Your farm’s story can help promote agriculture. Considering that most Americans are at least two generations removed from agriculture, it’s more important than ever to help connect the public to your livelihood and way of life. Dr. Michelle Schack, dairy veterinarian and online educator known as @Da...

Penn State Extension program specialist in ag economics, sociology and education Paula Ledney urges farmers to familiarize themselves with Medicare and how it’s regulated to make wise purchase decisions and understand how premiums might increase. One aspect that sometimes catches farmers off guard i...

Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” This phrase linked the French term déjà vu, meaning “already seen,” to the English phrase “all over again,” creating a humorous repetition. Much of the Northeast has recently experienced a major wildfire smoke invasion, comp...

Recruiting and hiring are the first steps to adding the right employees to a dairy farm, but training and retraining are essential to keeping them. However, Penn State Extension veterinarian Dr. Adrian Barragan said a significant percentage of dairy farms still don’t offer a solid training program. ...

The Brassica genus boasts in its membership many of our most well-known vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, rutabaga, turnips, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, collards, kale, mustard and more. My first contact with this genus as a source of soil fumigants occurred about 20 years ago. At the time...

More farmers than ever are interested in and practicing regenerative agriculture these days. They are focused on putting more back into their land and their animals so that more (and better) may be produced. But what about the concept of regenerative agritourism? On the surface, tourism seems like a...

There’s evidence that pair or group feeding for calves is better, but will farmers buy into it? Dr. Marina von Keyserlingk, professor and dairy welfare researcher at the University of British Columbia, has conducted extensive research on pair and group feeding of dairy calves. “There are lot of thin...

Part 1: How Medicare works Some business practices in farming, including legally minimizing reported income, may benefit the business for a while. However, in some cases, cleverly managed tax returns and waiting too long to enroll in government financial and health security programs can backfire. Pa...

Just as summer 2026 was getting started, I stumbled into three situations where cattlemen reported incidence of foot rot in their livestock. Two of the individuals I work with in an advisory capacity – one a dairyman, the other a beef (mostly Angus) farmer. A discussion of foot rot should logically ...