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“Roll down your window for a second and tell me what you smell,” Rosie Burroughs instructs me. It’s early March and I’m in the passenger seat of her gigantic white Ford pickup truck, bouncing down a narrow, potholed dirt road on her farm in the rolling hills just east of Turlock, Calif. Her husband, Ward is sitting in the driver’s seat.

The Burroughs’ 4,000 acres of sweeping organic grasslands, which practically rest under the shadow of Yosemite’s Half Dome, are a pastoral dream. On the Saturday afternoon of my visit, a storm was brewing over the purplish mountains, sending gusts of pink petals from their neighboring almond orchards across the landscape.

I opened the window, gazing at a herd of cattle grazing not more than ten feet away from our car, half expecting the acrid stench of manure and animal common on larger factory farms to assault my nostrils. But I couldn’t smell anything, save for the faint scent of damp earth and rain brewing on the horizon. Rosie leaned back in her seat, content.

Ward, Rosie, and their three grown children operate California Cloverleaf Farms and Full Circle Dairy, two organic dairies milking 500 cows each, in addition to a pasture-raised chicken operation and organic olive and almond orchards. In 2004, they joined Organic Valley – the largest organic, farmer-owned co-op in the nation with sales topping over $900 million annually – and began shipping their milk to grocery stores across the country.

Their family’s dairy history runs much deeper though: Ward’s grandfather, Benjamin, began farming in 1896. Original glass bottles from his first enterprise, Walnut Grove Creamery, line the Burroughs’ dining room mantle alongside Organic Valley milk cartons emblazoned with portraits of Ward, Rosie, and their children and grandchildren. The Burroughs are literally the face of the company.

But they’re in trouble. Last year was the first in their entire farming history that the Burroughs didn’t make enough money to pay the bills, prompting them to close their third dairy operation. And they’re not alone. California’s ongoing three-year drought – the worst ever in recorded history – combined with slow responses from co-ops, has doomed many of the state’s dairies, raising questions about how just sustainable this form of “sustainable farming” really is – economically, ecologically, and otherwise. Pastured dairies throughout California, once exemplary models of sustainable and organic farming, are in jeopardy of imminent collapse.