Emily Wright, Pennsylvania’s alternate dairy princess from Cochranton, has a lot to celebrate.
At the age of 21, Emily is entering her final year at PennWest, Edinboro where she is studying to become a high school English teacher. She also got engaged in December to a gentleman she met while showing dairy cattle.
The daughter of Kevin and Kim Wright, Emily lives on her family’s third-generation beef and dairy farm, Wright Way Farm.
The Wright family, from left, Sydney, Kevin, Kimberly, Lindsey and Emily Wright.
The farm started out as a dairy farm, milking around 40 registered Jerseys and Holsteins, until the early 2000s when the family made a strategic decision to stop milking. However, they kept heifers and some cows at other farms until around 2015 and her family showed their heifers until 2020 when the pandemic started.
Emily said after her grandfather passed away in 2014, her dad, Kevin, took over as sole caretaker of the farm. Kevin works full-time off the farm, but they still raise a small herd of beef cattle, which they sell by the whole, half and quarter.
While in middle and high school, Emily was an active member in her 4-H club Blooming Valley for nine years, showing alongside her sisters and cousins. She held a president’s office as well as several others throughout her years in 4-H.
In college, she is involved in the Chi Alpha Ministry group and was elected in Wayne Township as the inspector of elections.
While Emily has always had a passion for dairy farming, she admits she had no idea what a Pennsylvania dairy princess actually did. (She said, “Pass out ribbons, maybe?”)
Emily Wright shows Holstein Show-Mar Master Karley at the 2023 Crawford County Fair.
“The princess before me, Lauryn Irwin, inspired me to become the dairy princess,” Emily said. “She told me what an amazing program it was and how it helped her to build her confidence over her year. I had also been praying to God about where he wanted me in the dairy industry, as this was something that was really on my mind.”
Emily said when her family stopped showing dairy cattle during the pandemic, she started thinking about ways to turn bad circumstances into personal growth.
She also views this year as an opportunity to return the favor.
“It was a chance for me to both find my place in the industry and to give back to an industry that had helped raise me,” Emily said.
While her location seems far away (Cochranton is in the upper northwest corner of the state near Erie) she found it to be an advantage as a dairy princess,
“There are many events I get to attend solo, and with me being on the western side,” Emily said, “I’m able to attend events in Pittsburgh and Erie, where we hit a new demographic of people.”
Emily said she has been deeply impacted by seeing local farms exiting the dairy industry.
“I really wanted to promote their (dairy) products, so this didn’t have to happen anymore,” she said.
Reflecting on her path to alternate dairy princess, Emily said she still remembers the speech she wrote for the state competition about dairy myths relating to dairy alternatives.
Emily Wright kneels with a Holstein on a neighboring farm.
She said she is passionate about this topic because of the misleading statements on social media.
“Consumers are told that these (dairy alternatives) are much better than real milk, because they’re trendy and they’re something different,” said Emily. “But I really wanted to convey that real milk, health wise, is much better for a healthy and active lifestyle because it has those 13 essential nutrients.”
As part of the competition, she also had to submit three recipes, write a skit and demonstrate extensive dairy knowledge in the form of an exam, poster board, scrapbook and radio spot.
Emily was able to place in five of the seven competitions: first place, speech; second place, recipe; and honorable mention for dairy knowledge, poster board and skit.
She said one of her winning recipes, pumpkin mousse, tastes like pumpkin pie without the crust.
The most challenging part of the process was the impromptu question, where candidates are put on the spot. She said she still struggles with that aspect, but is improving.
The most rewarding part? Attending events at local food banks because, as she said, “I can bridge that gap between consumers and producers directly, as I’m putting milk in their car.”
As she approaches her final year of college, Emily plans to earn a master’s degree as a reading specialist and someday work for the same high school where her mother teaches.
