News: Loyal – Breakfast at Fellenz Farm (2021)

Transcriber: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Fellenz

Source: Tribune/Record/Gleaner (Abbotsford, WI) 16 June 2021

Kevin and Rosie Fellenz have had more than the usual amount of time to prepare to host the Loyal FFA Alumni’s annual on-farm dairy breakfast. They were going to do it already a year ago, but COVID-19 shot down those plans.

So they’ll do it this year, instead, on Father’s Day, from 7 a.m.-12:30 p.m. The plans are much the same as they were a year ago, they’ve just had more time to get everything in place.

“We’ve only been working on it for the last year and a half,” Rosie said this week.

Fellenz Farms also hosted Loyal’s breakfast in 2010, but things have changed considerably since then. What started as a modest dairy farm when Kevin and Rosie were married in 1992 has now become an agricultural enterprise with three separate businesses. The cows are long gone; in their place are separate businesses dealing with custom fieldwork, trucking, and now excavating.

Fellenz Farms still owns about 1,100 acres and rents another 1,200, but those fields are all for cash-cropping these days. Rosie said they sold the dairy herd some 14 years ago and turned instead to just raising crops, as the custom fieldwork business was taking off.

Kevin had his own planting, harvesting and other field equipment while they were dairy farming, but saw he could make some money by doing such work for others.

“Kevin was helping some of the neighbors out and it just went from there and each year we got a little bigger,” Rosie said.

Fellenz Custom now runs a combine and chopper as well as semi-tractor long silage trailers and chopper boxes. Fellenz Custom employees are on the job all season long.

“We do everything from planting to harvesting, whether it’s corn, beans or oats,” Rosie said.

The Fellenz Trucking component has three full-time and one part-time driver on the road. They haul the Fellenz Farm commodities and hire out for other long haul needs, mainly in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The newest entity under the Fellenz name is Fellenz Excavating. That business


has a bulldozer, backhoe, skidsteer and dump truck, and does a variety of jobs from ditching to driveways. Rosie said Fellenz Excavating spent several weeks in Iowa recently after winning a bid to tear down grain bins that had been destroyed in last summer’s windstorms there.

Fellenz Custom opened an office in Loyal several years ago, and that’s where the business end of the operation is centered. The office has four employees who handle the scheduling, billing, bookkeeping and safety aspects of the businesses.

Rosie said she and Kevin were willing to host the Loyal FFA Alumni’s event again after being asked prior to the 2020 event. On-field parking will be available as long as the dry weather holds out, and those who come can expect to see a different farm from what they did in 2010.

“Since then the cows have left and we’ve gotten bigger with the custom,” Rosie said. “We started out with just a few tractors and chopper boxes. Since then we’ve grown to where we are today.”

Fellenz Farms is located east of Loyal on Sandhill Avenue. A sign along Highway 98 will direct traffic south to the farm.