(uplifting guitar music) - Wisconsin really is kind of an agricultural powerhouse in it's diversity.

And everybody focuses a lot on the dairy, which has been really unique, but Wisconsin is a national leader in pea production, green peas for canning, snap beans, potatoes, cranberries, ginseng.

You see a lot of corn because farmers like to plant corn, you get to see that big plant grow up and you see the big yields and so on.

But it's an important part of, especially the livestock industry in the state, whether it's growing corn silo, growing the corn for grain, but you also have like grain farms, that are selling it as a end product for them.

It's a full busy from start to finish kind of day.

It's more like a five to nine job.

(chuckles) It's something you really have to enjoy the challenges that go with it.

I mean, that's obviously something that's been talked about in recent years with the financial struggles that a lot of farms have been having.

But it's also the, some of the day-to-day struggles are, something goes wrong and you have to go to plan B or C or D. Some of it is, you know, you have to like working with the animals, you have to like working with the soil, working with equipment.

And every farmer has a different things that they're more comfortable with.

And while some people might think, well you know, you're in the winter months, you know, you get chores done in the morning and you get to sit in the house all day.

That's not the case.

We're busy 365 days a year, During winter months, we might focus more on trying to get equipment ready for the summer or the spring.

It's doing maintenance.

It's doing bookwork.

We usually talk about January and February being meeting season.

You know, whether it's meetings with extension, learn different techniques, technologies, new research that's come out that might be able to help us do a better job on our farm.

Every farm is trying to do different things from a conservation standpoint to better cope with rain events and so on.

You think of, you know, the moldboard plows and chisel plows and how we used to work all the soil before we planted things.

And now we're trying to do more no-till and minimum till and strip till and try not to disturb the soil.

Putting on cover crops during the winter months and having them there for the spring to help hold that soil in place.

To help not only sequester carbon, but also keep that soil exactly where we want it so it doesn't end up in our rivers, streams and lakes.

Ultimately, it's trying to be a good steward of the land and of the soil.

For hopefully generations to come.

Wisconsin, I think is always going to be the America's dairy state.

It's too much a large part of our infrastructure, our heritage, our history here in the state of Wisconsin for that to change.

It's just what that industry might look like.

Going ahead, that could be really unique or really special going forward.

(uplifting guitar music)