Where were we?  Yes, demoaning the plight of those poor local Alaska dairy farmers, without any place to sell their milk now that Matanuska Maid (the state-run Dairy) has shut down...

Oh, wait.  Let's back up.

About a month before Mat Maid shuts down, a new Dairy starts up, named, appropriately, Matanuska Creamery.  Not the brightest business decision, you might think, given that the state-owned version is going out of business despite heavy subsidies, but the guy starting the new enterprise used to be the biggest dairy farmer in Alaska, so maybe he knows what he's doing.

Maybe he knows something we don't.

So what happens next?

The dairy farmer ends up leasing the best equipment from the now-shuttered Mat Maid, at very reasonable rates.  (I guess not everything got auctioned off.)  Hey, what a coincidence!  I'm sure it's not like Kyle knows anyone like, you know, a Governor or Senator or anything.

Well, maybe a Senator at least.   Sen. Ted Stevens and state Senate President Lyda Green (representing - wait for it - Wasilla, Gov Palin's home turf!) manage to get Kyle Beus - that happens to be the astute dairy farmer's name - a bunch of money from the Federal Department of Agriculture. $643,000, actually.  Hey, better the Feds than us poor Alaskans!  We're so frugal, we even sold our plane! 

But it's all good: the farmers sell their milk now to Kyle Beus, who prospers with a lot of hard work (and cheap shiny equipment and fed gov, not ak gov, handouts).

And the whole board-firing, "keep Mat Maid alive", "no, get rid of it" fiasco had nothing to do with allowing all this wonderfulness to happen.

Somehow, in the magical kingdom of Alaska, things just always seem to work out.