Farming for five generations

FALL CREEK, Wis. — The country was growing and changing in 1913. The 16th Amendment was ratified, establishing a permanent federal income tax; Henry Ford launched the first moving assembly line for the Model T, and thousands of suffragettes marched on Washington, D.C. In western Wisconsin, August Messerschmidt purchased a farm where his family has made their living for more than a century.

One hundred and thirteen years later, Dave and Felicia Messerschmidt are the fifth generation of Dave’s family to operate the 377-acre dairy farm, nestled in the hills of Eau Claire County, near the town of Fall Creek. The couple milks 45 cows. The Messerschmidts were formally awarded recognition as a Wisconsin Century Farm last August.

“Growing up, it was never a question for me that I wanted to farm,” Dave said. “I couldn’t really ever imagine myself doing anything else.”

Dave’s journey to farming led him off his family’s farm for a period of time, an experience he said served as a good education.

“My brother was here farming with my dad, so I left to go work for different farmers,” Dave said. “My brother took a job off the farm, then I came back here to the home farm in the early 1990s.”

Messerschmidt officially became the fifth in his family to have ownership of the farm in 2010, when he purchased it from his parents.

Dave and his parents continued to farm together until his father passed away in 2017. He and his mother continued working together until she retired in 2022.

In recent years, the Messerschmidts have made changes to their farm to lighten manual labor.

“I didn’t make too many changes to things until I met Felicia,” Dave said. “She said I farmed like it was the 1940s, and she wasn’t wrong.”

Felicia had not grown up on a dairy farm, but felt an early calling to the occupation.

“My parents said I decided I wanted to be a farmer when I was 3,” Felicia said. “Growing up, I always wanted to, so I got a degree in agriculture from Chippewa Valley Technical College. I relief milked for people the whole way through school.”

Felicia said she quickly learned that becoming a farmer was not simple.

“To my surprise, there weren’t a lot of great jobs, which I didn’t expect because I wanted to be a farmer,” she said. “When I went to the bank to get a loan as a farmer, they literally told me to go marry a farmer. That was in 1999.”

Putting her dreams on hold, Felicia turned to a career in healthcare until she met Dave, more than 20 years later.

“I was kind of surprised when I walked into the barn,” Felicia said. “When I was relief milking 20 years ago, the farms were a lot different than here. I told Dave if we were going to keep doing this, we had to make it easier.”

Felicia said she told Dave that the way he had been farming would make it almost impossible to find anyone to come in and do chores so they could get away.

“I told her I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, ‘getting away,’” Dave said. “She kept talking about having a life off the farm, and I honestly didn’t see what the big deal was.”

The first improvement came in improving the stalls for cow comfort.

“Cows are a lot bigger now than they were years ago,” Dave said. “My grandpa milked Guernseys from the 1930s until the 1970s, when they transitioned to Holsteins.”

The Messerschmidts purchased units with automatic takeoffs in 2022, installed a new vacuum pump at the same time to run the new units, and improved milking procedures for better udder health.

This spring, the Messerschmidts went from decades of component feeding to giving their herd a total mixed ration.

“We were feeding corn silage and haylage in the bunk outside,” Felicia said. “In the barn we would feed corn and protein, which was specific to each cow. I kept telling him that no one would do it that way — they’d just give everyone three scoops, or something like that.”

The Messerschmidts said they have already seen the benefits of feeding TMR, as their bulk tank average has climbed more than 10 pounds in a few months.

Another change coming this year will be transitioning from storing their forages in stave silos to using bags.

Dave also plans to phase himself out of fieldwork this year, renting cropland to a neighbor and purchasing the feed back. The Messerschmidts will have their haylage custom harvested.

“I really hate doing field work,” Dave said. “I figure this will take something off my plate and allow me to focus more on the cows. The custom guys can do everything so quickly, and the feed is so much more consistent and of better quality. You aren’t worrying that rain will pop up after you cut, or that the wind will blow too much.”

The Messerschmidts are keeping their changes small for now, uncertain of whether the farm will continue beyond them.

“We’re just making changes that are making things easier to do around here,” Dave said. “I’m not getting any younger and help isn’t getting any easier to find. We just want to keep it manageable so we can handle the work.”