Dipping into dairy history

Brothers entwined by history

Zabinskis preserve pieces of the past

Posted

WAITE PARK, Minn. — Many farms have history behind them, and those operated by retired dairy farmers and brothers, Jerry and Bob Zabinski, are no exception.

Jerry lives on Farm Beautiful, a site that got its start during the Great Depression and served to help people in a time of need.

“They would have large numbers of men during the Great Depression who’d come out and work and get paid with vegetables or a subscription to the St. Cloud Times, which was a big deal then,” Jerry said.  “Up to 500 people helped throughout the project.”

Jerry and Bob started farming together in April 1969, after they both returned from the military. Bob’s farm is the one they grew up on and has been in the family for over 140 years. It is across the road from Farm Beautiful.

“When we got out of the service it seemed we were both interested in farming and it was an excellent place to raise a family,” Jerry said.

The Farm Beautiful location was rented from 1970 until it was purchased in 1980.

Farm Beautiful is home to a 3-story barn and a blacksmith shop that were built in the 1930s along with other small projects around the site. The farmland was originally purchased by Fred Schilplin, a previous owner of the St. Cloud Times. The blacksmith shop was the first to be built in 1933.

“This is a beautiful barn, but we could never make good use of it as a barn because we couldn’t accommodate it with any modern things,” Jerry said.

Streetcar tracks, that were no longer in use in St. Cloud, cement and stones make up most of the structure and aesthetic of the buildings.

“All of the cement work was done by hand and very labor intensive,” Bob said.

While lining the outside of the barn and buildings with stone added a new sense of beauty to the structures, it was a lot of work.

When the barn was built in 1935, it was designed with a granary on the main floor, horses for the operation housed on the lower floor, and hay storage on the upper floor. All the feed was carried into the barn in sacks.

Schilplin paid special attention to the barn design because he lost several horses in a fire at his old barn.

“Basically, he was going to build a fireproof barn,” Jerry said. “When you get in it, it is all cement and the door from one floor to the next is lined with steel and the stairs were poured cement, so in theory it was fireproof.”

The only part of the barn that could have burnt was the roof, which has a German design for the rafters. The cross-pattern design creates rhombus-shaped areas throughout the length of the barn.

There were many additional features to the farm itself that were purely decorative, including a stone wall, a wishing well and designs in the stone walls of the barn. The farm also included other functional buildings in its prime, from a bull shed to a chicken coop.

Once all the finishing touches were made, Schilplin added cattle to the farm and employed an average of seven hired hands at a time.

Jerry said many of the hired hands were young men who were in trouble with the law for various reasons. The farm was a version of a work release program.

“While some of the hired men had a troubled past, the program was in place to try to help people out,” Bob said. “The original caretaker relied on hired help.”

The farm, with 160 cows at its peak, was kept in excellent shape under the management of Ferdinand Storekamp from 1934 to 1942 and Ed Stemen from 1942 to 1961.

“The man who came in after Stemen utilized his eight children as hired hands, and it wasn’t managed well,” Bob said. “By the time they sold out in ’68 and had the auction, they only had 17 cows and a tractor they had to roll down the hill to get started.”

The brothers have done as much as they could to preserve the barn and the blacksmith shop.

“There was an arch over each window that started to rot, so we had to take some of that off and cover it with steel,” Jerry said. “We improved the barn, but in the process, some aesthetics were taken out.”

The brothers utilized both farm sites and barns by housing their replacement heifers at Farm Beautiful and milking at the family farm. In 1974, they added onto their tiestall barn and expanded the herd to 100 cows.

The Zabinskis were a part of the Dairy Herd Improvement Association until they quit milking in 2006 and switched to steers. In 2021, the brothers retired from farming.

The land is now farmed by Jerry’s son, Lee, so the history of the Zabinski farms will live on through another generation.

“There was talk of putting (Farm Beautiful) on the record of historical places, but then you have to follow their rules on how to use it so that wasn’t practical,” Bob said. “It is a nice monument and people value it.”

The brothers said they are proud to have so much history between their two farms. Bob said there had been a handful of people who would come from a long way just to see Farm Beautiful.

“The stonework and everything Schilplin had done there was phenomenal but quite impractical to keep up,” Bob said. “I’m glad we kept it up and it will stand there a long time.”

Jerry agreed. He said he has enjoyed preserving history, even though it has been expensive to do so.

“Both of our wives and all of our family members helped to make it all work,” Bob said. “It’s been a great place to work, raise our families, and now retire.”

Jerry agreed.

“I don’t think I’d change a lot,” Jerry said. “We did what we could when we could. We are proud of it.”

Share with others

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here

© Copyright 2024 Star Publications. All rights reserved. This material may not be broadcast, published, redistributed, or rewritten, in any way without consent.