One of the things I’m known for in my family is my love of the Harry Potter book series. From the movies to the books, and even the books on CDs, I’m amazed at the brilliance that is J.K. Rowling, formerly a struggling single mother who had a vision of a boy with a scar on his forehead and turned it into a multibillion-dollar enterprise with fans clamoring for more, even more than a decade after the last book was published.
Her daydreams heading home on the train from her minimum wage job have transformed into multiple theme parks, festivals and stage performances dedicated to them. Not to mention the badly abused little boy who spends his formative years living in a cupboard under the stairs and who goes on to lead a revolution and save the magical world from an evil regime. To me, the stories of Harry Potter and his creator have always signified what can happen when you don’t turn your back on dreams that scare you.
“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress called adventure,” Harry Potter’s professor and mentor, and “the greatest wizard alive,” Albus Dumbledore, tells Harry as he whisks him away to worlds unknown. That’s how the summer of 2018 has felt here at Moore Family Farms. We took a huge leap of faith and opened our Main Street shop full time on Memorial Day weekend. Since then, we’ve sold thousands of scoops of ice cream, hundreds of pounds of cheese, local meat products, nut butters and so many other great local products.
We’ve also had some great things going on at the farm, with calving our first group of bred and owned heifers, classifying some really great young cows and increasing our herd by about 10 cows, or 20 percent. We are so lucky to be able to count every day here as an adventure! In addition to the happenings at the store and the farm, we have been able to share our story in so many avenues, including being featured in the Iowa Farm Bureau newspaper, The Spokesman, being included on a producer panel at the Dairy Iowa Annual Meeting, in a local paper as a June Dairy Month feature, through a story time on the farm and of course on our social media page.
We were honored to be the recipients of the Renew Rural Iowa Leader Award for excellence in entrepreneurial achievement by Iowa Farm Bureau and WHO Radio in July. It is a very humbling experience to think that our small shop and farm is considered a leader in anything, much less as entrepreneurs, but we are completely dedicated to the success of our farm and enterprise, and have big plans for the future (stay tuned)!
Another exciting adventure came in the form of an invitation to speak at the Farmwest Discovery conference in Bunbury, Western Australia. One of my dearest dairy friends and I will be heading Down Under in a few short weeks to talk about dairy in the U.S. and learn about the Australian dairy industry. I’ve only previously traveled internationally on a tour bus full of college students to Canada for the Royal Winter Fair, so I feel like I might as well be jumping headfirst into some sort of magical adventure!
With so many struggles in our industry today – low milk prices, rising feed costs, staffing issues and an uncertain future – one thing remains constant: Life sure is an adventure. And just like J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, I’m confident that dairy farmers will be able to find the magic in our industry to preserve. After all, in the seemingly immortal words of Sirius Black and Ginny Weasley, respectively, “What is life without a little risk?” and “Anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve!” 
Heather Moore is a dairy farming mama herself, raising three little boys with her husband, Brandon. The Moore family has a 60-cow dairy and custom feeds 800 head of beef cattle near Maquoketa, Iowa. When she is not chasing around cows and kids, you'll find her scooping ice cream and selling cheese in her store, volunteering, cooking and very occasionally, sleeping.
