Telling the story of 125 years of dairying

AUGUSTA, Wis. — While commemorating 125 years of western Wisconsin dairy farming for their family, Mark and Terri Karow chose to invite their community to celebrate with them by hosting the Eau Claire County Breakfast on the Farm June 13.

“We’re proud of the history of our family and of our farm,” Mark said. “Sharing what we do with consumers, letting them see a working dairy farm up close, and just being good neighbors, it’s all an important part of building our community and supporting our industry.”

The Karows, along with their children, Caden and Brayden, milk 67 cows in their farm’s sand-bedded tiestall barn near Augusta, Wisconsin. They farm 500 acres between their home farm and a second farm just south of Augusta. They raise forages and grains to feed their herd as well as for cash cropping.

The Karows are the fifth generation of the family to operate the farm, which was established in 1901. Mark and Terri went into partnership with Mark’s father, Dean, in 2009. The partnership continued until Dean retired in 2014.

“Both my dad and grandpa grew up here on this farm,” Mark said. “When my mom and dad got married, they bought a farm on the other side of town, and that is where I grew up. Grandpa had about 40 Guernseys here, and we usually had around 30 at our place.”

The milking herds were combined at the home farm in 1993, as Mark’s grandfather got older.

“We didn’t have a pipeline at the other farm, so we moved all the cows here,” Mark said. “We took out some pens and added more stalls. My grandpa continued to live in the house here until 2004, when I was able to move into the house.”

The Karows originally had a herd of registered Guernseys and began adding Holsteins to the mix in the early 1990s.

“Back in the late 1960s, people in the Guernsey breed decided their cows should get to be as tall as the Holsteins,” Dean said. “They forgot that cows need to have some strength and width. Then there were so few bulls to choose from. It’s too bad, Mark had the champion Guernsey down at the state fair and a reserve champion at World Dairy Expo, back in the day.”

Eventually the Guernseys phased themselves out of the herd.

“There were only five or six Guernseys left when I met Mark in 2004,” Terri said. “I was a Jersey girl, and I brought some of them along with me. Now, they’re gaining ground on the Holsteins.”

More recently, Brown Swiss have been added to the herd, and Caden has developed an affinity for the big brown cows.

While this year marks the first time the Karows have hosted the county’s annual gathering, it is not the first time they have opened their farm to the public, hosting an event for the Augusta FFA Alumni in 2018.

The size and scope of this year’s event will eclipse that one — a prospect that leaves the Karows both excited and anxious.

“It’s kind of stressful, planning on having so many people here at the farm,” Terri said. “The FFA alumni event, we had around 300 people visit, and a lot has changed over the last eight years in terms of biosecurity.”

Last year’s breakfast saw 1,800 people visiting the farm of David and Felicia Messerschmidt near Fall Creek. The Karows said this year, the Eau Claire County Breakfast on the Farm committee has its sights set on hosting 2,000 people.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Eau Claire County Breakfast on the Farm. The event was born when the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce discontinued the long-running Breakfast in the Valley event, held at the Eau Claire County Expo Center.

“The committee really does a great job with planning the event,” Terri said. “Even though this is only the fifth one, they’ve gotten it down to a science. It’s been interesting to be involved with the details from the inside, looking out. It gives you a new appreciation for how larger events are staged.”

Located on the outskirts of western Wisconsin’s Driftless region, the rolling topography can create challenges for hosting events like the Breakfast on the Farm. The Karows have spent months contemplating how to plan traffic flow to best showcase their farm.

“Weather permitting, we’re going to plan to have parking here on the farm,” Mark said. “It’s not the easiest scenario to plan out. It will entail making two lanes up the driveway, as the field to park in is behind the buildings. It might require a few extra volunteers to coordinate foot traffic and parking, but we think it will work.”

The Karows admit that, while preparing for the breakfast is a lot of work, it has helped them check many things off the to-do list.

One project that has kept the Karows busy is placing a series of barn quilts on buildings around the farm. The quilts have personal meaning to the Karows. Terri created one of the geometric design quilts at a workshop, with assistance from Debbie Kitchen of Creative Touch and Kayla Davis of Inherited Artists. The Karows’ niece, Hannah Klesmit, painted a trio of one-of-a-kind barn quilts, featuring each of the three breeds of cows that call the Karows’ farm home.

The desire to share their story prompted the Karows to host a WEAU television crew, along with the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, to film a commercial highlighting their family dairy farm for June Dairy Month.

“We are committed to educating people about farming, making sure they have good information,” Terri said. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. We want people to come and see that small dairy farms still exist, and that we’re just a normal family like any other family. We want them to see the animals and how we care for them. We want them to see the real story of dairy.”