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• Annual St. Croix County event offers day on the farm the Lab Farm
• Zoning could spell doom for trucking firm

By JudyWiff, Regional Editor

Families will get a look at the latest technology and a peek at the past as the University of Wisconsin-River Falls Mann Valley Farm hosts St. Croix County's Farm-City Day.

Activities will be held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9, at UW-River Falls Farm No. 2, located at the corner of County Road MM and South Glover Road.

St. Croix County farms and businesses have hosted the annual day-long event for 27 years, rotating the sites around the county each year.

The committee was looking for a location on the River Falls side of the county this year, and Lab Farm No. 2, with its new Dairy Learning Center, seemed the logical choice, said UW-Extension Agriculture Agent Lee Milligan.

"We thought this would be a good opportunity for them to showcase the university farm," he said. The $9.3 million Dairy Learning Center, which replaced the old dairy facility, was opened last October.

Farm-City Day attracts 1,800 to 2,500 visitors a year.

"The intention has been to rotate around the county to host families," said Milligan. "We've not had to go back to anybody twice."

The event was started in 1982 by the Bob and Mary Zwald family, who had moved from Lake Elmo, Minn., to the Hammond area 20 years earlier.

The family was hosting the Holstein Twilight Meeting and had spruced up the farm for that.

"We said as long as we've got it cleaned up, why don't we invite people from our old church and other friends," said Mary Zwald.

They invited members of the church they had attended in St. Paul and called the Ramsey County University Extension office to extend an invitation.

"Nine buses came out," said Zwald. She estimated that first open house drew 900 people.

It became a countywide event, hosted at another farm the following year.

"We're excited about it. This is a fantastic facility," said Milligan of this year's host site.

The Mann Valley (UW-River Falls) Farm houses beef, dairy, sheep and swine operations. Facilities include beef finishing lots, a swine farrowing area, a milking center, a free-stall barn for the cows and heifers and a sheep barn with heated lambing rooms.

"You can see all of these at one farm," said Milligan.

The farm includes more than 290 acres, and its fields produce most of the feed for the livestock. Rations are formulated and processed at farm facilities.

Attractions for families will include a free dairy lunch and ice cream, a petting barnyard, hayrides through growing crops, music entertainment and antique machinery.

The new Dairy Learning Center uses an environmentally friendly composted bedding housing system for 100 milking cows plus calves and heifers.

"The cows just love it, and it's so comfortable for the animals," said Milligan, showing the open barn spread with deep sawdust.

When the bedding material is removed from the barns, it is spread in windrows and the composting process continues. The finished compost may be used in gardens and lawns and as fertilizer for fields.

"There will be a mix of various technologies, new and old," said Milligan.

Along with being able to visit a research farm, visitors can see antique equipment, including working threshing machines and an old hand wire-tie hay bailer.

Displays and demonstrations of old or antique machinery will be provided by the St. Croix Valley Collectors Association.

Also, said Milligan, both old and modern tractors will be used to pull wagonloads of visitors on tours.

To reach Mann Valley Farm No. 2, go to the junction of River Falls' Main Street and County Road MM. Take MM west 2.5 miles to South Glover Road. The farm is on the corner of MM and South Glover Road.

There is no admission charge.

For more information contact Milligan at the St. Croix County UW-Extension Office, 715-684-3301, ext. 5.

Contact Judy Wiff at regional@rivertowns.net or 715.426.1049.

By Debbie Griffin, RiverTown Staff

Longtime town of Kinnickinnic residents and business owners John and Candace Bettendorf could be forced to move or close their trucking and transfer business after the Kinnickinnic Town Board voted at a special meeting Monday night to deny their request for a commercially zoned parcel.

A messy but significant legal technicality, lost records at the St. Croix County Courthouse and questions of fairness mark the years' old conflict.

The Bettendorfs' lawyer, Matt Biegert, said the property at 285 County Road SS near the intersection with Hwy. 65, has been in the Bettendorf family for more than 100 years. The early 1970s found them running a home-based business with one truck.

In 1980, they bought out a trucking business and thought they could operate under a grandfather clause even though their property was zoned for agricultural/residential use. St. Croix County said no, they should apply for commercial zoning for that portion of the property.

In 1985, the county granted the Bettendorfs commercial zoning. Interested in building a transfer station in 1990, they applied for a special-use permit, which the county granted and the Bettendorfs understood would transfer with ownership of the business.

In 2003, the county told an interested buyer the special-use would not transfer. The Bettendorfs requested records from 1985 that prove they have the zoning, but the county claims they were lost or inadvertently destroyed.

The owners sued the county and won when an appeals court reversed the decision.

During the course of that lawsuit, the county discovered that some of the actions taken "way back when" might not have been legal. Meeting discussions also revealed that the county's Corporation Counsel Greg Timmerman initiated action (an appeal, zoning revocation) that may not have been within his authority to initiate.

The county decided that the ordinance on which the 1985 rezoning decision and 1990 special-use permit had been based was invalid, making both rulings based on it also invalid. That decision put the owners back at square one: Asking to rezone their property to commercial.

The Bettendorfs appealed to the state Supreme Court, which declined to review the case.

The county asked the Town Board to make a recommendation on the "new" zoning request.

Biegert said, "There's got to be a way to get this done. It is possible to find common ground."

"Granting commercial zoning is not going to change status quo," said Biegert.

He emphasized that the Bettendorfs had been running their business with what they understood to be proper zoning for 23 years with no pattern of complaints.

Biegert suggested as an alternative a developer's agreement between the town and the Bettendorfs that would spell out the conditions under which their business could operate.

Get more on this story in this week's print edition of the River Falls Journal and on the River Falls Journal Web site.