Ed Krultz to host 26th annual Greenwood Dairy Breakfast

The 26th annual Greenwood Dairy Breakfast will be held on the final Sunday of June, concluding area June Dairy Month celebrations for the year. The breakfast will be held at the Ed Krultz farm northwest of Greenwood and is sponsored by the Greenwood FFA Alumni and the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce.

Krultz, a 1962 Greenwood High School graduate, decided to host the Dairy Breakfast this year after he spent the past few years repairing damage done to his farm after storms in 2020 destroyed his barn, silos and storage facilities.

“In December (2020) we had that severe weather that blew over my silo on top of the barn,” he said. “I had to start over to build a new place for storage. I built this shed in 2021 and the storage shed after that. Before I offered to host the dairy breakfast, I didn’t have a new building, but now I do have a brand-new building. It doesn’t have to be cleaned up as much to get it ready.”

The new buildings are not the only changes Krultz has seen on his farm. After he graduated from high school, he said he briefly joined the Marines to avoid being drafted into the Army and returned back home, where he married his wife Barbara in 1967 and bought the farm.

“Well, I grew up right across the field over there,” he said when I interviewed him on the farm recently. “I helped the people who owned this farm when I was in grade school and after school I signed up to join the Marine Corps. When I got done with that I came back home and started farming after my wife and I bought it (the farm). I’ve been here ever since.”

From the time he first started assisting on the farm through today, Krultz said farming is just something he couldn’t walk away from.

“When I got out of high school I didn’t want to do anything else,” he said. “I just like farming. I just do. It’s not in the literal sense, but I’ve got the dirt in my blood.”

When he started farming, Krultz said he started off as a dairy operation, milking 12 cows. He also took on truck driving on the side, driving semi trucks for Smith Feed — now known as Vita Plus of Loyal — for about 20 years. Over the years, the herd grew in size until it reached 45 cows in 1994. It was during that time, he said, that the market turned unfavorable for dairy farmers and he sold his cows and turned to cash cropping.

“I milked cows until 1994, when I had 45 cows at the time,” he said. “In 1994, milk prices were not good and bills were getting expensive. The economics just didn’t work for it anymore. Life was different after the cows, but I soon found out that there was a life after cows.”

Today, Krultz farms about 460 acres of fields, with this year’s crop being split between corn and soybeans. He also spends his time on other hobbies, including taking care of an International Harvester 1066 that was owned by his late father Selvian, and restored by his late brother Gary over a three-year period. That tractor, along with a few other Internationals at the farm, will be on display with the tractors being brought by the Granton Antique

Please see Greenwood breakfast, page 9