Phil Giglio, outfitted in a perfectly pressed denim shirt with pearl-snap buttons, boots, and a straw cowboy hat, watches as a pair of ranch hands wheel a cartload of equipment toward a row of water buffalo parked at a milking barn in Floresville, outside San Antonio.

The cowboys attach an apparatus to each buffalo’s udder, one at a time, then set the whirring machinery in motion, drawing milk that will be used to make gelato at Giglio’s shop, OroBianco Italian Creamery in Blanco. “A year ago, I was in a boardroom talking to hedge-fund executives,” says Giglio, a corporate attorney who grew up on a small family farm in New York. “Now I’m out here working water buffalo.”