Tony Jandernoa still doesn’t quite understand how it all works. After decades of running a dairy, there are days he looks out across the fields or into the barns and just shakes his head, half laughing, half in awe.
“I don’t even know what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t get how this all works, but it works, and man, it’s an amazing thing to watch.”
For Tony, the 2025 Michigan State University Dairy Farm of the Year, farming isn’t just a job, it’s a front-row seat to something bigger than himself. Every season, every cow, every crop reminds him that farming is an act of God. “What the dairy cow does for this Earth is unbelievable,” he said. “Nobody understands it, but I see it every day.”
Tony’s luck with having that magical view today wasn’t something passed down to him from the generation before. Before the cows, the fields and the long days, there was a kid with a fast car, a girl who swore she’d never marry a farmer and a leap of faith that would change everything.
Built on Grit, Fueled by Dreams
“When we first started dating, I was working at Federal Mogul, driving a Trans Am,” Tony said with a laugh. “Patti thought she found something right.” By the time they got married in 1987 though, he was laid off from his automotive job, the fast car had turned into an old clunker and cows entered the picture when he started working part-time on his neighbor’s dairy farm to make ends meet.
The same year Tony and Patti got married, they took the leap. It was $180,000 to buy 20% of the farm he’d been working on, the now Dutch Meadows Dairy in St. Johns, Michigan, and the beginning of Tony’s dairying.
“We didn’t have any money,” he said, still sounding surprised. “Patti was freaked out. She’ll tell you, she thought I was nuts.” But Tony’s advice to Patti was simple, “If it’s got you that nervous, just whack three zeros off. It’s $180. Everything else is just zeros.”
The “just zeros” mentality carried Tony forward. Never short of ideas or energy, he admits, “I was crazy. I had a lot of big ideas, and the only way they were going to happen was if I worked my butt off.” And that’s exactly what he did. He poured himself into the farm, chasing opportunities, pushing boundaries and betting big. As a first-generation farmer, it wasn’t about tradition, it was about building something. After all, “I got into this to make money.”
But in 2009, everything hit a wall. “We thought we were broke. Honestly, I wasn’t sleeping at night. We couldn’t pay the bills.” Desperate for answers, Tony brought in help to benchmark his farm’s financials to others of similar size in the region. “The results showed that we were doing better than I thought. That gave me the confidence to keep going.”
By then, Tony was two decades into dairy farming. The stakes were higher, and the risks felt heavier, but the passion was still there. He had a drive to expand his operation and with limited space to make it happen in the central part of the state, they purchased a corn field in Lake Odessa, Michigan, establishing another operation, Meadowbrook Dairy. Then, just seven years later, thanks to a connection he made when he began dairying, they purchased another dairy, in the St. Johns area, Berlyn Acres. Collectively across the three operations, Tony milks over 5,000 cows and farms 5,000 acres.
Getting Out of the Driver’s Seat
To him, the reason for his growth and success is obvious. “We hire good people and let them work.” With a grin, Tony added, “I don’t even know what they’re doing half the time. As long as the numbers look good at the end, I don’t care.”
That faith in people is one of Tony’s favorite parts of the job. “When you get people with a drive like that, they’re so much fun to be around. And that’s a lot of our success, to be honest. I love hiring people who want to prove they can do it. Watching them figure it out and watching that drive is fun.”
Tony focuses on building trust with his 75 employees. He rewards good milk quality, and his crew knows the benchmark goal is to be in the top 25%. “You keep me there and I don’t care how you do it.” It’s a hands-off approach that only works if you know how to hire the right people and respect them in turn. “People are incredible. If I had to do all this on my own, we’d have been gone a long time ago.”
These days, Tony calls himself the “head cheerleader.” And while he jokes about it, there’s truth behind the title. His nephew, Matt, took over the cropping side of the business a few years ago while his son, Kyle, runs the dairies, and his daughter-in-law, Mackenzie, manages the books. “Now I’m just the guy on the sidelines, trying not to get in the way,” he said. Then, with a smirk, he added, “I’m sure I’m still a pain in the butt.”
Letting go hasn’t been easy. In fact, Tony admits it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. “I was used to being there, in the barn and in the fields. If something was getting done, it was because I was doing it. Then we built this new facility 40 miles away, and I had to change. I can’t just swing in and check on things anymore.”
While he’s in the process of transitioning his farm to the next generation, he acknowledges that he isn’t fully out yet. “Some days I catch myself laying it all out in my head, pricing projects, planning builds and I have to stop. I tell myself, ‘This isn’t your baby anymore. Get in the passenger seat.’ But man, that’s tough. Especially when it’s fun.”
Full Circle
Part of the fun is Tony representing his peers on the Michigan Milk Producers Association (MMPA) Board of Directors as the elected Vice Chair. He’s always believed in the value of connection between generations, farm sizes and people who care about doing things right. That’s what drew him to run for the MMPA board in the first place.
“I thought I could bridge the gap,” he said. “I could talk to the guy milking a hundred cows and the one milking 5,000.” Even now, as his own farm has grown, that commitment hasn’t changed.
When Tony talks about dairying, it’s obvious that it’s not just a job, it’s a way of life that still fills him with awe. “We’re the most sustainable industry there is,” he said. “We feed cows waste products. They give us the healthiest food on earth. Then we take their manure and feed the ground, and it just keeps going in a circle. How much more sustainable do you want?”
But more than anything, Tony’s proud of what he’s built together with the people who’ve grown up alongside the farm, who showed up hungry to learn and who stayed and made it better. He’s proud that he no longer has to be the driver, and that someone else who he believes in has taken the wheel.
“I’d love to look down someday and see that it’s still successful,” he said. “That we created something worth handing off. That we did it right.”
And if it all still feels a little unbelievable? That’s the beauty of it.
This article was originally published in the May/June 2025 issue of the Milk Messenger. Subscribe »