“My dad always told me that a cow was put on this earth to produce milk, but she doesn’t have to be ugly to do it,” says Paul Chittenden, founder of Dutch Hollow Farm in Stuyvesant, New York.

Want to improve your soil quality quickly? Start practicing residue management and keep a close eye on your nutrients and micro-organisms. “Residue breakdown is the best way to start next year’s crop,” said Jerry Scheppele of Full Sircle Products, located in northeast Iowa.

Matt Bomgardner has 10 years’ experience in a grazing dairy system at Blue Mt. View Farm, in Annville, Pennsylvania, which has been a grazing dairy for 15 years.

One of the fastest-growing niche markets is “grass-fed” milk, attracting producers, consumers and premium prices. To ease consumer confusion, the American Grassfed Association is seeking to find unity in production standards.

“The organic industry continues to grow,” said Lisa Engelbert, dairy farmer and NOFA-NY certified organic dairy team leader. “There is still a shortage of organic milk nationwide.” Organic milk markets are stable, without the pricing fluctuation on the conventional market, making it “so much easier for budgeting and planning purposes,” she added, addressing farmers at the NOFA-NY Organic Dairy and Field Crop Conference last March.

I never thought being a loan officer would offer this much variety in my life. I should also claim that I have a hard time sitting still and I am very happy I do have variety in my job so I don’t have to be trapped by four brown walls daily.

Editor’s note: Dr. Jane Caldwell wrote this article in response to California dairy farmer Stephen Weststeyn’s producer blog, “Expanding the conversation about the health benefits of milk” that ran in our March 12 issue. Humans have teamed up with many organisms, both large and small, for mutually beneficial reasons. We have domesticated dogs and cats as protectors and pets, while they rely on us to feed and house them.

I grow increasingly weary as this election process drags on. I wonder what country I am living in. It is not the American way to snarl and bicker back and forth like dogs in a fight. It is not the American way to storm and throw temper tantrums when the game doesn’t go our way.

More and more, it is becoming likely that the farmer sitting next to you at the local association meeting is “wired-in” to the virtual world. To be sure, as some of you read that first sentence your retort was, “I will never do that!”

It was a rough week, to say the least. The battles just seemed to stack up, and I couldn’t win any of them. It was hard to come to the farm every day to find myself in another mess it was going to take me all day to get out of.