How Social Media Sensation NY Farm Girls Defied Odds to Expose the Truth About Farming

The NY Farm Girls have become a social media sensation. With nearly 645,000 followers on TikTok, along with more than 171,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook, the NY Farm Girls are taking all of social media by storm.

“Social media can reach millions of people by the touch of a button,” says Claudia Leubner. “It's been really cool we're able to reach this many eyes in the world to try to share dairy farmers are not evil people.”

NY Farm Girls consists of three sisters: Evelyn and Claudia Leubner, who are both in their early 20s, and their sister Jojo Leubner, who’s still in high school. In addition to the social media piece of the business, the girls are seeing significant growth on YouTube with 87,000 subscribers. Their goal is to simply share life on the farm.

“We are a fourth-generation dairy farm. It's a partnership between my dad, his sister, his brother and our two cousins, and we’re over 100 years old now, says Evelyn.


With a mix of dairy cattle, row crops, hay and an agritourism pumpkin farm, life on this New York farm is in constant motion. The busy schedule creates long hours of work, but it’s also allowed each of the girls to uncover their niche.

“I've always loved working with animals,” says Evelyn. “I actually went to SUNY Cobleskill for animal science, because of my love for animals, and I honestly thought I would never come back to the farm.”

While Evelyn didn’t plan on returning home, she lived in Georgia after college. That’s until she realized home is exactly where she wanted to be.

“I'm pretty much doing her checks, vaccinations help with the preg checks on Mondays,” says Evelyn. “Pretty much everything cows and some calves stuff, I'm your girl.”

Being born into the Leubner family means you’re also born into life on the farm. Each of the girls started on calf feeding duty since elementary school. From an early age, those farm chores also gave them a taste for what they did and did not want to do.

“After I fed calves for that long, I realized it's not really something that I was too passionate about,” says Claudia.

Instead, Claudia found a better fit on the row crop side of the family business. After attending the University of Nebraska, Claudia came back with an even deeper love for grains.

‘I'm helping with planting season harvest season, everything in between. It's been really fun to start to learn about our crop operation” she adds.

 And Jojo? Well, as a high schooler, she still works on the farm part-time.

“She goes to school during the day, comes home and does chores every night,” says Evelyn. “She doesn't really know what she wants to do yet, with her future, but she doesn't have to yet.”


While the sisters work together on the farm, it’s their collaboration on social media that’s helping plant new seeds of opportunity for their business.

“When you come up to upstate New York, you're going to see a lot of lakes and hills,” says Evelyn. “All of our fields are full of rocks,  but it's just really beautiful up here. We're definitely a lot more than New York City.”


Do you want to read more stories of inspiration?  Find the entire list of "Grit with Grace" stories that showcase the heart of rural America.


The three sisters are working daily to showcase New York agriculture, with a focus on dairy. Each of the girls will be the first to tell you that  they couldn’t do it alone, and social media has actually drawn them even closer.

“Having this relationship together and doing things like this, and we've always just become much bigger, stronger bonds together,” says Claudia.

“And we're really good at holding each other accountable. Like if Claudia is slacking on something or I’m slacking on something, we let each other know and we don't get offended anymore,” says Evelyn, with a smile.

“Not anymore,” Claudia jokes back.

The bond the NY Farm Girls trio has built came despite the harsh reality of social media.

“Sometimes it's not even the extremists. It's also other farmers or people you know in real life that are the ones that are sending negative comments to you,” Claudia says. “You kind of just have to brush it off, because we have an end goal in mind,”

“You kind of have to learn to ignore it,” adds Evelyn. “In the beginning when we started, we really took the comments to heart and impacted our mental health and kind of almost made us not want to do social media anymore.”

Even as they battled the comments and negativity that comes with social media, the sisters refused to quit, as their motivation was seeing constant social media posts plagued with misinformation.

“It's a huge passion of ours to teach consumers about agriculture, because they're the ones buying our products; we want them to trust us,” says Claudia.

“All those touchy subjects people don't really want to talk about, we dive into all of that,” Evelyn adds.

Reaching the "Moveable Middle"

With a variety of skills and personalities, the girls no longer focus reaching those who are anti-dairy. Instead, they target what they call the “moveable middle.”

“We know these people don't know where their food is coming from. They think it's coming from the grocery store,” says Claudia. “So we want to be able to target them and share exactly where their milk is coming from that they're buying.”

What they’re doing is working.

“I just did a post the other day on Facebook about how there's no antibiotics in milk, ever. And it reached almost 500,000 people because of how many people shared that post,” says Evelyn.

Her post was part of an ongoing effort during the entire month of June, which is also known as June Dairy Month. To play off the dairy theme, the girls decided to do a series of videos busting dairy myths.

“When you hop online and you see the negative connotations with artificial insemination or antibiotics, you're obviously going to believe that because at the surface level, it might seem bad to you. But once you go to the source and see how it's actually done, you can feel a lot better about where your food is coming,” says Claudia.

While the NY Farm Girls brand has grown since they started on social media, the motivation hasn’t wavered.

“We just want to reach as many people as we can and teach them about agriculture,” says Evelyn. “It just really comes down to that.”

Meet NY Farm Girls' Dad

Each one of the NY Farm Girls is very visible on social media, but a less familiar face on the farm is one that has been a constant stream of support behind the scenes.

“My dad is a great teacher and very patient. You need a lot of patience with me,” jokes Claudia. “He’s always been very supportive of what we want to do on the farm, in our business and everything."

Maybe the reason their dad has been such a great teacher over the years is because farming is what Tim Leubner knew he was meant to do.

“I never left. I just loved it ever since I was a little kid,” says Tim. “I couldn't wait to get out of school and go farm.”

While Tim was hesitant when the girls first launched into social media, his tone has evolved over the years. He has seen the power of social media, and the benefits of showing real life on the farm. But in the beginning, that hesitation was rooted in concern. As for a father, his biggest worry is always the safety of his three girls. 

In years past, they were getting threats constantly [on social media],” says Tim. “It was like that for about a year or so, and there people were really going after them. That was kind of scary.”

From animal activists to other social media users, the threats have calmed down and the situation has improved.

Tim’s concerns have also subsided and now his addiction to the farm could be turning into a new addiction for social media.

“I constantly am making little videos here and there, and then I’ll send it to Claudia or Evelyn, and they'll make a video. We'll come up with different ideas that might work, and I have mostly good ideas,” Tim shares, with a smile.

 

How NY Farm Girls Brand Continues to Grow

NY Farm Girls is a business that continues to grow. The girls even launched their own clothing line recently, adding another chapter to the story of the brand. 

As Tim watched the NY Farm Girls business grow, he's proud of the fact his daughters are strong and independent.  The girls’ drive and determination didn’t happen by chance, they’re traits that are a product of how Evelyn, Claudia and Jojo were raised.

“Don't ever tell like a kid they can't do something,” says Tim. “Always tell them it's possible and just give them confidence and let them go.”

In their 20s and late teens, the determination and confidence is paying off as the NY Farm Girls  continue to gain followers and fans. The side business is also helping these fourth-generation farmers secure a future for their dairy farm.

“We had no idea it would take off like this,” says Evelyn. “We started it just to share pictures of cows and calves and maybe teach a little bit about farming. And it took us a while to grow.”

“We obviously didn't think that it was going to get this big,” adds Claudia. “We are so thankful we're able to reach the amount of people we do, because at the end of the day, it's not really about your follower count or how many likes you get. It's that you are getting that information out there.”

Closing in on 1 million followers and fans across all sites is no easy feat, it’s the product of hard work that’s required constant grit and grace.

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