 feet of snow at the Meadow (where it isn't drifted) so that should mean a lot of nice feed in the spring and summer. Interestingly, John figured out that the ground here is not frozen very deeply. He figures it's because we got so much snow that has stayed since October without a gradual transition to cold weather in the fall. He figured this out when he was moving snow in they hay yard (area where hay bales are stacked until they are fed) and when he got down to bare ground the frost line was only a few inches below the surface. We are hopeful this means that when the time comes for all of this snow to melt it will be easy for it to seep into the ground and we'll see less runoff overall. We pretty much need to bring the tractor over to the house to move the piles off the edges of the driveway, because a shovel-er or the snow blower can get it up high enough to top them. The driveway is recessed by a couple of feet to begin with, and the piles on top of that are pretty impressive. I'm hoping that the snow sculpting will take place before John's surgery happens because it will take some finesse to move the snow and not the sod under it. This time last week we were in one of the super cold spells. We saw negative 25 at our home on January 30th. During our drive to John's doctor appointment in Pocatello we saw negative 33. Friends that I saw at the Farm Bureau board meeting who live in Chesterfield said they had negative 40's for their low. A few people we know are having calves now and they were having a time of it during that extreme cold. Multiple neighbors were also dealing with gelled fuel (water in the diesel fuel freezes and blocks filters etc) and tractors and trucks that wouldn't start. John is very, very, picky about where he buys fuel in the fall and winter so that he gets diesel that won't gel when the temperature drops. Thankfully we didn't have any problems with our equipment, at least this year. We are due for another cold spell later this week but it shouldn't be as cold, nor as long. I'm looking forward to having Tom home for a couple of days after John's surgery so he can help with farm chores and keeping John attended to. Tom is in his final semester at USU! He is still enjoying his job/internship doing computer science stuff. It seems to have something to do with apps and websites. He's developing a plan for a spring break trip to Chicago with friends, which should be fun! He hasn't done much for spring break in the past so a trip with friends will be a good conclusion to his college experience. Becca has been in Pasig City (part of Manila metropolitan area) for about 2.5 weeks now as part of her trip with Mentors International. She says things are starting to feel a little less overwhelmingly new and different, and she's beginning to know where she is and how to get around. We are so proud of her ability to adapt and embrace all the novelty and thoroughly enjoy her experience. She will have about 10 more weeks of work and then a few weeks of playing/traveling before heading home. She is part of a group of 4 USU students who went to work with small business people as well as teaching about entrepreneurship and small business skills to high school students and business owners. Some of the clients have micro loans from Mentors International. Their group came across a group of ladies who weave small rugs that are then resold at a local market. The ladies were so curious about these western girls in their neighborhood that a conversation was begun and Becca and her group have now begun teaching these ladies and looking for ways they can help them improve their standard of living. In just a few days, Becca has gained a new understanding of how much of the world's population lives and a new appreciation of what she has taken for granted all her life. She has also raved about how happy and kind all the people they have met are. The girls got out of the city overnight last weekend and got to see a more rural part of the country. They went to a local lake and took a boat tour of a beautiful waterfall. John estimates they were about 60 miles from their apartment but it took 5 hours of travel to get back! Here is Becca and the rest of the USU crew with the rug making ladies. A bunch of adorable kids, and the girls taking in the waterfall. While John has been trying to prepare as much as he can for his down time I've been trying to prepare too! I'll figure I will be out of the house a bunch more than usual as I take over the snow management and feeding chores so I've been working very diligently on having things ready for the tax accountant. I'm hoping that I will be able to manage the deliveries/markets we have scheduled for the second half of March on top of my new chores. I'm a bit nervous about shearing in Mid March too but hopefully all will come together okay. I think I've gotten nearly all the cutting instructions for the custom orders we will be filling in the next 8 weeks sorted. I've also put some time into figuring out what prices we need to charge to stay economically viable. It seems, none of us can avoid price increases on just about everything we have to buy these days. I think our last major price change was about 6 years ago. We understand the impact price increases are likely to have on our customers' increasingly tight budgets. I am doing my best to trust that everything will work out just fine while John is down healing from his hip surgery. I'm sure I'll get the tractor stuck in the snow a time or two, not to mention the truck or minivan, but somebody will come to my rescue (maybe me) and all will be well in the end. Hopefully I will be able to laugh about my mess-ups soon after they happen. I tried to ask for preemptive lessons on getting unstuck etc but apparently each situation is different enough that neither Pat nor John thought they could teach me. I'm supposed to call for advice when it happens, so that should be fun.Thank you so very much for supporting our family farm. We know you have a lot of choices as to who provides your meat these days and we appreciate giving us that honor! We so appreciate you being willing to set alarms and mark your calendar to come pick up your orders! We know that it takes extra steps to buy your meat from us, rather than just going to store for mass produced meat, and we are sure glad you are willing to do those extra steps!  As our family celebrates 140 years of farming the same land, and 19 years of feeding families like yours, we look forward to many more years of being your family's grass farmers! Take care, John, Lori Anne, Tom & Becca Lau Family Farm, llc

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