Just a decade ago, the media was dominated by a few (very loud) voices. We watched the TV news at 5 p.m. and read the newspaper over coffee. If, as a farmer or a manufacturer or an inventor, we wanted to tell our story, we wrote up a press release and faxed it out - hoping someone would bite. Or, we sank thousands into advertising. For the most part, farmers didn't need to hire a big-city public relations firm to tell consumers that milk came from cows. Then came the social media revolution.

to jump to the article. Summary: This March 2011 article detailed facilities, bedding and cow cooling on four New York operations. Skip Hardie of Hardie Farms, Ryan Akin of Hemdale Farms, Dan Westfall of Aurora Ridge Farm and Mary Young of Young Farm talked about how they put cow comfort first. [Click here or on the image above right to see the full list of the Top 25 articles of 2011. Click here to see the list from 2010.]