From our side of the fence

Kayla Sexton

Millville, Minnesota

Wabasha County

125 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? One tradition we look forward to every year is participating in our family’s white elephant gift exchange. Everyone brings a gift under $10, and it ranges from something good that everyone wants to something silly. We usually have 25-30 people participating, and it can be very entertaining.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On both Christmas and Christmas Eve, we all do chores together. Milking usually consists of my husband, my father-in-law, my sister-in-law, her boyfriend and me. On Christmas Eve, we usually try to go to church for the Christmas Eve service. On Christmas day, we usually get together with either my immediate family or my husband’s, and we have a big meal and exchange gifts. We finish the night by milking cows together again.

What is the best gift you have ever received? This year, I have a heifer due to calve on Christmas Day. She is the only daughter out of the first cow my husband and I bred and owned together, and she is supposed to have a heifer, so that would be a special gift. Besides that, my grandma sews me homemade Christmas gifts every year. They are very meaningful, and I always enjoy putting out the seasonal table runners or using the items she makes.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? This year, I am going to make Christmas cookies with my sister and husband and give them out to the people we do weekly business with. I enjoy baking, especially at Christmas time, and this is a fun way to spread holiday cheer with others.

Tell us about your family and your farm. My husband and I own Irish Ridge Dairy, where we farm in partnership with his sister. His parents also help with everyday chores. We milk around 125 Holstein and Jersey cows and farm 300 acres of corn and alfalfa. I also raise some regis-tered Holsteins to carry on my parents’ farm prefix, Shir-Man Holsteins.

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Harlan and Nelva Huitink

Huitink Dairy LLC

Hospers, Iowa

Sioux County

100 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? A favorite tradition of ours is having the noon meal together on Christmas Day and opening presents afterward.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Christmas Eve, our church has a children's Christmas program that we attend. On Christmas Day, we go to the morning Christmas service and then have a prime rib noon meal as a family and open gifts.

What is the best gift you have ever received? My sisters, who are crafty, make homemade tree ornaments each Christmas. These ornaments bring back special memories each year I put them on the tree.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? We have given a variety of gifts. We have given gift cards, homemade candy, various snacks and t-shirts and sweatshirts with our farm name on them.

Tell us about your family and your farm. Harlan and I have three children. Our oldest son, Heath, is married to Jordan, and they have two sons: Hudson, 2, and Landon, 1 month. They live in Manhattan, Montana. Paige is our only daughter and lives in North Sioux City. Bryce is our youngest son. He is a custom applicator at the Hull Coop and helps us with the dairy. We are working on starting to transition the farm to our kids. We live on Harlan's family farm. Harlan took over the farm when he graduated from high school. We have a 100-cow herd of Holsteins we milk twice a day in a stanchion barn.

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Hope and Jeremy Middendorf

Browerville, Minnesota

Todd County

70 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? Christmas is very important to our family. We all work together to set up and decorate the house for Christmas. The kids love to help put all the ornaments on the tree, especially the handmade ornaments they have made over the years. We always make homemade Christmas cookies, and we all decorate them. Mom tries to save some cookies to leave out for Santa, but they are always a hit to snack on coming in from the barn after chores.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Christmas Day, the kids all wake up excited to see the gifts from Santa Claus, and everyone rushes out to the barn to complete chores as a family before opening gifts. Our kids never complete chores as fast as they do on Christmas Day.

What is the best gift you have ever received? Jeremy says it was the cordless impact driver for projects on the farm. Hope loves the little gifts the kids make us at school.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? We usually give Christmas cookies and homemade desserts.

Tell us about your family and your farm. We are a small third-generation family dairy farm that milks 70 registered Holsteins in central Minnesota, where we grow our own feed. We are lucky enough to be working alongside Jeremy's parents as we buy in and take over the legacy that began in 1974. We moved to the family farm in 2016 after Jeremy worked in construction for 13 years. Hope has worked outside the farm as a nurse for the last 15 years. We have four children: Tate, 12, Ryder, 10, Harper, 8, and Emma, 4.

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Tom Gavin

Lansing, Iowa

Allamakee County

700 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? Coming home after chores on Christmas morning and watching the kids open their presents. Then, going to Christmas Mass, followed by a Christmas meal for lunch.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Christmas Eve, we go to extended family gatherings. On Christmas Day, we stay home with immediate family and watch the kids play with their presents.

What is the best gift you have ever received? In 1989, I received a John Deere toy tractor from Santa. I dreamt of having one on our farm someday. The very next year, my grandpa got one almost identical to it on our farm.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? All the employees get gift cards and sweatshirts. The milk truck driver insists on getting cookies my wife bakes.

Tell us about your family and your farm. My wife, Alana, and I have four children: Brielle, 14, Brogan, 12, Breyson, 9, and Braxon, 8. The kids are all very active in day-to-day activities around the farm. Alana works off the farm as a physical therapist at the local hospital and helps around the farm when needed. I am the fifth generation on my family’s farm, Gav-N-View Farm. I farm along with my dad, Pat, my uncle, Mike, and his son, Brayden. We are currently under an expansion project and look forward to milking cows in our new parlor next fall.

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Annette Gorentz

Dent, Minnesota

Ottertail County

155 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? My favorite tradition is going to the Christmas Eve service at our church. We have two grandchildren, a grand-niece and a grand-nephew who will be in the program during the Christmas Eve Mass. Our four children all live nearby and will attend mass with us. Over the years, our grandparents, our parents, our children and us — and now our grandchildren — have been a part of the Christmas Eve program at our church.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? After the program, we used to go to my brother and sister-in-law’s house for supper and to exchange gifts. On Christmas Day, my husband’s parents, my parents and our immediate family came together to open gifts.

What is the best gift you have ever received? My family. Watching our children grow up to be healthy and happy adults is the best gift I have had.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? We give some goodies and cookies but also Bongards cheese and some of our beef to our employees, family and friends.

Tell us about your family and your farm. We milk 155 cows in a parlor that was built about 10 years ago. We have four boys — two of them are married — and we have four grandchildren. One of our sons works in town and helps out when he can. The other three work on the farm full time with us. The grandkids also help out with age-appropriate chores. We sell our milk to Bongards. We also raise our own steers and have about 25 beef cows. Our grandkids show in 4-H and we lease animals to other kids in our county as well. I have been a leader in 4-H for the past 38 years. My husband participates in a barbershop singing group too, so we have a lot going on besides the farm.

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Troy Colsrud (pictured with his wife, Vicki)

Finlayson, Minnesota

Pine County

70 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? We get together with our families with lots of smiles and a big meal.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Christmas Eve, we get together with my wife's family after chores, and we stay there until about midnight. On Christmas Day, we get together at the farm with my side of the family after morning chores.

What is the best gift you have ever received? One year, right after Christmas Day milking, we had a beautiful blue Holstein heifer calf; her name is Blutiful. She is in the milking herd now and is 4 years old. She has one daughter due next spring.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? My wife likes to can, so we like to share her canned and baked goods with the milkman and the feed truck driver. She makes ginger cookies or ginger snaps and chocolate chip cookies. She also gives them salsa and green beans.

Tell us about your family and your farm. My wife, Vicki, and I have five kids: John, Jake, Justin, Laura and Joe. Their ages range from 20 to 10. Vicki helps on the farm and also works part time at a local hospital. We milk our cows in single-8 step-up parlor. The cows are housed in a sand-bedded freestall barn we built in 2016. We raise corn, alfalfa and oats on 300 acres. We are the second generation on this farm. We ship our milk to Associated Milk Producers In. out of Paynesville, Minnesota.

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LaVern Lambright

Campbell Hill, Illinois

Jackson County

74 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? My favorite tradition is getting together with family members and going to church on Christmas Day.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? On Christmas Eve, we don’t do much more than our regular work. On Christmas, we generally take the day off except for our normal chores. We go to church and celebrate Christmas at home with family or extended family. We have a special meal consisting of ham and mashed potatoes and an-ything else that people would like to bring, such as snack foods, etc. It varies from year to year who hosts Christmas. It’s either at our house or at my wife’s parents’ place or at my parents’ house. We have a big family, as I come from a family of five boys, and my wife comes from a family of 11 siblings. When we gather with my wife’s family, we do a gift opening where the grandparents hand out gifts. The children love to look at what they get and play with their toys. Sometimes, we do that on Christmas Day or another day near Christmas.

What is the best gift you have ever received? I would say the best gift is bringing home our 6-month-old daughter from the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Dec. 11. Jalisa was born with severe combined immunodeficiency and had to have a bone marrow transplant. She was admitted Aug. 26 and remained through Sept. 22 and then stayed at the Ronald McDonald House until Dec. 11. So, being healthy and being reunited as a family is a great gift.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? We like to give baked goods of some kind, such as a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls or doughnuts.

Tell us about your family and your farm. My wife, Rosetta, and I have four children: Diane, 11, Lori, 8, Lyndall, 6, and Jalisa, 6 months. We farm together on our family farm, Milky Way Dairy, alongside my mother, Nancy. We milk in a double-8 parlor, and cows are housed in a freestall facility. We ship our milk to Prairie Farms Dairy Inc. and farm 220 acres. I am the second generation at this location. My parents moved here from Kentucky in 1994, and the farm was a new facility at that point.

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Luke Wolfisberg

Black River Falls, Wisconsin

Jackson County

40 cows

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? A Christmas tradition my wife and I are continuing from my family is Swiss cheese fondue on Christmas Eve. After we got married, my grandmother in Switzerland gifted us a fondue pot, and we’ve enjoyed a cheesy meal on Christmas Eve. Our son, Luca, is 9 months old, so this will be his first Christmas. We are just starting to create traditions with him and our growing little family — cutting down a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and teaching the true meaning of Christmas is what we would like to do.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? When my wife and I were kids, both our families did stockings on Christmas Eve and then opened presents on Christmas Day. We would like to do something similar with Luca in the future, with the added bonus of family chores on Christmas morning, complete with hot chocolate and a big breakfast.

We aren’t exactly big gift givers, but our families do a secret Santa gift exchange between siblings, spouses and parents. Usually, that’s done over FaceTime since family is all over the country, but this year, my brothers and their families are coming out to Wisconsin to do it. We will have a big Christmas dinner here the week before Christmas and celebrate with a full house and lots of help doing farm chores.

What is the best gift you have ever received? Back when we were poor beginner farmers (oh wait, that’s still a thing), we were pinching pennies. However, my wife knew I really wanted a pair of Bluetooth headphones to talk on the phone while doing chores or driving the tractor. She went out and collected her tip money from working at a bar and bought me a really nice pair — it was something that totally caught me off guard and just such a great gesture. I still have them, and they come in handy when I’m spreading manure or raking hay on the Farmall M.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? Last year, we baked sugar cookies and made plates for the neighbors, our landlord and the milk truck driver. We will plan to do the same this year and maybe include a pack of bacon or brats from homegrown pork. We have two high school employees who cover some chores, and I think I will get them gift cards to the farm store here in town.

Tell us about your family and your farm. My wife and I moved to Wisconsin from Washington two years ago. We rent an 80-acre farm just north of Black River Falls where we milk a herd of 40 cows. We ship to Organic Valley and really enjoy pasturing cows during the grazing season. We make about a third of the forage we need and buy the rest, along with buying corn. We milk in a 9-stall step-up parlor and house the milk cows on a sawdust bedded pack and feed out in the barnyard on feed wagons. Dry cows and heifers are housed in 3-sided sheds. It’s a fairly simple setup up, but it works great for us, and we have a great landlord, too.

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Becky Mills

Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Winnebago County

200 goats

What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family? My favorite family tradition is, after the presents are opened and the prime rib eaten on Christmas Day, the whole family squishes into my mom’s living room to watch a movie and take a nap. A silly tradition when we were still milking cows was to do shots in the parlor Christmas morning. This is Wisconsin, after all.

How does your family celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Christmas Eve has always been the one night of the year when we milk early so we can go to church. Now, without having cows to milk, that has not changed; it is just milking the goats and doing goat chores early to make it to Christmas Eve service. After church, my mom’s side of the family gathers at our house for snacks and drinks, and it is really one of my favorite evenings. Since I was a child, Christmas morning has always been to hurry up and get chores done so we could open presents — after taking care of animals first, always. This is the way my son, Wyatt, was raised also. On Christmas morning, everyone pitches in to get done faster. After our little family Christmas morning, we go to my mom’s house to celebrate with my brother and sister and their families. It is loud, it is chaotic and it is perfect.

What is the best gift you have ever received? Honestly, it has never really been about gifts; it has always been about the time spent as a family, and the older I get, the more I realize that. I love thinking back to all the memories over the years and the little traditions we have had, whether it was Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa K’s house or Grandma O coming with her big orange Fleet Farm bag full of presents. It has been fun to start new traditions with the family and our own kids.

What type of gifts do you like to give employees or people you work with? We really like to give things from small local businesses.

Tell us about your family and your farm. Together with my husband, Marvin, and son, Wyatt, we operate Wy-Guy Dairy Goats. We are a commercial herd, shipping our milk to Saputo. We will be milking around 130-140 goats in 2026. We started with two goats in 2009, and by 2014, we were shipping milk. In 2024, my family sold the dairy cows, which was an incredibly hard change for me, but it has been a true blessing to be able to be home full time with the goats and care for them. They definitely show it as they are milking better than ever and look great. I do all the milking and kid care, Marvin does the feeding and Wyatt fills in where needed. We also like to show at various dairy goat shows around the state. It is a fun way to meet people and see how our goats compare with others. In addition, my brother and I farm 600 acres of cropland, which has been a learning curve for me as I was always the “cow person.”