Farm Technology Days Coming to Clark County in 2022
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019 -- 1:39 PM
-Clark County was selected to host Farm Technology Days in 2022 and a media day was held at Rustic Occasions just south of Loyal on Monday.Roehl Acres, owned by the Dennis and Suzie Roehl family, was selected to host the show in 2022. Dennis talked a little bit about the farm and Rustic Occasions, the beautiful event barn owned by his family.
"This is Rustic Occasions. It's my aunt and uncles place. They purchased it in 1968. When they bought it, they farmed in for a lot years and sold their cows out in 2003. And then I actually put cows in the bottom and put hay in here. Then their daughter was going to get married and they decided in 2017 to make it into an event barn. So, I built myself a free stall barn."
Hosting the Farm Technology Days event is a huge undertaking, but Dennis and his family are ready to meet the challenge head on.
"Last time it was in Clark County, we went to it and said, 'you know, this is something we could do.' And I've always wanted to do it, so it was a once in a lifetime opportunity."
Finally, Dennis talked about what he and his family are looking forward to in hosting Farm Technology Days.
"I just want to see all the people come to the farm and learn something. I want everybody to come out of this and say, 'wow, that was a nice place to go to and I really learned a lot.'"
During the presentation, Richard Halopka, a member of the Farm Tech Days Executive Committee, provided some facts on why Clark County is the perfect host from Farm Tech Days 2022.
So, just to give you a quick little thing that I think is really neat. Clark County has a population base of about 34,000 people. And every person has the opportunity to have 3.5 cows in their possession because we have about 160,000 cows and calves. Now, I don't remember what the exact acreage is, but we need about that many acres to feed all that livestock, which is number two here in the State of Wisconsin. The other neat thing is, while we have the most dairy cows in the State of Wisconsin, our average herd size is about 80 cows, which is what I would call very traditional. And thus, that's what we were talking about in regards to a theme. I wanted to tie in that tradition with how are producers here in Clark County are using new technologies in our traditional dairy farms."
Wisconsin Farm Technology Days General Manager Matt Glewen talked about the history of the show.
"So, Clark County is carrying on this tradition. It's the only show of its kind in the United States. The only farm show that both moves around from location to location and is also completely run by organizations and volunteers within the host county."
He also talked about the relationships formed for those that work on the show.
"Those of you that have worked on shows before, you know the kind of relationships that are built that wouldn't be built otherwise. The connections that are made. The things that happen after the show as a result of people working together, getting to know each other on a pretty deep level. There's also a whole lot of volunteerism that turns into leadership. And people that really never worked in the leadership capacity, learn how to do that with in the 3/3.5 year period. So, you might call it a leadership symposium that lasts 3.5-years that ends up developing a lot of leaders for the communities and the county. So, it's really neat that Clark County can look forward to a whole new group of folks that are going to get involved."
Executive Committee Chairmen Chuck Rueth said it was a hard decision when it came to choosing the farm, but it all worked out in the end.
"I want to thank the six applications of the farms that put an application in. It was a very hard decision to make. And any one of those applicant farms could have done the show. We feel is was a very hard decision to make. We were there for a long time and we're still friends. So, it all worked out very well."
Clark County has hosted Farm Technology Days twice in the past, back in 1984 and again in 2005. Clark County Farm Technology Days will be held July 12th-14th of 2022.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.