KEWAUNEE COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – As summer approaches, some students are getting ready to head back to school.
An annual five-day agriculture boot camp kicked off Monday morning in Kewaunee County at Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy near Casco.
Living on a sixth-generation beef farm southwest of Fond du Lac, Gretta Hahn says she’s ready to learn about the dairy business in Northeast Wisconsin.
“I’m hoping to meet new people and experience, I guess, what they experience around here,” said Gretta Hahn from Cambria. “And kind of see their different backgrounds and what they go through and if they live on a farm, or kind of what their daily life is like.”
“Some of them have never been on a farm before. Some of them work on farms. Some of them live on farms. So, it’s all different backgrounds,” said Chase Pagel, Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy Safety Coordinator.
Thirty students make up three teams.
Page says the boot camp gives the incoming seventh-grade students a look at many different careers in agriculture.
“At Pagel’s Dairy here, we have about 150 employees and they range. We have ladies and gentlemen that work in the barns with the cows. We have safety people. We have financial people. H.R. people. We have electricians. We have mechanics. We have guys that do the maintenance and construction. We have guys that work with just crops, learning how the fields work.”
Pagel says some boot camp students go on to work at the farm through a youth apprenticeship program offered by the local schools.
Meanwhile, Hahn says she’s sold on a career in agriculture.
“I think that working with these people and being able to present in front of people and good public-speaking skills is important. And I think it’s good for daily life, when I get a job someday and I have to do some of these things.”
The boot camp wraps up on Friday. There will be final presentations and a graduation ceremony as well.
