Aug. 13 2012 08:20 AM

Nine-year-old dairy farm boy, "Little Fred," sings a "Call Me Maybe" parody while putting a cute face on dairy farming


by Chelsey Johnson, Hoard's Dairyman Editorial Intern

Leave it to farm kids to come up with creative ideas. When gathered with family over the 4th of July, Clymer, N.Y. brothers, 18-year-old Justin and 9-year-old Fred White decided to respond to the recent YouTube video "I'm Farming and I Grow It" created by the Peterson Farm Brothers. However, this time the parody would be based on Carly Rae Jepsen's hit, "Call Me Maybe," and the star would be an animated, charismatic 9-year-old who sings about the life of growing up on a dairy farm.

Creating the video was a team effort, as cousins Sam and Jacob worked on the lyrics and sister, Katie, helped during the filming. The actual filming process took about a week, and the boys used a small flip camera for the video and voice recording. But more than 700,000 views later, the farm kids' creativity turned into more than a fun 4th of July activity.

In fact, "Little Fred" - as Fred White is known on his YouTube channel - was asked to appear on "Fox and Friends" in New York City. So, the Whites left their 170-cow milking herd to make the eight-hour drive to the Big Apple. The dairy farming family received a tremendous amount of community support as they were sent off with fire trucks and a prayer service.

During their appearance on the show, Justin, Fred and their family represented our industry well. They put a face to the product we produce and showed their pride in dairy farming. As Little Fred sang a few bars of the song, his brother Justin was grinning from ear-to-ear with pride for his younger brother.

This isn't Justin and Fred's first YouTube video; in fact, the brothers have been filming humorous YouTube clips since 2008, but this video gained popularity the fastest. When asked what it was like to become such a star, Fred simply responded, "It is really awesome."

Just a little old-fashioned farm kid creativity made an impact on our industry's promotion efforts. You don't need fancy camera equipment to create a quality YouTube video like this and uploading YouTube videos takes only a few minutes. Videos like "Farm it Maybe" and "I'm Farming and I Grow it" show that a little bit of fun and creativity can go a long way.

To view the brothers' interview on "Fox and Friends":
>

They were also interviewed on the "After the Show Show":