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There are many agricultural settlements in Israel, for example, where the residents are religious Jews. The rabbis came up with one solution to the problem of milking on Shabbos, which cannot be avoided because not milking the cows causes them tremendous pain, which is forbidden. They can hook them up to milking machines which are on timers so that the machine does not start up immediately when the cow is hooked up, but rather at a certain time of the day. So if you hook up your cows at 7 a.m. and the machine timer is set for 7:30 a.m., it comes on whether the cows are hooked up or not. So you are not violating the Sabbath by turning electric things on and off; the timer was set up on the milking machine before Shabbos, just like my lights are set up on timers before Shabbos. They come on during Shabbos at preplanned times, but I do not touch them to make it happen. The timer does that.

As for the wood stove, the only solution I could find was asking, BEFORE Shabbos, a non-Jew to kindle the fire of the wood stove several times a day. The only way that lighting a wood stove on Shabbos by a Jew is permissible is if it is very cold and someone is seriously ill, and their illness would be exacerbated by the cold if the stove is not lit.

*** So you are not violating the Sabbath by turning electric things on and off;****

But someone somewhere is on duty stoking the fires with natural gas or coal to make steam to turn the turbine which spins the generator which then sends it’s electricity to the farm to make the power come on.

Besides, in my days in a dairy when a cow ate her feed, got tired of standing in one spot she was determined to move she would MOVE, often times kicking off the milkers. This caused a loss of vacuum and all the milkers on the other cows would also fall off!!

ALSO, the milkers, being vacuum operated, if there is NO power, the milkers will not stay on the cow but fall off in the manure. Someone STILL has to be “Johny on the spot” to keep them on and the system working!