Socha’s Homestead to host Edgar Dairy Breakfast Sunday

By Kevin O’Brien

When talking to Pat and Michelle Socha about their fourth-generation farm in the town of Rietbrock, you quickly get a sense of just how devoted the couple is to keeping their operation going well into the 21st century.

“I guess I’d say we’re small but mighty and we’re willing to try new things,” Michelle said, summing up her family’s philosophy for surviving in an ever-changing agriculture industry.

Perhaps this is why Socha’s Homestead, 125849 CTH U, has been chosen to host this Sunday’s Edgar FFAAlumni Dairy Breakfast from 7 a.m. to noon. The event will include a meal of pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, applesauce, ice cream, cheese and milk, and will also feature a petting zoo, bouncy houses, a balloon maker and live music.

Guests will be free to walk around the family’s barn, and Pat and Michelle will be available to answer questions. The Sochas, who last hosted a Dairy Breakfast in 2000, are expecting between 2,500 and 2,600 guests.

Ever since returning home in 1995 to help his parents, Joe and Betty, run the family farm, Pat has been changing the way he does things while also staying true to the traditions that go back to 1909, when his greatgrandfather, John, first bought the land from his cousins.

“He lived in Edgar and he had a bar, and he thought it wasn’t a good place to raise the kids, so he bought this farm out here,” he said.

Pat’s grandparents, Frank and Lucy, were the second generation of owners, and his parents bought the farm in the early 1960s. He said his grandparents remained involved when he was a kid, with his dad and grandfather branching out into logging and his mom helping with baling hay and milking cows.

“My grandmother would help with canning and babysitting us,” he said. “She was the babysitter.”

Pat is one of seven siblings, which include two brothers, Bob and Mike, and four sisters, Barb, Joan, Bonnie, and Suzy. Mike was the first one to enter the agricultural field, earning a master’s degree and PhD in dairy nu-

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trition. Pat earned an agronomy degree from UW-River Falls and initially worked at the Edgar Co-op (now Rib River Valley Co-op).

“He was more into cows and I was more into the crops,” Pat said.

The two brothers talked about running the farm together and “going big” in the early 1990s, but their dad was opposed to the idea. Pat says this was a good thing in the long run. Mike got a good job at a feed company in the Twin Cities, so it was up to Pat to carry on the family’s legacy. While Pat was still working at the co-op, his dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor, so Pat started milking cows with his mother in the late 1990s, and by the time his father passed away in 2008, he had fully taken over the farm.

“I always thought about farming, but I never was very good with cows,” he said.

Pat decided to remodel the operation to make it more efficient and he started custom raising calves for his friend at the co-op. This continues to be an important part of the farm operation, where he keeps baby cows from the time they are five to seven days old up until they are about two years old.

“As the years went on, we started raising heifers for other people,” he said. “We had three farms we were raising heifers for.”

Pat met Michelle in 2004 at a church retreat, and they got married the following year. Michelle grew up in Lower Michigan and earned an accounting degree at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. She was working at an accounting firm in the western Upper Peninsula when they met. Her first husband died of cancer, and they had a daughter together, Serena, now 27.

Michelle moved to the heart of America’s Dairyland with no background in farming.

“My grandparents did it, but they were pretty much retired by the time I was born,” she said.

Her off-farm jobs have been an important source of income for the family over the years, allowing Pat to continue pursuing his passions on the farm. Michelle worked at Data Flow in Marshfield for 14 years, until COVID 19 hit in 2020, and she briefly stayed at home with their kids during the school shutdowns. A job opened up in the Edgar School District and she has been working there ever since as an office aide.

Michelle has also worked as the office administrator at their church, Holy Family in Poniatowski, for 12 years as a side job. She continues to be heavily involved with the church.

“Faith is very important in our lives,” she said.

Over the past two decades, the Sochas have expanded from 120 to 270 acres (and renting another 100 acres) and Pat has gotten more involved in custom spraying and planting.

Pat was an early adopter of no-till planting, which he started experimenting with in 2015. He said it has saved a lot of time and labor, and after purchasing his own planters for corn, soybeans and small grains, he now does custom no-tilling work for other farms in the immediate area. He also plants cover crops and has worked with UW Extension on various trials.

Due to his work with no-till and cover cropping, Pat became one of the founding members of the Eau Pleine Partnership for Integrated Conservation (EPPIC), even though his family’s farm is not located within the Eau Pleine watershed.

Unlike other farms, the Socha Homestead has resisted the trend of growing larger than a traditional family-run operation. When he first started, Pat said the area around his farm felt more like a traditional “neighborhood,” with fellow farmers helping each other out with field work. As the years went by and farmers start retiring and selling their land, he said it’s not as common to share machinery or swap labor.

“Everything’s getting so much bigger,” he said.

In addition to farming, Pat has also driven semis and school buses on the side, and he continues to work as a substitute bus driver for the Athens and Edgar school districts. The Sochas have also purchased their own truck to diversify their business.

Besides Michelle’s daughter, Serena, the Sochas have three children, including Erica, 17, Isaac, 15, and Lucas, 14. Erica just graduated from Edgar High School and will be pursuing an agricultural education degree at UW-River Falls. She’s also running for a state FFA officer position.

Isaac has shown an early interest in crop farming, and he especially enjoys tinkering with farm machinery, according to his parents.

“We’d have to be careful because he would take the pins out of all the wagons,” Michelle said, laughing.

Besides all of their work on the farm and other jobs, the Sochas have also been involved in Edgar FFA Alumni, Edgar Lions Club, Boy and Girl Scouts, the Edgar Theater Company and the Athens Acres 4-H Club. Even though they live the busy lives of farmers, Michelle said they still manage to get away from the farm once a year.

“We always make sure we have time for a family vacation,” she said.

THE HOSTS - Michelle and Pat Socha are pictured with their three children, from left to right, Lucas, Erica and Isaac. Socha’s Homestead will host the Edgar FFA Dairy Breakfast this Sunday, June 9, from 7 a.m. to noon. SUBMITTED PHOTO