There have been a lot of changes to the federal government and to federal economic policy in the last eight months. President Donald Trump has set expansive tariffs. Congress passed a big tax-cutting bill that slices funding to programs like Medicaid and food stamps. The current administration has implemented mass layoffs of federal workers. It’s also has terminated some federal union contracts and stripped other federal workers of their union rights.
WUWM wanted to know how some of these changes are affecting people in Wisconsin. We spoke with business owner and mother living in Greendale, the owner of American Science and Surplus, and also a veteran who receives federal benefits who had been searching for jobs for a year.
Now, we take a peek at southeastern Wisconsin's agricultural economy. Tom Oberhaus is a co-operator of Cozy Nook Farm in Waukesha County. Cozy Nook is primarily a dairy farm, supplying milk to Prairie Farms mainly for their cheese products. The farm supplements its dairy business with seasonal pumpkin and Christmas tree sales.
Lake Effect’s Sam Woods met with Oberhaus to check in on how his dairy business is going, and what pumpkin sales can tell us about overall economic confidence in Waukesha County.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Sam Woods: Can you introduce yourself, your business and how you make money.
Tom Oberhaus: My name is Tom Oberhaus and my wife Joan is a partner in the business. Cozy Nook Farm is our farm. We're a family dairy farm that has milked cows here since 1958... We have a thriving pumpkin business here in the fall that started in 1962 by my mother-in-law. And then in 1985, that's when my wife and I joined the operation. We needed another business to keep thriving, so we started a cut Christmas tree business too. So we market about 2,000 Christmas trees at Christmas time.
We'll get into the pumpkin side of the business later in the interview, but first I want to talk about the dairy side. Can you describe the supply chain that you're a part of and your place in it?
Sure. So we milk 75 to 80 cows and we have signed a marketing agreement with Prairie Farms Cooperative. We're a member of Prairie Farms Cooperative, which is made of about 600 dairymen across the Midwest. It's up to Prairie Farms to decide where to make best use of our milk, whether it becomes fluid milk, or is used in the cheese or ice cream or whatever. They make those decisions and market the milk.
How has this side of the business gone so far this year?
Profits are very slim in the dairy industry for us right now. Milk prices took a big plummet here in the last six weeks or so. Helping along that is that feed costs are near record lows right now too, because grain prices are very low. So it's very tight.
The one thing that's helping the dairy industry right now is because beef is so short in America, our bull calves are worth a tremendous amount of money, more than we'd ever imagined. So as dairy farmers, the beef end of things is an important profit angle for most of us. Because all good dairy cows someday end up as beef as they age out, and we all have bull calves born on our farm, which are of no worth to us to make milk. So yeah, we as dairy farmers are in the beef business and that's very, very vital right now.
I want to move into pumpkins. Can you describe the pumpkin side of your business and how that fits into the overall operation?
We live in an area that has become urbanized over time. If you go back to 1985 when my wife and I moved here, Waukesha County had over 300 dairy farms. Today we have about 10 of us left. So as the people moved in, the cows moved out and we needed to diversify the business.
So the pumpkin industry or the pumpkin business started on this farm in 1962, and it has grown tremendously. We sell about 20 acres worth of pumpkins right out of the front yard. We do a fair amount of wholesale orders too.
We're in the middle of October now, so we are squarely in pumpkin season. How has this side of the business gone this year?
Excellent. We actually started off a little slow because of the heat wave. I think, you know, when it was in the middle 80s, people really didn't think about pumpkins. I think some people were still in their swimming pools in the backyard two weeks ago. But now that the cool fall weather has come in, sales are booming and everybody seems to be in a great mood and things are flowing very nicely.
Correct me if you see it differently, but pumpkins seem like one of those products that's a luxury, not a need for most people coming through here. So high sales might signal confidence that we think times will be good in the future, and so we're going to spend some money on pumpkins. Do you see the pumpkin economy the same way?
Yes, I agree. Very few of the pumpkins we sell are to feed the family. Yes, we do sell some squash and we sell some pumpkin that you can eat and whatnot, but that's a very small part of the business. Mostly it's just to have fun. It's enjoyment. And yes, I think most of these people are feeling very good about the economy. And yeah, they feel good about the future and they're happy to have their children out here on the farm and running around and doing some farm type things. It's just a very, very positive feeling.
Would you say that most of your customers for pumpkins come from locally here in Waukesha County?
A very high percentage are people within 10 miles. I get more and more people from further out, like Milwaukee, and now it turns into their annual trip to come to the farm because they don't have an opportunity to get on a real farm that's actually producing milk. But most of our business is local.
I'm going to ask you to opine here a little bit, so if you're comfortable, would you say that indicates that economic spirits are high here in Waukesha County?
Yeah, I'm not an economist, but just looking at the front yard, the people seem to be very happy and they're happy to spend money on product that's just a fun thing to spend money on, a fun activity for the kids. Yes, from my perspective, very limited perspective here on the pumpkin yard, the economy is in great shape.
And for you and your business, is there anything you're looking forward to economically, or concerned about economically, in that near future?
We're not out to conquer the world. We like to have a business that we enjoy and we make enough money to live the lifestyle we want to live. So we don't have big, broad ideas of how to make things boom and grow. That's not who we are. So we really don't have big, exuberant plans for the future.
As far as concerns, when America goes through a real traumatic experience like Sept.11 or something like that, yes, it hurts business bad because people are shook up. So I guess concerns is just that we don't have any widespread big catastrophe in America.
You mentioned Sept. 11 and you've been on Cozy Nook Farm since 1985. Was Sept. 11 the only time that you saw a dip in business because of low economic confidence?
Sept. 11 is certainly the one that sticks out in my mind, especially because of the timing. It was right at pumpkin time, so people were totally uneasy. From year-to-year, we don't climb in sales every year. We have years that we dip down, but really Sept. 11 is the only one that really had major play with us.
Anything else you’d like to leave me with?
I always have to tell a story. I had a neighbor who moved out here from the city, and he had all his friends out here for a big barbecue and whatnot. We were hauling manure pretty close to his house, and it was smelly. So he brought all his relatives up there and said, “Look at all that land. That is the smell of open space. As long as it smells like that, I will have that open space there the rest of my life.” That’s what we love.
