If this legal battle were a baseball game, it would still be in the first inning. The fight between environmental activists and a group of Yakima Valley dairymen is just beginning. The case could drag on for years. It’s being watched around the country and stands a good chance of going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, some attorneys predict.

There were a lot of tears the day Eugene Smith’s cows left the parlor for the last time. “That was harder than moving off the farm,” he said.

Students from Australia, Maryland and Louisiana handily won the attention of leading science organizations and a household-name philanthropist foundation in their efforts to address how to improve data sharing related to dairy farm production. Specifically, a $7,500 innovation contest challenged participants to create new methods to enhance data measurement, collection and sharing as it pertains to small-holder farmer dairy production in developing countries.

Ideas to improve dairywomen’s participation in U.S. dairy organizations Women perform a variety of important roles on dairy farms today, be it farm work, administrative duties, working off the farm or raising the next generation. However, some dairy organizations in charge of promoting dairy products, drafting public policy, creating the image of dairy and communicating to the public have few female members.

Our farm sits in the bottom of a valley. Because of it, we can’t get any reception. When I did have a cell phone, I had to climb to the top of the hill to use it. On winter nights talking to friends, I’d stomp around corn stalks to keep warm. Most conversations ended not because I ran out of things to say, but because my fingers went numb.

When I was growing up, back in the Ice Age, moral stories were common and children understood them. The “Three Little Pigs” was not just a story about three pigs building houses in the forest. It was a moral story about work ethic and the blessings of building things to last.

One the first things my dad did, after he completed the building of our dairy barn in 1970, was to start on a farm shop. As I have mentioned before, Dad was a factory-trained mechanic, so he routinely tackled all machinery repairs on-site. He wanted a place to be warm and dry in the winter, and cool and comfortable in the summer.