Waupaca event celebrates Dairy Month
By James Card
Ruth Trinrud has to survive the next couple weeks. The challenge: educate, entertain and feed an expected crowd of 3,000 people in four hours on her family’s farm.
Trinrud drives an off-road side-by-side to get around the farm. In the back seat is a German shepherd and on the front seat are two dumbbells. She said while running the farm’s beef store, she would squeeze in a mini-workout in between waiting on customers. She knows how to keep busy.
Trinrud and her family will host the Dairy Agstravaganza from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 25, at their Whitetail Valley Farm on E1596 Haase Road, northwest of Waupaca.
With her husband and two adult children, they decided to put together an on-farm June Dairy Month event. They originally scheduled it for the summer of 2020 but COVID-19 put a monkey wrench into those plans.
“A few years ago, Brad and I and the kids were discussing agriculture one day over lunch and we decided that maybe we could do something to get a June Dairy Month event back on the farm,” she recalled.
She pointed out that many other counties have similar events but not Waupaca County.
The long-term goal is to see a rotating line-up of dairy farms in Waupaca County hosting events that celebrate June Dairy Month. One year, a farm in Manawa would host one. The next year, another in Iola would host one and so on.
“It’s a big thing. It’s been a lot to undertake for me. It could be a one-and-done. Or it could keep going. I don’t know. We’ve got to get through it and see how it goes. I hope that somebody else will want to do it. We could keep doing it every year but that’s not the point. The point is to get it to be a county-wide thing,” said Trinrud.
That’s the plan but first the Trinrud family has a lot of work to do to get their own event underway.
Event details
Haase Road will be closed to traffic so visitors must come from the Country Trunk Q route. They obtained permission from the township to close the road as they didn’t want the farm tours to be a traffic hazard. Parking will be in two large fields to the west of the farm. It has already been mowed and it will be mowed one more time before the event.
Multiple tents will be set up all over the farm. A contractor that specializes in pressure washing farm buildings is scheduled to hose the place down and get everything looking shipshape.
Organize volunteers: Trinrud formed a committee and she said those members have been a phenomenal help. FFA members from Waupaca and Weyauwega are helping out, along with kids from numerous 4-H groups. The Iola Leos will be there, along with the Waupaca dance team and hockey team. FFA alumni will also lend a hand. Numerous local businesses are involved in the event.
The event is free and there will be free Cedar Crest ice cream for everyone. There will be a big-screen video tent where people can learn how a dairy farm operates. Kids can compete in their own tractor pull—think of mini pedal-powered tractors attached to a weighted sled. Local artist-author Missy Mittel set up a craft project for kids to make gift cards.
Wagon ride tours of the farm will be ongoing and acoustic singer-songwriter Rob Anthony will be playing the tunes. Julia Nunes, the 74th Alice in Dairyland will make an appearance. Lots of farm machinery will be on display—both modern and antique. There will be gift basket raffles and a silent auction for a 65-inch television, a fire pit, kayaks, and grills.
There will be burgers from Whitetail Valley, along with bratwurst. Those lunches are served with Waupaca’s De-Lish-Us potato chips, pickles, string cheese and a drink.
The Rustic Java Coffee Truck will be there, along with the Wittenburg Lions Club deep-fried cheese curd truck. Funds raised during the event will be paid to the youth groups and nonprofits that help out.