Firefighting farmers

DICKEYVILLE, Wis. — Perched atop some of southwest Wisconsin’s rolling hills sits the village of Dickeyville, hometown to Jerry Pitzen and Beau Rindy. In addition to their roles as dairy farmers, the two volunteer with the Dickeyville-Paris Fire Department and Rescue Squad.

Pitzen, 85, owns Pitzen Farms, located a short walk from the fire department. There he and his son milk 150 cows in a double-10 parlor as a third-generation farm. Rindy, 30, farms with his grandparents at Green Acres Dairy. Rindy handles the majority of the labor, milking 45 cows in a tiestall barn and housing them in a freestall barn. He has been volunteering for the fire department the past eight years.

The initial fire training is a 70-hour class, held at the firehouse, with additional training needed for driving, specialized equipment and more.

“When I decided to join, my cousin Tony (Droessler) talked me into it,” Rindy said. “I was living with a roommate and we both decided we wanted something to do after chores, and I’m halfway available during the day so we both joined. He has since quit, but I’ve stayed on. I really enjoy helping where I can.”

The reason Pitzen signed on remains his passion today.

“I was in the military when I was younger, and I’ve seen where people needed help,” Pitzen said. “I joined the department after I got out of the military. I had to wait seven years because our roster was full, but I’ve been at it 47 years now.”

Being on call at all times means schedules at home are sometimes changed.

“I’m lucky with where I’m at,” Jerry said. “I can usually get someone to run me up to the firehouse pretty quickly, and we have some really good help on our farm. My son takes care of pretty much everything, and we have Julie Augustine and Jeff Puls who help us out a lot. It’s the long calls that make it more difficult on the dairy farmers.”

It takes a village to help keep things in working order, and that extends to Green Acres Dairy as well.

“If I’m out on a call and it’s getting close to milking, my grandparents will help me,” Rindy said. “They’ll go get the cows and scrape the freestall barn. Depending on how long the call will take, my brother, who works as a plumber, also comes and will help get me started so all I have to do when I get there is carry units to the barn.”

Always being on call can make for long days and nights.

“We had one call that came in late and we were there all night,” Pitzen said. “When we got close to finishing up, Beau went right to the barn to milk. There are nights where you just don’t go to sleep after a call and you just carry on through the next day.”

Some calls make for unique situations.

“(When) we got one call, I was in the tractor hauling bales and saw some of the trucks go by,” Rindy said. “I hopped out of the field and took the tractor and a wagon full of bales to the call, got parked and started directing traffic.”

To handle situations like this, one of the trucks carries additional equipment and gear for the volunteers who weren’t at the firehouse when the call came in. This gives Rindy, Pitzen and others the ability to head straight to the emergency, put on their gear, and help.

On-site, knowledge gained on the farm helps Rindy and Pitzen make a difference in the field.

“We have more general knowledge on how things work than some of the others,” Rindy said. “As a dairy farmer you turn your own wrenches, you have to make it work. If something goes wrong on these trucks, we could piece it together if needed.”

Pitzen has also seen farming knowledge give them an advantage such as recently when  they were practicing training with rescue airbags. They were trying to lift a boom, but the way it was set up originally was pushing the boom out.

“Booms only go up,” Pitzen said. “That’s just one example of how our knowledge from the farm can help us. Calls with farming equipment there’s a base level of knowledge for the machinery that is really helpful.”