ABBY BREAKFAST HOST FARM A FAMILY AFFAIR
by Neal Hogden Tribune Phonograph The 33rd Abbotsford Alumni Dairy Breakfast featured a local family with special ties to central Wisconsin on June 5.
Taylor and Evan Ensign and family hosted the event as they opened up their family farm, named “Ensign Rolling Acres,” to people from throughout central Wisconsin.
The Colby High School graduates became dairy farmers after an opportunity to own a family farm came their way.
Located about eight miles northeast of Dorchester on County Line Road, Ensign Rolling Acres is the same site where Taylor Ensign grew up. Taylor and her sisters, Jenny Halopka and Beth (Halopka) Martinka, grew up on the farm where their dad used the barn and sheds as a hobby farm.
Taylor’s mother, Linda, passed away in April of 2003, when Taylor was just eight years old. From then on, her father, Todd, ensured his girls would love and appreciate every moment they had as a family.
That same year, Evan lost his dad Ed and his mother Michelle was tasked with raising her two boys, Evan and Ethan.
Farming came easy to both Taylor and Evan as they participated in FFA throughout their school careers and both served as the president of the organization, Evan in 2011-12 and Taylor in 2012-13. Taylor went on to serve FFA in the state organization as the Wisconsin State Treasurer in 2015-16. The duo got engaged shortly after and decided they wanted to create a life together with farming and family at the center of it.
The Ensigns bought the Halopka farm in 2017 from Taylor’s father. The farm had been in Todd’s possession since 1989 when he purchased it from his parents. Todd bought and sold farm equipment and worked from home while raising his daughters.
The memories made on the farm and the connection to her family made the Halopka family farm option No. 1 when deciding where to start a family.
“It was either come back to the farm here or buy something else,” Taylor said. “Dad always kept up the buildings here. He always told us girls, he puts tin on the roofs and did other upkeep projects, that way, if one of us wanted to come back, we could.”
There were a couple of other factors that made the opportunity too good to pass up.
“There’s a land base here which helped because 90 percent of farms you can buy don’t come with that nowa- days,” Evan said. Taylor mentioned that having family in the area was a huge motivation to stay in the Dorchester area. Being a partial crop farm, it is useful to have all the help you can get from family members when harvesting season arrives.
The Ensigns moved in and began the process of turning the farm back into a dairy farm, something that hadn’t been done at the property since the late 1990s. Three months of construction and work went into arranging the barn for updated milking systems.
Throughout the years, different avenues and ventures have presented themselves to the Ensign family.
Taylor had put her years of farming and agriculture experience to the test when she taught agriculture at Colby High School from 2017-2020.
Today, the Ensigns own 80 acres of land and rent almost 200 more from close family and friends. They crop, dairy and hobby farm, have raised a family with two kids, take in foster kids and do much more for the farming community.
Their array of animals includes dairy heifers and steers, horses, a miniature donkey, ducks, chickens, goats and more. Their milking herd includes a mixture of 50 Jerseys, Holsteins and Milking Shorthorns.
The decision to dairy farm came at a time when Grassland Dairy had recently cut some farms in the area from their repertoire of producers so there was an excess of dairy producers trying to find places for their product to be used. This might have made it difficult for the Ensigns to get their milk accepted by a company but a family tie helped them get their foot in the door with Nasonville Dairy.
“At that time, milk producers weren’t accepting new milk,” Evan said. “The only reason we probably got [to produce] was because my parents shipped to Nasonville and a majority of the cattle that came up here were from between my parents’ two farms.”
The partnership is still going strong after five years as Nasonville has been picking up milk from Ensign Rolling Acres since June of 2017. They also played a role in providing a unique menu for the Abbotsford alumni dairy breakfast.
The meal featured the normal pancakes, sausage, eggs, fruit and other typical dairy breakfast cuisine, but the drink of choice was milk that was taken straight from the host farm’s bulk tank, and processed and bottled at Nasonville Dairy.
The company then brought those bottles back to the farm where they were chilled and served to guests the next morning. The process as a whole took a little under 24 hours to complete from start to finish.
Over 2,200 bottles of farm fresh chocolate and white milk were made available to those in attendance. The Ensigns’ animals served as entertainment as kids could play with and pet the horses, goats, donkey, ducks and other animals roaming around the farm.
Evan said another unique aspect of their dairy breakfast is that there will be more access to more parts of the farm than you would normally see at a different farm.
“We’re opening up our doors,” Evan said. “They can go through our barn. They can walk pretty much anywhere. Some dairy breakfasts you go to, they want you in one barn and isolated from the rest of the property.”
