If you're like me, I have always believed living and working in the country does my soul good. And that is precisely why many of us work and live on dairy farms dotted throughout the rural countryside.

A research team confirmed that our city cousins also do well with trees and greenspace. So much so that having 10 or more trees in a city block improved one's perception of health and personal self worth as much as:

• Having an additional $10,000 in income.
  
• Moving to a neighborhood with a $10,000 higher median income.
  
• Being seven years younger.
  
• Having less cardio-metabolic issues such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes.

In conducting this analysis, the research team from Toronto, Canada; Chicago, Ill.; Bloomington, Ind.; and Adelaide, Australia, accounted for demographic and socioeconomic factors such as income, property values and other related factors. In all, 30,000 residents from Toronto were included in the health-related study.

It also turns out that having more trees and green space had a compounding effect. As densities rose above 11 or more trees per city block, people had even better attitudes. That level of satisfaction was similar to having incomes $20,000 higher than presently earned and being roughly eight years younger.

Let's tie this back into dairy farming.

Those of us who have dairy cows not only have access to wide open fields (green space), but many of us also have large woodlots. Last year, 33 percent of Hoard's Dairyman readers reported that they had 75 acres of land dedicated to trees.

That's a whole lot of green space and improvement to ones health based on this Toronto study reported in the journal Scientific Reports.

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