Brian,
I grew up in the NW portion of Wisconsin where dairy farming was king. Families were raised and thrived off small 80-200 acre dairy farms with 50-100 milk cows. My grandparents had a small 80 acre farm and produced grade B milk that was still picked up by the creamery in milk cans - (I'm aging myself). I basically grew up on that farm, its where I learned work ethic and how to be thankful for the little things in life. Dairy farming is a hard life - those cows had to be milked twice a day "every" day - holidays, weekends it didn't matter "every" day (up at 4:00 am for morning milking, back in the house by 8:00-9:00 pm after evening milking). Did I mention it was every day. In between you got to go work on your crops, or treat the herd for pink eye, or one of the other 50 things that can affect a cow. Most farmers didn't trust anyone else to take care of their herd, so they never took a day off. As a teenager during the summers I milked for several farmers so they could take off 1 week for a vacation - they trusted me. Milking wore out a lot of good men constantly bending/stooping over to put on milkers. I went off to college and never became a dairy farmer.
Sadly, none of the small dairies that dotted the landscape exist anymore where I grew up. 2-3 mega dairies have scooped up all the the small farms, and opened up fence lines to create bigger fields. The old barns and silos are dilapidated or gone. The big players now have huge high tech milking parlors and run over 1000-1500 cows, basically around the clock. They are impressive operations, but I sure miss the simpler times.
