"I always wanted to be a farmer," Bruce Krebs said. "When I was a little kid, I was forever playing with toy farm equipment and adding the vroom, vroom sounds."
Today Krebs is indeed a farmer with his wife Helen and sons Ryan, 16, and Justin, 14. He tills 500 acres and milks 40 cows just up the road from the original Krebs home farm east of Sun Prairie in Dane County, Wis.
The neat white barn and sheds, three silos (two concrete stave, one Harvestore), well-mown lawn, basketball hoop and a baseball field are guaranteed to slow down the casual traveler on this rural road.
Bruce Krebs admits the dairy economy of the past two years has been rough on dairy farmers. "We were down $35,00 in milk income last year," he said. "Luckily, corn and beans, which we sell, were up. Like all dairy farmers we had to adjust our budget."
Bruce says that his grandfather, Julius Krebs, bought this farm in 1939. He actually owned a number of farms in the area that eventually were sold to fam-ily members, with this farm owned by Paul and Katharine Krebs, Bruce's parents.
Currently what was for many years about 70 acres of farmland, part of it owned by the Krebs family, is underwater in what is called Patrick Marsh, a wildlife area and lake just south of Highway 151 that can be seen as you leave Sun Prairie going north-east.
"We owned nine-sixteenths of the area," Krebs said. "Our neighbors, the Hanley family owned the rest."
In the early 1960s, corn was planted around the edge of the lake if the water was low. Then neighbor Joe Hanley got the idea that dynamiting a hole in the middle of the-then dry lake would make for more crop-land.
The story goes that Hanley planted the dynamite and lit the fuse with his cigar. The resulting mighty explo-sion covered onlookers with dirt and dust but did make the desired hole.
Soon after, the lake was tiled and in 1967 two engines and pumps were installed to keep the land dry during rainy seasons so the rich soil could be farmed. But the area was a terrible place for agriculture, Bruce remembers.
"There was something in the soil—no one ever figured out what it was, although tests were made—that caused a horrible skin itch," he said. "I had to repeatedly wash my hands, arms and face after working the field and couldn't get the stuff off. Researchers finally said it was maybe some kind of 'swimmer's itch.'"
In 1991 the Krebs land and the Hanley land became part of a complicated process to make the land a lake again, and a year later the pumps were removed and the water eventually rose to where it is today.
Bruce Krebs and I visited the lake via a four-wheeler but were unable to get near the shore because of the marshy conditions created by the rains this spring. But we sat and looked and talked of what this area must have been when the Ho-Chunk camped in the area long ago.
Then there is the baseball field just south of the Krebs barn. "A true 'field of dreams' in miniature (it's little-league size) backed up to Highway VV with dairy cows in deep right center field.
"When our children Ryan and Justin were real young they played ball in front of the barn and two metal sheds," Bruce said. "Then they they began hitting the metal sheds and leaving dents."
"We want a baseball field," they said.
Bruce says they saw it as kind of a joke. "Who has a baseball field on the farm other than a hayfield?"
"That didn't stop the kids from asking, so in the fall of 2003 we took a look at the pasture just to the south of the buildings and agreed maybe that could be a ball field, but it would need to be mowed.
"So we got some posts and fenced off the area, mowed it short and hauled away 17, 80-pound bales of grass, measured the bases, built a pitcher's mound, then began to chisel and work the base paths and infield (that was a mess) and the first playing field was finally created on June 4, 2004."
Soon the Krebs boys were back playing in the yard, they had lost all their baseballs as the foul balls were in the corn field across the highway, and they were forbidden to cross the road. Obviously they needed a backstop.
So Dad and sons went to Qual Line Fence in Waunakee and bought a backstop. Then it was foul poles—you must have foul poles. Again Qual Line Fence came up with a 30-foot metal pole that they cut in half.
Ryan and Justin were playing on Little League teams in Sun Prairie and invited some friends to practice at their ball field. They came and more came, and today there are youth teams practicing at Ryan and Justin Krebs field about 100 days a summer.
Bruce Krebs loves to farm. And he likes the smell of the land, the sound of birds singing and the yells of young ball players at practice. He also wonders about the history of the land when his family first settled in the area and had to grub trees to make farm fields and what it will be like 100 years from now.
Forty cows and 500 acres isn't big by today's dairy farming standards, but "big enough" Bruce Krebs said. "It's a great life and I feel at peace."
Can anything be better?
John F. Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison, Wis.-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 608/222-0624 or e-mail him at jfodairy@chorus.net.