She Bought a Scrawny Guernsey Calf for Two Dollars… Her Butter Outsold the Creamery Within a Year.

Nobody at the dispersal sale would bid on the runt calf in the back of the wagon — legs too long, ribs showing, not worth the trouble. Iris saw a Guernsey, and she knew something the rest of Rooks County didn't: this breed's milk came out of the cow already gold, rich enough to make butter that needed no coloring at all. She paid two dollars and built an operation nobody believed in until the hotels in the county seat started fighting over her butter. Rooks County, Kansas, 1933 — with wheat failing under drought and household incomes across the country barely clearing fifteen hundred dollars a year, a two-dollar calf was either a foolish risk or the smartest trade Iris ever made.