Wolff, N.Y. Dairy Farmers Honored at Convention
Submitted by Editor on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 12:33pm.
Chris Torres
Staff Writer
More than 500 people attended Holstein Association USA’s annual convention in Sacramento, Calif. this week with Dennis Wolff and a pair of farmers from New York State walking away with two of the association’s most prestigious honors.
Wolff, Pennsylvania’s secretary of agriculture, was awarded the 2009 Distinguished Leadership Award.
He was selected after receiving numerous letters of recommendations from supporters and for his past work as a farmer in Columbia County.
“He is a past registered Holstein breeder and he just has, through his service, always tended to keep dairymen at the top of his mind,” said Lindsay Worden, communications manager for Holstein Association USA. “He’s been a team player, trying to team up with ag leaders in the Northeast.”
A pair of brothers from Schuylerville, N.Y were honored as the Distinguished Young Holstein Breeders.
Jan and Jeff King, owners of Kings-Ransom Farm, a 900-head operation, were selected from what Worden described as a strong pool of applicants.
“They are very progressive minded. There parents really handed things over to them and they really took the operation to the next level,” she said.
Large farms rarely win the award, Worden said, simply because many do not apply for the award in the first place. To apply for the award, an applicant must submit their complete herd statistics as well as fill out a series of seven essays on their operation.
Jeff King, reached by phone Wednesday morning, said he applied for the award after winning the same award at the state level.
“We feel very, very fortunate and very honored,” King said. “I think we’ve been very lucky. We work very well together and that’s a great thing. That’s made it much easier.”
The brothers have worked on the farm their entire lives and took over for their parents with the goal of taking the farm to the “next level.”
“We’ve always had the attitude that we wanted to move the business forward and look at whatever it takes,” he said. “We are not afraid to take risks and try something new. We don’t just want to have a nice herd of cows. We want to have a good herd of cows that will make us some money.”
