Verhoefs to host Colby Dairy Breakfast June 22

By Nathaniel Underwood

The family of J.C. and Alsha Verhoef will be hosting the 44th Annual Colby FFA Alumni Dairy Breakfast on Sunday, June 22. The breakfast will be held from 7 a.m. to noon and will be held on the Verhoefs family farm at 225703 Pecan Rd., a few miles east of Colby.

Both J.C. and Alsha were born in the Netherlands, but met in the United States. J.C. first came to the United States to manage a farm in Kansas in 2007, while Alsha had been working as a registered nurse in Saskatchewan, Canada for a couple years when they met by chance at a Denver airport.

Alsha joined J.C. in Kansas after they got married, and while they stayed there for some time, they knew that they did not want to stay there forever.

“Kansas is fun, it’s an exciting place, but I didn’t want to grow old there,” Alsha said with a laugh.

“Southwest Kansas is a desert,” J.C. added. “That’s what it is. There’s always 40 mile per hour winds. In the summer, it’s dry. In the winter it can sometimes get really nasty. The water also has to come from the ground and they have to pump it in. The other thing with Kansas is that you cannot start with 100 cows. You need to start with a truckload of milk a day, which is more like a thousand cows.”

When the economy took a downward turn in 2008 and 2009, the Verhoefs saw an opportunity to move and start their own farm. After looking at facilities in Missouri initially, someone suggested to Alsha’s parents that they look in Wisconsin.

“So my husband says ‘Well, I’ll go,’ and I stayed at home in Kansas,” Alsha explained. “He went up here and looked and he said he really liked it. It’s green, it’s lush, lots of crops, everything’s here and it’s set up for dairy. And so everything seemed to click into place after that.”

After some extensive research, the Verhoefs settled on Central Wisconsin, purchasing their farm east of Colby in 2011. At the time, the property was only 11 acres and did not come with any livestock. They purchased 250 cows to start their operation and then expanded to 300 the next summer.

After buying some more land and building a new barn in 2016, the Verhoefs eventually expanded their herd to the current total of 500. They now own 1,200 acres of land, most of it used for crop farming to sustain their dairy product.

Starting a new dairy farm from scratch while also having a young family was a rewarding but sometimes difficult task, especially with no family in the area for support. Nicole was just a year and a half and Alsha was still pregnant with Pieter when the family first moved to Wisconsin.

“It was very hard,” Alsha said. “You’ve got a young family, you’re starting a business, you work 24 hours a day and the kids are around the house. We didn’t have parents or grandparents, no aunties or uncles or sisters or brothers, nobody to help you out. You’re on your own.”

Dairy farming is a consistently demanding endeavor, requiring hard work and dedication on a daily basis, and through that, the Verhoefs made their farm work. Now, with the farm more established and their children able to assist, branching out into the community is much easier than it was in the early days.

With Nicole now in high school and Pieter in middle school, they’ve had ample opportunities to grow their appreciation for agriculture over the years. Both are part of FFA and 4-H and participate in the showing of animals at the fairs in Wausau and Athens. Pieter said that he would perhaps like to take over the family farm one day, or at the very least work in agriculture, and Nicole has worked a lot with the family’s cows.

While both children are involved with the farm and engaged in agriculture outside of it as well, their parents noted that they hope they are able to find something that they want to do, either on the farm or not.

“It’s a fine line,” Alsha noted. “You involve your kids doing chores all the time and it’s seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. It’s a lot and you see some families and the kids hate the farm because that’s all they’ve done their whole life. And, so we’ve seen that and we’re kind of like we need to find a happy medium in there because you don’t want to sicken them of it either.”

“For a lot of people, it’s a family farm,” J.C. said. “We maybe don’t have the same connection, it’s a farm, and if they don’t want it, if they want to do something else, that’s completely fine. That’s how I see it.”

See VERHOEFS/ Page 8

FIRST TIME HOSTS - The Verhoefs will be hosting the 2025 Colby FFA Alumni Dairy Breakfast on June 22 on their family farm. It will be their first time hosting the event. From left to right are Nicole, Alsha, J.C. and Pieter.

SUBMITTED PHOTO Verhoefs

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It will be the first time the Verhoefs will be hosting the Colby Dairy Breakfast, and while there is certainly a lot of work that goes into putting on the event, the family is excited at the prospect.

“We are very honored to host,” Alsha said. “It’s nice to be able to give something back to the community and the FFA alumni. They do a lot.”

While a delicious breakfast of sausage and pancakes is the main draw, there will be plenty of other things for families to do while attending. A bouncy house will be set up to entertain children, and a professional face painter will be available to help liven up the festivities. There will also be a petting zoo featuring everything from more typical petting zoo animals to somewhat more exotic critters like lizards and llamas.

A fried cheese curd stand will be a new addition to the breakfast this year, giving those waiting in line something to munch on. The curds were donated by Lynn Dairy and Nicolet Bank. All the milk at the event was donated by Kwik Trip and Culver’s will once again be supplying custard.

A representative from CowManager will also be on hand to demonstrate how the farm uses technology to keep track of and supervise the status of their herd.

Buses will be available to shuttle attendees from the Colby schools to the event, starting at 7 a.m. and running every half hour thereafter.

“We are extremely grateful,” Jeanie Tesch of the Colby FFA Alumni said of all the donations and help that they’ve already received. “We have over 86 businesses that have donated, between monetary items or even just their time, so that is amazing. Every year, it gets bigger and bigger. We are extremely grateful to the farmer, the businesses and everyone who shows up that day.”

The alumni group is still looking for volunteers to assist with the breakfast, so any interested parties can contact Tesch at 715223-5182.