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Valene Lickley and Katharine Lotspeich are the co-hosts of the Millennial Ag podcast. Editor Walt Cooley interviews them as they approach their one-year anniversary of the launch of their podcast. The mantra of their podcast is that no topic is off-limits. This episode lives up to it.

In this episode, we hear from 22-year-old dairy farmer Anna Hinchley. Her desire to return to her family’s dairy in Cambridge, Wisconsin, after graduating prompted her parents to move forward with expanding the herd and upgrading to automated milking. Anna has been involved in every step of the barn design process. Hear about the key features of her robot barn here.

In this episode, we talk with dairywoman Melissa Traiser. She is the owner-operator of THF Jerseys, a 45-cow dairy in Somerset, Wisconsin. We talk about how COVID-19 has affected her and her farm. She tells us about an act of kindness from her milk hauler that was specifically meaningful to her and her local dairy community.  

This episode is with regular Progressive Dairy columnist Tim Moffett. Tim is a dairy-farmer comedian. You can find his humor in every issue of the magazine on the inside back cover. Tim has had some time on his hands due to COVID-19 and its prohibition on large gatherings. Thus, many of his scheduled performances have been canceled. He’s itching to get back on stage. During this episode, Tim talks about his upbringing on the farm and brought a few humorous clips from his live performances. He tells the back stories of those jokes. 

Canadian dairyman Ben Loewith milks 450 cows in Ontario, Canada. He’s about two hours west of Buffalo, New York, or just a bit southwest of Toronto between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Loewith’s cows are 100-plus-pound producers.