Growth in export markets has long been lauded as the measure of success in American agriculture. Last year, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue credited exports for being a “major driver of the rural economy, generating 20 percent of U.S. farm income and supporting more than a million U.S. jobs.”

As I typed the title to this blog, I could actually see Tim Gunn from Project Runway nodding his approval. Make it work. As farmers, we’re pretty inventive. I’ve never met a farmer who couldn’t make something out of nothing to finish a milking or to be able to make the last round in a field. We’ve become MacGyvers when it comes to the quick fix just to get the job done.

Other people: What is it like be married to a farmer? Me: I don’t know. Ask my husband.

Back to school ads are everywhere, and it seems the last few weeks of summer are quickly passing us by. Before we know it, Labor Day will have come and gone, and teachers and students will be back in their classrooms, kicking off a new school year.

When life gives you cow’s milk, make cheese curds. Or give tours. Or sell under someone else’s label.

Rest is both a noun and a verb according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. A bodily state characterized by minimal function and metabolic activities and peace of mind or spirit are a couple of the definitions you will find for rest as a noun.

Keith Cunningham went from zero to $100 million and lost it in a period of 3.5 years. Emotions, excessive pride, greed and arrogance slipped into the way Cunningham ran his business, and he lost it all.

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!

There’s no doubt the dairy industry is in challenging times. Low milk prices, changing consumer preferences, devastating weather conditions and an ever-changing political environment has resulted in much uncertainty throughout the industry.

One Saturday night, my husband and I got a text from our milk co-op with milk quality data from the previous day’s load, and panic began to set in. Our somatic cell count (SCC) was far over our comfort threshold of 100,000, and in a small herd like ours, the blame – more often than not – lays squarely on the withers of just one cow.