More than a year ago, I received a random direct message (DM) on Instagram. It was from a female farmer out in California who I had never met. She asked if I wanted to join a female farmer group. If I am being honest, it was pretty random. (We laugh about this now.) Why would I want to join a group of women I had never met? But, I thought, “What the heck? I am a millennial. Why not make friends with random strangers on the internet?” So that’s when I decided to say yes to joining the group!

When you look online at articles, blogs and comments, it can feel like the whole world is against animal agriculture. Just this year, we have seen the EAT-Lancet Commission report and the Green New Deal.

A while back, I was scrolling through Facebook. And I came across a video by a large animal activist group. The video was horrible! They used videos, pictures, lies, sad music and anything else they could to play on people’s emotions to convince them of their negative agenda. As I continued scrolling, I saw it again. By then, I was wondering why this was even on my news feed. That’s when I realized it was being shared by dairy farmers! Their captions would read, “Can you believe this stuff?” or “OMG, did you see this?”

I’ve learned over the years from growing up on a dairy farm and being married to a dairy farmer that dairy farmers tend to live in a bubble. We all hang out with other dairy families. We live in rural communities where most people have a connection to agriculture.

Over the last several years working as an environmental consultant on dairies, I have heard one question from my clients over and over again: How do we remove solids from our synthetically lined lagoons? Unfortunately, I have learned that removing manure solids once they have accumulated in a lagoon is easier said than done.

Every day, dairy farmers go to great lengths to care for their cows. In this series from Dairy MAX, Tara Vander Dussen of New Mexico shares her story about caring for newborn calves during Winter Storm Goliath.

While I have lived and farmed in New Mexico all my life, my family originally dairy farmed in California. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a “great migration” of dairies from California to New Mexico, and we were one of those families.

I think we all have that handful of Facebook friends who share everything that has ever been posted about dairy. Health benefits of milk? Share! New research on the positives of GMOs? Share! Cute cow photo? Share! Well I will let you in on a little secret – I am that friend. Yes, that is right. Take a look at my social media pages.