Discovery Farms Participant Earns Honors for Quality

Town of Centerville, WI--A state-of-the-art farm runoff project going on here may tell farmers and scientists how farming impacts water quality. And that project has already garnered a statewide honor for the dairy farm's owners.

Karl Klessig of Saxon Homestead Farms and Julie Mauer of Soaring Eagle dairy, on the southern edge of Manitowoc County, are exposing their farm operations runoff to scrutiny through the University of Wisconsin-Extension's Discovery Farms Project.

Not many farms are willing to put themselves under the microscope literally, as these water samples taken from their fields will be looked at very carefully to find out whats in the runoff, Denny Caneff, director of the River Alliance of Wisconsin, said in a statement.

That exposure earned Saxon Homestead Farms statewide recognition this month when the alliance awarded the farms owners its River Champions award.

The tremendous effor that went into being awarded the River Champions is for the effort to get a Discovery Farms project with our own board that showcases a diverse group of people to study water quality, Klessig said.

It is the only Discovery Farm with its own board of advisors, including an environmentalist. State-wide there are fewer than a dozen farms participating in the project.

The project's goal is to get a better understanding of what exactly is in the runoff and how to improve water quality.

Saxon Homestead Farms drains into Centerville Creek, which in turn drains into Lake Michigan.

When it rains, water that is not absorbed into the soil can flow into Centerville Creek, carrying wwith it manure or other pollutants. Those pollutants can eventually make their way into Lake Michigan.

Each day a photo is taken at the test site and e-mailed to UW-Extension scientists. If the stream is flowing, water samples are then taken automatically.

The five-to-seven year project is currently in its first year of collecting baseline data.

Klessig and Mauer have no connection to the testing, except to expose their farms to a public collection of data that will be studied at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Its impact will affect the whole industry of agriculture, which is a $50 billion industry in Wisconsin, Klessig said. Dairy is $20 billion of that figure.

The information collected may be used to initiate and develop legislation for agriculture.

The point is, results of this testing will impact agriculture, the environment and communities we live in, said Klessig. It is at our risk and exposure that we are willing to reveal the results.

The two area farms contain three time the animals per square mile than other farms in Manitowoc County. That and the results of the subsequent manure spread on the cropland are being studied.

Lauren Reed, assistant Manitowoc County executive, said county government commends (both farms) for their commitment to preserving the environment by taking the intiative and risk to open their farms to this type of scrutiny.

The group has raised $52,000, but it will take several hundred thousand to complete the project. The more curious we get, Klessig said, the more expensive it gets.