“If you build it, they will come.” Yes, it’s a line out of a Hollywood movie. It worked for Kevin Costner’s baseball field in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” but will it work for a dairy? If a producer builds a visitor center on the dairy and invites tourists to learn more about the industry, will people come?

There are days when I’m still stunned about the assumptions people make about the dairy industry, especially when you live on a “large, corporate” dairy.

Kathy DeBruin is a stickler for detail. She has to be. A livestock photographer, her clients say tenacity and perfectionism are her signatures. They are the elements that set her work apart from the rest.

When a substantial section of southern Idaho was on fire last summer, I had to face my yearly recognition of the fact that if there was a disaster in my backyard – and really, it’s not an if, it’s a when – I am horribly unprepared.

You know it’s happened to you. A trip to the home improvement store has yielded a shiny new green hose.

As I write this, it is late October. The air is crisp here in southern Idaho. The leaves are waterfalls of color in the backyard and the last of the corn is being harvested to the hum of silage trucks and a bright yellow combine.