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A young mom running a dairy farm gives us a darling sneak peek behind the scenes.

It's time to get acquainted with where your food is coming from.

True

Cheese is cheese, you say? Not so fast, buck-o.

Not all dairy gets produced the same way. Some comes from very small farms with actual families taking on the shared responsibility of caring for their animals.

That's how the cows get raised at Royalty Ridge Farm, in Tillamook, Oregon.

It's owned and operated by the Lancasters; Freynie and her husband, Ryan, along with their kids, Logan, Tatum, and Harper.

Farming wasn't a choice made to try to get rich but a deliberate exercise in the values they wanted to live. Freynie explains:

"Both my husband and I have been farming our entire lives. Working in nature, with animals and together as a family, is what inspired us to devote our lives to dairy farming."

Freynie Lancaster steadies a young calf while Logan, Tatum, and Harper help feed him. All images used with permission.

One of the kids' jobs is feeding all the new babies, which actually sounds like a pretty enviable sibling activity!

Logan handles the bottle while Tatum and Harper give her some love.

Freynie says that a strong community is crucial for family farms.

"Having a strong community bond is so important for farmers. In our small community of Tillamook, many families rely on dairy farming as a source of income. I feel supported by many members of the community, even if they aren't from a farming background. I know many people who grew up in Tillamook and moved away years ago, but ... the Tillamook Cheese Factory is their root. They continue to support us and are very proud of the farming community they were a part of!"

Ryan finds ways to make the work fun for the kids. I don't know about you, but it's been forevs since I had a wheelbarrow ride!

Freynie wants dairy lovers to know something about her though. She gets it. She gets what you go through as a consumer.

"Farmers are moms and dads too. I'm just like other young moms wanting to provide safe, healthy, and affordable food to their family. I look for healthy food choices for my family. Food safety and quality are also extremely important to me. Because I'm on the production side of food, I can say without hesitation that we are so lucky to have the food options that we do in this country."

In fact, you can join the Tillamook Co-Op and “Ask A Farmer" anything from relationship advice, to input on the in-laws, to life on the farm, or just life in general. The Lancasters will be the featured family beginning Wednesday, October 21st, and answering questions for the next month.

And that's why knowing where your food is coming from is so important. I want to know that the food I give my kids comes from people who care and put their hearts into it — and more and more, it seems like others want that, too.

Pop Culture

Folks are admitting that Boomers weren’t totally wrong. Here are 19 things they got right.

OK, Boomer, you're right about this one.

via Patrick Lannigan/Flickr

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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Little boy steals the show at his sister's end-of-year dance school concert

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@kleinkwagga1/TikTok

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Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

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Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

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GOOD

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

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To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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A young mom running a dairy farm gives us a darling sneak peek behind the scenes.

It's time to get acquainted with where your food is coming from.

That's how the cows get raised at Royalty Ridge Farm, in Tillamook, Oregon.

Freynie says that a strong community is crucial for family farms.

Freynie wants dairy lovers to know something about her though. She gets it. She gets what you go through as a consumer.

OK, Boomer, you're right about this one.

1. App exhaustion​

2. Let kids play

3. Pricey concerts

4. Tip creep

5. Phones at concerts

6. Kids online

7. Lazy tablet parents

8. Bring back knobs

9. Bad customer service

10. Raising entitled kids

11. Emojis in work emails

12. Paper straws

13. Face tattoos

14. Gender reveals

15. People are too sensitive

16. TV sounds terrible

17. Affordable housing

18. Blinded by the lights

19. The people on your lawn

This kid was born to dance.

The 42-year-old optical illusion is still astounding people.

Sometimes the best gift is practicality.

1. Everyone has to eat, especially when you've just birthed a human

2. Cleaning is a gift of love

3. Giving parents a much needed break from their littles to do wild things like nap.

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

1. App exhaustion