Minnesota’s fi st breakfast on the farm

Minnesota’s fi rst breakfast on the farm

Olmsted County celebrates its 31st year

BY KATE RECHTZIGEL STAFF WRITER

ROCHESTER - The fi rst breakfast on the farm in Minnesota took place on a beautiful sunny day in June of 1988 on Curtis and Myrna Kroenig’s farm in Olmsted County.

The farm sits six miles northeast of Rochester and welcomed 809 people for that fi rst breakfast. While the farm is no longer an operational dairy farm, the memory of the fi rst breakfast still lives on.

“I had friends in Wisconsin who attended a number of these breakfasts on the farm and started telling me what a promotional event it was,” Dave Kjome said. “I planted the seed here and they really bought into this thing and decided to do it here in Minnesota.”

Kiome remembers frying pancakes and sausage on a single electric grill as pigs and dairy cows stood their regular ground on the farm.

Kiome is considered the father of the breakfast along with deceased agribusiness committee member, Ambrose King.

Kjome, a retired extension educator with the University of Minnesota in Olmsted County, was also was on the agribusiness committee of the Chamber of Commerce in Rochester for 15 years. That chamber group developed breakfast on the farm for the county and supported local farmers and agricultural businesses near town.

The fi rst year was possible with farmers and local business people coming together to cook and serve a breakfast, and share the farming experience with others less familiar.

Now, Ron Pagel heads the breakfast with Jerry Dee. Pagel milks 130 cows with his two sons, Jeff and Tim, near Eyota. Pagel’s parents, Clifton and Lea, were also both active in the event as well as many other local farmers and agribusinesses.

“The agribusiness committee had this idea as a chance for people in town who maybe grew up on a farm, but were generations removed and still wanted to get their kids out to the farm,” Pagel said. “The fi rst few years, agribusiness committee members cooked all the food on grills; pancakes and sausage. Everybody pitched in to bring a grill, mix orange juice or set up tables.”

This year’s Olmsted County breakfast on the farm will take place from 6:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. June 18 at Gar-Lin Dairy near Eyota. The Allen family, of Gar-Lin Dairy, milks 1,750 cows in a 50-cow carousel parlor.

Kiome is excited for this year’s event.

“People will be able to see a carousel parlor and birthing of cows,” Kjome said. “You will be able to get out for some fellowship in the country, see dairy farming at its best with high technology, and have a good meal. It’s something to see.”

Pagel agreed.

“They have been one of the top dairy herds in the state,” he said.

Through the decades, the annual event has travelled to a number of host farms both inside and outside of the county; some chosen as volunteers, but most chosen for their traditional or technologically advanced ways of farming, through the use of robots, or in this year’s case, a 50cow carousel parlor.

In 34 years, the onfarm event has only had to be canceled three times; for foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, torrential rain in 2013 and COVID-19 in 2020.

PHOTOS SUBMITTED U.S. army paratroopers land out of a helicopter amidst the Breakfast on the Farm crowd in 1995 at the Schumacher farm near Elgin. The Olmsted County Breakfast on the Farm has been going on for 31 years and was the fi rst one in Minnesota.

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