The barn at Fahrnwald Farm

BLACK WOLF, Wis. — In 1922, a barn unlike any other in the area was built near the shores of Lake Winnebago. Located in the small town of Black Wolf near Oshkosh, the barn stood on a 400-acre property owned by the Fahrney family. An architectural masterpiece, the brick barn was part of Fahrnwald Farm, also known as Fahrney’s Woods or the E.C. Fahrney Farm.

The building featured a tile brick façade and four cupolas on its roof with matching twin silos erected on one end. The architect of the barn was Auler and Jensen, and the barn’s architectural style was considered Astylistic Utilitarian Building.

In 1918, two brothers from Chicago, E.C. and E.H. Fahrney, purchased the property where the barn now sits. E.C. Fahrney constructed a 30-room summer home on the estate. The Fahrneys made their fortune from the family’s production of Alpen Krauter, an old country doctor’s remedy said to cure a wide assortment of ailments. In 1930, Fahrney’s nephew — John Vette — inherited the property.

The barn was once the home of Fahrnwald Farms Dairy. The dairy bottled milk for the Oshkosh area and provided employment for 30 families. The dairy delivered milk directly to homes, stores, restaurants and hotels in glass bottles or cartons. At the time, the farm was home to a herd of 150 Guernsey cows.

A 1956 video  explains how Fahrnwald Farms Dairy was on the cutting edge of producing and bottling milk. Staff were devoted to maintaining the highest quality standards and providing the best in animal care within a clean facility.

During this period, a young man named Paul Fowler was learning the ropes of dairy farming within the barn at Fahrnwald Farm. He was not from the area. Fowler, a New Jersey native, visited his grandfather’s farm every summer, which was down the road from the dairy.

“He loved helping his grandfather on the farm,” said Fowler’s daughter, Diane (Fowler) Scott. “My dad also worked at the Fahrnwald Dairy, and I think that’s where he learned a lot of his dairy science and how to care for animals.”

After graduating from Cornell University in 1959 with an agricultural engineering degree, Fowler worked at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street’s  trade floor but soon realized it was not the life for him. In his heart, he wanted to be a dairy farmer, like his grandfather.

Fowler took over his grandfather’s farm and with his father, Titus, expanded the business to include two other farms down the road.

“My dad ran a Grade A dairy farm and was into registered cattle and doing record keeping and milk testing,” Scott said. “He was doing cutting-edge stuff in the 60s.”

Fowler leased Fahrnwald Farm from John Vette from 1968 to approximately 1987. 

“I was there all the time when I was a kid,” Scott said.

Scott rode her bike or motorcycle to the farm and sat on the fence and drew the cattle markings for registration.

“Fahrnwald Farm is a fascinating place with a rich history,” Scott said. “When my family took over, the dairy business at Fahrnwald had been shuttered. We referred to it as ‘Farm Three.’ As kids, we thought it was a lot of fun. It was a fun place to explore with all the bottles and bottle caps and crates. It was cool stuff.”

Scott said the front of the barn contained offices, the lab, and the bottling and shipping/receiving areas.

“I remember crawling around by all the equipment when we found these big tubes of bottle caps,” Scott said. “My dad let us keep them, and we were so excited. We later donated them to a local school to use as counters for math classes. It was like a treasure hunt if we found an old bottle, etc. There was a lot of equipment that we as kids had no idea what it was.”

Fowler hired a farm manager to run the farm, and that manager lived in the house located next to the barn. The herdsman and other farmhands lived in an apartment building be-tween the barn and house.

“The barn was phenomenal, especially for the time it was built,” Scott said. “It was beautiful.”

Scott went from exploring the barn as a kid to working in it as an adult when she and her husband managed the farm from 1981-1984. 

“Farming was tough, but it was incredible to work in a barn of that splendor,” Scott said. “You walked in and could see its beauty and the craftsmanship.”

Scott and her husband lived in the farmhouse and were employees of her dad.

“When you worked for one of my dad’s farms, you also got a house,” she said. “It was a great house, but it needed a lot of work, so I painted and wallpapered.”

The Fowler family milked 50–60 cows at Fahrnwald Farm. It was a stanchion barn containing 52 stalls. Bulls and heifers were housed across the street in the farm’s outbuildings.

“We had a mixture of registered and grade Holsteins, and I kept all the cattle records for the three farms,” Scott said. “My dad had a few Guernseys early on.”

Fowler ran a total of four farms, including a beef farm. Scott said her father was farming about 1,000 acres in the town of Black Wolf at his highest point, and Fahrnwald Farm was part of that acreage.

“After my husband and I left, I don’t remember if my dad filled that position or moved all the cattle to one of the other farms,” Scott said. “I’m guessing my dad would have loved to buy Fahrnwald Farm, but he couldn’t afford it.”

Down the road from the barn on 20 acres of the original Fahrney property, the grand home of E.C. Fahrney became the Jesuit Retreat House in 1961.

Today, the barn at Fahrnwald Farm, although still a magnificent structure, appears to be empty. But if walls could talk, this historic barn would probably have much to say.