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La Prairie farm fends off development

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Photo by Kyle Bursaw

Bob Arndt gasses up his combine at the family farm in La Prairie Township. The Arndts own more than 2,000 acres and rent nearly 900 more. Members of the family serve on the town board, helping craft zoning and other regulations to help preserve the prime farmland in the township.

Photo

Photo by Kyle Bursaw

Bob Arndt performs routine maintenance on the Arndt Farms combine on a wet October morning.

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David Arndt

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Bob Arndt

JANESVILLE — It's simple in La Prairie Township.

It's farm country.

"We're not interested in selling land," David Arndt said.

"We don't want development," added Bob Arndt, his brother. "We don't want urban sprawl. We don't want Janesville coming here."'

Brothers David, Bob, and Allan, their mother, Donna, and Bob's son, Austin, are shareholders in one of the most successful farm dynasties in Rock County. The brothers' grandfather farmed the land, and so do their children.

La Prairie Township is south and east of Janesville, and its six miles by six miles include some of the best farmland in the world.

Township residents fought bitter—though futile—battles with the state in the 1950s over the Interstate that sliced through a section of La Prairie. In the 1980s, the board threatened suit over the Avalon Interchange. More recently, they lost a fight over a weigh station but successfully fought a private mining company.

"Although we may have lost those battles, the land use in the town shows we are winning the war," Allan Arndt said recently.

"We are very independent and quite frequently fight among ourselves," said Arndt, a supervisor on the town board. "But we're pretty adamant about standing shoulder to shoulder when fighting the outside world. Here, the bickering stops at the town line."

La Prairie Township residents are proud of the ironclad zoning that their town board has stood behind to repel developers and subdivisions.

They don't mind that they must drive 10 minutes to buy a loaf of bread.

They like pointing out that fewer people live in La Prairie than a decade ago.

The Arndts own 2,068 acres and rent the rest for a total of 2,921.

Their land tells the story of ownership, of a family with the foresight to buy enough land to control its own destiny. It tells a story of being in the right place and protected by adequate zoning.

Bob Arndt contrasts the fortunes of farmers in La Prairie to the plights of farmers in Harmony Township between Milton and Janesville. Harmony has two different topographies, created by the last glacier. Part of the land provides reasonable places to develp.

"The difficulty is how to craft an ordinance that allows landowenrs to develop and that still provides protectionfor those that live on the flat, black deep stuff you want to continue to farm," Allan Arndt said.

The Arndts have land that extends from the city limits to four miles south, and much of it is within Janesville's three-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction. Bob Arndt, however, believes their farmland is safe because the town's strict zoning provides a cushion and because of the amount of land they own.

In 1923, the Arndts' grandparents bought 80 acres in La Prairie. Bob and Allan's dad bought the farm from his parents when he was a high school senior.

"He bought every farm he could ever buy," Bob Arndt recalled. "He just kept adding on."

Farmers these days can't make a living on the traditional 160-acre farm of the 1960s.

The family continues to buy land adjacent to existing properties.

The Arndts say there's no better soil in the world.

It lacks a bit of the clay found on the nearby Rock Prairie, which slightly lessens moisture-holding capability, but irrigation from nine wells makes up the difference.

"It's way too good to cover up with cement," Bob Arndt said.

If a family wants to make money growing crops, the land is its resource, he said.

"We've had many people come here to buy land," David Arndt recalled. "We told them to go away."

The brothers' father taught them to protect the land from erosion and depletion. Correct farming methods take time to learn and understand.

"You gotta do it right," Bob Arndt said. "If you take care of your farm, it will take care of you."

The land isn't really their land, the Arndts said.

"Somebody else farmed it before us, and we hope somebody will farm after we're done," Bob Arndt said.

"We're just tending it for a little while," Allan Arndt said. "We'll leave it as good as we found it."

"Or better," Bob Arndt said.

Said Allan: "The problem I have with farmers selling land for development is they have cashed in all the future production forever from that parcel of land for one check today."