(Strafford, Mo.) -- A 33-year-old Missouri program recognizes family farms over a century old. One of the most recent century farms: the Coble Dairy, just outside of Strafford, Mo.

About a mile down the road once called "Coble Hill," sits the Coble Dairy Farm. It was homesteaded in 1872, by Christopher Coble and his wife Lucy.

Eventually, it to went to their grandson, Harry Coble. The line nearly ended there.

"My dad wasn't gonna sell it to me because he'd worked hisself to death on it," says the current owner, Harry's son, Bob Coble.

"He said, 'Son, I don't want you to have it. It's just too rough to make,' and he said, 'You've got a good job. You don't have to do it,'" says Coble.

Coble wouldn't be deterred.

"He said, 'don't do it,' and I said, 'I want it,'" says Coble.

Instead of inheriting the farm, he set his sights on buying it.

"I just wanted to carry it on," says Coble.

Working for years at a steel manufacturer, he saved every penny.

"I worked a lot of hard hours to get this thing," says Coble. "I farmed and done that, too."

He bought his dad out, for $48 an acre, in 1963.

"It didn't have no buildings on it. [It was] bare land, brush, it was all growed up. It was bad, because dad couldn't make it," says Coble.

He put in a couple of barns, and set out to make Coble Dairy a success.

With a churn museum in his barn, he also educates the community on his roots.

"If you've never farmed, you just don't even have an idea of what it takes," says Coble.

He hopes that people will fall in love with local farms all over again.

"I still think if we don't take care of our family farms... if I can't make it, and nobody can make it, what are we gonna eat?" asks Coble. "If we don't take care of what we got today, where we gonna be in the future?"

Coble plans to pass the farm down to his son and grandson.

"Willing to do what i can just to keep the farm going," says Coble's son, Ron Coble.

These days dairy farming is a tough business, but the Cobles plan to milk on, with the hopes that Ron Coble, Jr. may one day celebrate this farm's bi-centennial.

"We've went through too much just to throw it away," says Coble.

"Farm life is a life like no other," says Rob Coble. "It's like i told that boy of mine: 'it's a hard life, but it's a good life.'"

"They love it. They're doing it, and they'll carry it on," says Coble.

Coble says, for now, any money he makes isn't from the dairy farm.

Because of the economy, he loses $150 every day.

It's his love of the farm, and a certain obligation to produce a quality product, that keeps him going.

Contact: dmagditch@kspr.com