When two farm families in North Freedom, Wisconsin, decided to pool their resources and create United Dreams Dairy, it was immediately obvious that joining forces would spur growth. And would ultimately set the stage for bringing the next generation of family farmers into the fold.

Owners Tim and Lisa Evert and Rick and Ronda Lehman began asking themselves a couple of key forward-thinking questions: where do we want the farm to go and where do we see ourselves years down the road? The answer was expansion, and the farm needed to begin streamlining operations and actively planning for that next phase of sustainable, revenue-generating growth.

At this time, the original dairy facilities were still in operation, with a handful of small feed storage bunkers and two animal production areas. The farm was also considering becoming permitted as a CAFO, and while not ready to take the leap just yet, wanted to incorporate some solid foundational systems and new best practices to meet CAFO standards of compliance so they would be prepared to pursue that certification in the future.

MSA agricultural engineers were asked to assist with a variety of projects to do just that, including farmstead planning, siting for a new freestall barn, and permitting and construction observation of a large dairy expansion with boosted capacity, new manure transfer and storage design, feed storage and leachate collection. The manure management system is perhaps the most impactful of the farm upgrades, as the farm’s prior system was already undersized for operations and certainly could not handle the needs of the farm as it continued to grow. MSA worked with the families to design a new 6.4-million-gallon concrete-lined storage lagoon at a larger and improved location on the property. This is a major increase from the dairy’s former 1.7-million-gallon storage facility and boosts the farm’s days of storage to approximately 255 days — more than sufficient to handle the existing 680-head herd, with plenty of room to add more cattle.

MSA also helped the farm increase its feed storage capacity by growing the number of storage bunkers from five to eight, with the potential to add two more, when necessary.

All told, the United Dreams Dairy expansion project helped the families boost manure and feed storage capacity, develop best management practices for dirty water runoff, positioned the dairy to someday achieve full CAFO permitting and assisted the family in obtaining funding through the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which helps fund sustainable and environmentally beneficial projects. In this case, United Dreams used the EQIP funds to finance the creation of a Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (CNMP) — a document that helps guide whole-farm operations, maintenance and expansions to ensure both farm production and environmental goals are achieved.