• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Rock County Dairy Breakfast returns to Funk farm

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Milker Tyler Briggs keeps an eye on a Brown Swiss during the afternoon milking at Funk's Farview Acres. The farm on County J will be the site for the Rock County Dairy Breakfast on Saturday.

LA PRAIRIE TOWNSHIP — It's been 20 years since thousands of hungry neighbors flocked for breakfast on the Funk farm.

In that time, David and Julie Funk have doubled the size of their herd.

And more than doubled the size of their family.

The youngest Funks—Allison, 17; Kaylyn, 15, and Hayden, 9—are the reason David and Julie want to host the breakfast again.

"Finally, they started saying, ‘I've been hauled to every one since I've been born. Why can't we do it?'" Julie said.

The Funks will welcome more than 3,000 people to the 2009 Rock County Dairy Breakfast on Saturday at their farm on County J in La Prairie Township.

It's an incredible amount of work to get a home ready to host 3,000 people for breakfast, Julie Funk said.

On top of the housework and yard work, 300 animals need to be taken care of.

"It just never ends," David said. "It's like a big snowball running down the hill."

It's also a bit of a chore to explain to a 9-year-old exactly how the family is benefiting from all this extra work, Julie said.

As the longtime chairwoman of the dairy breakfast committee, Julie is suited to explain to her son the importance of promoting the dairy industry.

"Our youngest is having a hard time, wondering what do we get out of it," Julie said. "When he's older, he'll understand that we do this to help promote our industry and to let people see what we do. He'll learn that sometimes, you do things to help others."

About Farview Acres

The cows: The Funks milk about 140 cows—Holsteins and registered Brown Swiss.

Holsteins are the black and white ones. Brown Swiss are large, strong, fawn-colored cattle.

The Funks raise their own replacement heifers. They have about 300 young stock.

Who does the work: The farm is owned and operated by David and Julie Funk. Their children also help with chores: Allison, 17; Kaylyn, 15; Hayden, 9. Tyler Briggs, a senior at Craig High School, and Kenny Durfee, a freshman at UW-Rock County, do the evening milking.

Farm history: David's grandpa, Arthur Funk, bought the La Prairie Township farm in 1917. It's been in the family ever since.

Quotable: "In today's world of dairy, we're kind of a small farm," Julie Funk said. "It's kind of unique these days, that we can stay this size and still be productive."

Makin' milk: Diners will drink about 360 gallons of milk at the dairy breakfast. Each cow on the Funk farm makes about 65 pounds, or 7.5 gallons of milk per day.

It would take one cow about 48 days to make enough milk for the dairy breakfast. That doesn't include the milk to make pancakes, the butter, the cheese or the ice cream.

More milk: That number doesn't include other dairy breakfast snacks. Diners typically consume 37 three-gallon tubs of vanilla ice cream, 60 pounds of butter and 4,500 cheese sticks at the Rock County Dairy Breakfast.