Dairy Farmer

With a lifetime of experience, Gerald Fieser, 61, counters what he calls the “idealistic view of what farming should be.”

- Cheri Henderson

He’s not in Kansas anymore. Fieser’s father, a dairy farmer, moved the family from Kansas to Florida’s Volusia County and eventually took over the 325-acre DeLeon Springs plot that Fieser and his brother, Karl, now farm.

Then and now. When Fieser’s family moved from the Midwest, “there were 30 dairies in Volusia County, and three of them were located here.” Today Fieser Dairy is the only remaining dairy farm in eastern Central Florida. “Dairies were always located near the population center. A lot of those dairies have sold out to developments.”

Farming was not his career choice. With a master’s degree in economics from the University of Florida, Fieser took over the farm in 1980 when his father got ill, and he had a life-changing realization: “I just didn’t like sitting behind a desk.”