Kilowatts to cows

MELROSE, Minn. — In March 2022, Derek Engelmeyer made a decision that forever changed the outlook of his parents, Joe and Kim’s, dairy farm.

He switched occupations from an electrician to a full-time farmer.

Since that life-altering change, Engelmeyer has been an understudy on his parents’ 140-cow dairy near Melrose.

“I always liked the thought of being my own boss versus working for someone else,” Derek said. “It was always fun between being on the farm with Mom and Dad and when I was kid out at my grandparents’ places on the farm. I kind of wanted to give my kids the same opportunity growing up.”

Derek and his wife, Amber, have two sons, Wyatt and Colton. Derek’s presence on the farm has injected energy and opportunity for the Engelmeyers.

He is embracing strategies for feeding, milking and breeding cows.

“I’ve learned quite a few new things, what it takes, like the feed to get them to milk, how to dry stuff down, how much they need for different rations,” Derek said.

He said recently they were working on the chopper and running into a few roadblocks. He suggested it might be better to bring the piece of equipment to a mechanic.

“I told Dad I wasn’t a mechanic, we should bring it to town,” Derek said. “Dad said, ‘You’re a farmer now so that makes you an electrician, a mechanic, a plumber, a carpenter, anything under the sun.’ You have to have some sort of knowledge on a little bit of everything.”

A few characteristics can help in gaining these bits of knowledge. Joe said his son has those qualities.

“He has patience, which is going to help him,” Joe said. “He’s willing to learn new things. He’s not afraid to do different things, like working on equipment or anything. It doesn’t matter. He’s not afraid to try.”

Farming has become a sort of school for Derek. He’s increasing his role with fieldwork and his dairy animal knowledge continues to grow. He recently added breeding to his class list.

“That’s probably one of the more difficult things I’ve had to learn,” Derek said. “Just because it’s inside of a cow. You’re searching for things with your eyes closed.”

Another new thing that Derek has been excited about since his return to the farm is learning about planting corn, including the electronics involved.

“The biggest thing that I’ve enjoyed this year is we planted our own corn for the first year since we started farming,” he said. “It’s kind of cool to see it in the box, throw in the ground and hope like hell it comes up.”

Derek said this project included planting just under 10,000 sweet corn plants.

“It’s a different feeling of accomplishment,” he said. “We sold a lot of it. It was one of those things we just did because we had our own corn planter.”

Derek said he would eventually like to see other electronics, such as robotics, on the farm.

“I’ve watched my parents update a lot of things with the times as they’ve gone on. You’ve got to keep moving along with it. You can’t be stuck in the old ways in how you do things,” he said.

Between taking care of the animals, planting and harvesting corn, and working around the farm, Derek’s hours have changed substantially from his day-to-day as an electrician.

“You start a little earlier in the morning, obviously. You go a little later into the evening with work,” he said. “It’s just basically when you get up in the morning to when you go to bed at night.”

While the days may be long, Derek said there is plenty of fun to be had on the farm.

“Going out to do field work kind of seems like playing because you get to go out and sit in the big tractor and drive around,” he said.

Amber said their boys also enjoy going for rides on the tractor or the skid loader.

“When I’m feeding the boys at night and Derek is pushing in feed, they can hear the beep of the skid loader,” Amber said. “For the first month that we lived here, they were crying because they knew the skid loader was moving and they were not in it.”

Derek, Amber and their boys live up the hill from Joe and Kim and have enjoyed being able to come down whenever and getting to raise their boys on the farm.

“Watching the kids grow up down here is a lot like my childhood,” Amber said. “It’s awesome. They get to experience all these things and see all the hard work that is put into farming.”

Wyatt and Colton are also excited to be on the farm.

“It’s super nice to bring them down here, they enjoy it,” Amber said. “When we first moved here, they would cry every time I would bring them home from daycare because they just wanted to come down to the farm and milk with Dad.”

Amber knew that Derek wanted to come back to the work on the farm, so she was not surprised when he came home and said he was quitting as an electrician to start farming.

“People say working for family could be a bad choice, but I don’t know. I’ve never second-guessed it,” Derek said. “They are always going to teach you something. They’ll tell you when you’re wrong and congratulate you when you do something right.”

Knowing someone wants to keep the farm in the family matters to Joe.

“It’s nice to have some help and to know that somebody wants to run it, to take it over,” he said. “If the next generation wants to do it, you have to hand it over and help them along with it.”