Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Small community

How small is the dairy farming community?

Well, the figure quoted at meetings is that there are 50,000 dairy farms in the country.  That doesn't exactly mean that there are 50,000 farmers, because there are often multiple farmers per farm. 

(The other day my son started to run in a parking lot and I said, "If you run without looking in a parking lot you're going to get hit by a car and die.  And it's my job to keep you alive!"  Cole replied, "Your job is a dairy farmer.")

The dairy community seems small.  I see the same people at Farm Bureau meetings and National Milk meetings.  Now that we've been doing this for awhile we know a lot of people in Michigan.  And!  Today I realized that one of my favorite articles in Hoard's Dairyman is where they do roundtable answers with four farms. 

Why?  Because I usually know someone in it!  Today I looked at the smiling face of our friend, Jerry Link and his relatives.  It makes it even more interesting to read the answers when you know the people.

It's like that with a lot of the farm magazines.  There are only so many people to write about and so many farms to photograph.

But there will soon be more ... we know a guy who's starting up his own, new dairy next year.  Hopefully, he'll be interviewed about it.  Lucky number 50,001.

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