Apprenticeships Bring a Fresh Generation to Small Dairy Farms
January 28, 2025 | Source: Civil Eats | by Daniel Walton
Ben Wagner may be a dairy farmer, but that job description is woefully incomplete. He’s also an accountant, squaring the numbers for his central Minnesota farm by hand; a herder, rotating 75 cows between pastures; a crop farmer, raising 300 acres of feed like corn and hay; and a mechanic, repairing the equipment necessary to tend that acreage.
It’s a lot for anyone to handle, Wagner admits, especially for a man approaching his 66th birthday. Thankfully, he has a capable and energetic partner, 25-year-old Jack Schouweiler. Schouweiler, who started out milking cows for Wagner as a teenager and now owns the farm’s herd, has plans to eventually buy the rest of the operation.