Our farm is not a family farm.
I know that’s a bold statement when it seems like everyone wants to hold family farms up on a pedestal, but that’s just not who we are. I always wonder what defines a family farm for people, we aren’t a single family farm, we are a farm made of families.
Photo by Len Villano
Back in 1998, our farm stopped being just a single-family farm. At that time my dad Ed, my brother Dean and our long-time hired hand Bob Radloff formed Majestic Meadows. If you’re defining a family farm as a farm owned by one family that’s all related to one another, that’s when we were no longer a family farm and that’s already a quarter of a century ago. But here’s the thing, Bob isn’t related to me by genetics, although he’s always been another brother in my life. He started as our hired hand in 1982, he ate breakfast and lunch with us every day. He worked alongside us and we never worried about if he was actually related to us when we decided to build a free stall barn and parlor and add him as a partner in our business. We formed Majestic Meadows, Bob became a partner in 1998 and I joined the farm as a partner in 2006. 
My brother Dean was always involved in our industry. He served on a lot of boards and committees and went to a lot of events and meetings. People associated the Strauss name with Majestic Crossing, and Dean made a name for our farm, but the Strauss family isn’t the only family here.
In 2010 we sat down with Roy Herzog and Wayne Wedepohl. They had already done the same thing we had done, combining their smaller farms into Highland Crossing. We decided to work together and we went from Majestic Meadows to Majestic Crossing. At that time Ryan Herzog, Roy’s son also joined the partnership. Wayne passed away in November of 2019, just 2 months after Dean passed away. Just last year we added Bryan Neeb and Rick Knoflicek as partners. 
So no, our farm isn’t the “family farm” but we certainly aren’t phoning it in from Florida. Ed and Roy are both semi-retired now, but all of our partners have an active role in the day-to-day here. Our farm still has a family atmosphere. We just aren’t doing what we do with all of us having the same last name. The people that are partners on this farm, didn’t just get here solely on genetics. They got here because they have a passion for the industry.
I like also to think that our dairy is a pathway for others to have ownership, people who maybe didn’t grow up on a farm or have a family farm to go back to. When Bob Radloff started working for my Dad 40 years ago, it wasn’t a dead-end job as a hired hand. He had a passion for the industry and a path into ownership. That passion is still what we are looking to attract. As Majestic Crossing Dairy continues on, we’ll be looking for the next generation. Maybe there will be sons or daughters coming up, or maybe that will be one of our Latino employees. Our farm family will never all have the same name, but we will all have a passion for dairy farming.