It probably took me a lot longer than others to realize what I was missing. The words “World Dairy Expo,” “Madison” and “colored shavings” were relatively lost on me for the first half of my years in the dairy industry.

This summer, people in New York state had something to talk about other than the wet weather. Convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility near the Adirondack Mountains, kindly leaving a note that read “Have a nice day.”

We all know farming is a gamble. We roll the dice every day. We try to count cards and figure the odds on seed prices to butterfat, or fuel prices to pork bellies, and everything in between.

Nestled in the rolling hills of southwest Wisconsin, milk cows graze in a picturesque setting, munching on green grass. Later in the day, they will make their way home to the comfortable freestalls and feeding barn. Here they will eat a TMR (total mixed ration). This combination of rotational grazing and feeding of a TMR mixture is why I consider our farm a hybrid.

In 2010, Thomas Grip, Jens Nilsson and Mikael Hedberg created a survival video game called “Amnesia: The Dark Descent,” based on a story of a person named Daniel who wakes up in a haunted castle.

I was admittedly intrigued when an Icelandic farmer told me his town was owned by the mafia. I could imagine The Godfather playing out much differently in the north, where a horse head is more likely to be dinner rather than a threat, and the gangsters would be hard to tell apart because they would all be wearing wool sweaters.

Progressive Dairyman prides itself on highlighting new technologies for dairy producers, and this issue’s cover image and accompanying stories here and here are the result of several months of discussion and planning.