COMFORT AT THE

NURSERY

Bauman’s St. Bernard, Boomer, provides calming presence

By Casey Krautkramer The Record-Review

A large friendly St. Bernard dog named Boomer will greet shoppers at Bauman Nursery & Landscaping when it opens for the season on Friday, April 26. Business owners Dave and Debbie Bauman rescued Boomer, who is now seven years old and 190 pounds.

Debbie Bauman said a girl in a wheelchair comes with her parents to the business each year to see Boomer. She said husbands waiting at the farm while their wives shop for plants in the nursery will ask to see Boomer.

“Boomer has sure done a lot to promote our nursery business,” Dave Bauman said.

Dave Bauman has lived in the house on the farm his entire life. He and Debbie and his brother, Terry, eventually took over the dairy farm from his parents, Wendell and the late Anita Bauman. They sold the dairy cows in June of 2016 because Dave Bauman was experiencing health problems. Dave Bauman supported his wife’s passion to start a landscaping business in 2016 and they opened a nursery the following year. Terry Bauman is not involved with Bauman Nursery & Landscaping but he still helps Dave Bauman crop the farmland.

Dave and Debbie Bauman still perform maintenance work for a few customers but they’ve cut back on the installation and maintenance aspect of their landscaping business because they can’t find enough help. Now they mainly sell plants from their nursery to landscaping companies. The nursery sells perennials, hostas, daylillies, trees, shrubs and fruit trees. They do have one dedicated full-time employee, John Kavajecz, of Edgar.

The Baumans cleaned out the first floor of their barn and began having a Christmas barn boutique in the winter of 2019, which is on three straight weekends starting the third weekend in November. They spread out vendor items throughout the first floor of the barn for shoppers. The annual event is incredibly popular.

This will be the fifth year that Bauman Nursery & Landscaping is having its Backroads Country Music Series from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on the last Wednesday in June, July and August. Debbie Bauman’s brother, Jerry Schmitt, also plays in the Backroads Country Music Series. This is the third year the Baumans will allow a local civic group to sell food and refreshments at the farm during each of the concerts.

Bauman & Nursery also has a midsummer night garden party where their gardens are lit up on the farm each year. Debbie Bauman wants this event to raise money for an organization that fights a disease. For example, last summer’s midsummer night garden event raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The event raised $7,300 for Stratford’s Axetyn Kurtzweil’s wish.

Debbie is thinking about having this summer’s midsummer night garden party to raise money to fight multiple sclerosis. The Baumans are passionate about helping others because their youngest son, Jordan Bauman, twice fought through having childhood lymphoma, once during his junior year at Stratford High School and also when he was at the University of Minnesota- Duluth. Today Jordan works as a physician in Milwaukee.

FRIENDLY FACES - Dave and Debbie Bauman pose with Boomer the St. Bernard in front of the Bauman Nursery and Landscaping sign in rural Edgar.