Neighbors judged Dan Brick and his dairy for its smell and mud on the roads – until he held his first dairy tour. Now the fifth-generation dairy farmer from Greenleaf, Wisconsin, says he and his employees have seen the attention they receive flip-flop from negative to positive.

Carl and Debra Chaney of Bowling Green, Kentucky, spent the first 20 years of their lives together focusing on raising children, milking cows and running the family farm, but as their kids began moving away Debra and Carl began talking about their dreams.

A lot more women are rising before the sun these days, and it is not to make breakfast, get the kids off to school or clean the house. They are milking cows, feeding calves and doing daily work on a dairy operation.

Dairyman Bill Wolfe is the young blood of his Wisconsin family’s fourth-generation farm. His great-grandfather homesteaded the original farm. Since then the family has purchased other farmland adjacent to the homestead, owning a total of 600 acres.

How can someone who milks water buffalo win a contest sponsored by a magazine for dairymen with traditional milk cows? The answer for Kent Underwood is simple: Milking water buffalo isn’t much different from milking a Holstein.

If you have been to a Boise State football game, or any college football game, you know there are a lot of tailgaters enjoying themselves before the game. Boise State University has its own special tailgating group – the Bronco Dairy Boosters. This group of 150 to 200 dairy producers has made a big splash for Boise State’s fundraising efforts and has started a tradition that has enhanced one of the Western Athletic Conference’s premier rivalries.

In June 2005, a group of eight women were sitting around a kitchen table planning a fashion show. One woman mentioned a local children’s home where the kids needed undergarments. The woman also found out that the children could only get one glass of milk each day – if they asked for it and if there was enough money in the budget that week.

Sitting in a classroom or studying in his dorm room, 19-year-old Luke Vander misses working outdoors. He frequently longs for a 12-hour workday treating cows on his father’s 700-cow dairy in south-central Michigan. But Luke, a sophomore studying animal science at Michigan State University, also knows attending to his university studies is just as important. “You have the rest of your life to be on the farm,” Vander says. “You’re only going to gain more from going to college.”

Peering down from metal amphitheater seats to the glass encasing below, Rita Moenck’s small class of third-grade students shushed each other as they watched the highlight of their field trip unfold. For most of the students, it was the first time they had seen an animal give birth. After watching for more than a half hour, the class members’ whispered “eeewhs” turned to “ahhhs” and clapping when the Holstein cow they were watching finally calved her baby.

A broad-based interest in soil conservation began in the 1930s as a result of the devastating “Dust Bowl” era when the shortcomings of the then current agricultural practices became apparent. This trend has continued on many fronts, and the most visible one at present is the “organic movement.” It is well to remember “organic” is only one part of a much larger trend toward sustainable agriculture changing the nature of farming in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world as well. My evolution as a holistic veterinarian roughly paralleled this broader national movement.