A murmur rippled through the crowd perched on the tractor-drawn wagon. "That's Joe Leibham. In the red shirt. He's a state senator." As the wagon rounded the corner on the way from the parking field to the farm, Senator Leibham waved. Suddenly, I had a much better understanding of how the annual Dairy Breakfast functions in Wisconsin.
When we scheduled our stop in Sheboygan for the Eat Well Food Tour, we didn't realize we'd be there over Father's Day weekend. We also didn't realize we'd be in Sheboygan County on the weekend of the Dairy Breakfast, which draws thousands of people and moves from farm to farm each year, celebrating local agriculture throughout the state.
Community is a primary theme at the breakfast. Originally a means of connecting people with the sources of their food, the organizers maintain that goal by serving Wisconsin dairy products and hosting farm tours and other interactive events for families. While karaoke in the breakfast tent was an attempt to involve more folks in the morning's entertainment, the blaring music ironically inhibited conversation and was probably none too pleasant for the nearby cows, who were mostly massed in one corner as far away from the crowds as possible.
Another theme of the breakfast was abundance, as participants revel in the rich agricultural potential of the local region. The breakfast itself consisted of a huge helping of ham and cheese eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese cubes, bagels with cream cheese, donut holes, coffee and, of course, milk. The line between gluttony and feasting is pretty fine sometimes and I certainly can't make a call on that issue on behalf of everyone at the breakfast. I was mindful of a statistic I heard recently: the number of obese people in the world has just surpassed the number of malnourished people in the world, which begs the question of whether we in North America feast all too often.
Commerce is also a huge theme of the breakfast, in both positive and negative ways. As the current Alice in Dairyland suggested, buying food produced in the state helps maintain a healthy economy and support family farms. But I wasn't seeing much in the way of celebrating how eating local represents good stewardship of the earth by cutting down on transportation resources and encouraging seasonal habits. Pioneer had sponsored the paper plates and Ulta Genetics had branded the Styrofoam cups. Culver's was giving out custard for dessert (can you have dessert after breakfast?) in plastic cups with no recycling option available that I could see. (In case you're wondering, Rob and I brought our re-usable camp dishes along.)
Before we left, we had the opportunity to talk with Garrit and Muriel Ledeboer, the patriarch and matriarch of the family that runs the farm where this year's breakfast was held. A long-time member of First Reformed Church in Oostburg, Mrs. Ledeboer emphasized the family's dependence on God for everything, from sun to rain to good soil to healthy animals. The family has strived to honor the created rhythms of nature, as well as the rhythm of work and rest revealed at the very beginning of the Christian story. One year, she says, they even lost a crop because they didn't bring the hay in on a Sunday before it rained, but they trusted God to provide if they honored the Sabbath. Mrs. Ledeboer still cooks hearty breakfasts and lunches for the farm crew and sees that her children and grandchildren are increasingly conscious about the sources of their food.
I would have liked to talk to one of the Ledeboer sons before we left, but we had to get back to Sheboygan in time to make the farmer's market. My hope would be that the younger generation of this farming family would be able to further articulate how Christian faith distinguishes their specific farming practices, perhaps in contrast to other "faiths" that shape commercial agriculture today, including consumerism and rationalism, to the peril of the animals caught up in the system.
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