I first met Karen when I stepped out of my pickup to take her family portraits. It didn't take long to see the passion she has for their farm, to realize how knowledgable she is about the daily operations, current issues and the entire industry. In a world that has questions about where its food comes from, she has a lot to offer, and was gracious enough to share that knowledge:

Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, working on calendar artwork for the ND Farm Bureau, when I noticed huge, chunky snowflakes falling out my window. Snow! It's always a bit magical. And in my opinion, if it's going to be below 32 degrees, it better be snowing! :)And this was good timing! We needed a few "snowy cow" photos for the Farm Bureau calendar, so I called up Whitney Vogel and headed out to her place Saturday morning to grab these shots...

Factory farm.

I hate that term. So you can imagine how startled I was when I stepped foot into Cactus Feeders, a business that feeds 500,000 cattle at a time, and heard someone say, “We’re proud to be factory farmers.”

Gulp.

And the tour began: