LOOK INSIDE FOR OUR WORLD DAIRY EXPO PREVIEW EDITION!
DAIRY ST R
September 10, 2022
“All dairy, all the time”™
Volume 24, No. 14
Giving its members a stable market
Decatur Dairy expands to meet current, future growth By Stacey Smart
stacey.s@dairystar.com
BRODHEAD, Wis. – Among the rolling hills of Green County, growth at Decatur Dairy has led to an expansion that will nearly double the cheese factory’s physical footprint. A milk processing plant owned partly by the dairy farmers who ship their milk to it, Decatur Dairy is building not only for today but also for all of the tomorrows that lie ahead. “The expansion will create huge efciencies in our business,” said Steve Stettler, owner and operator of Decatur Dairy. “It will give us the opportunity to invest in technology and change some of the ways we do things. We’re trying to serve all the needs of our patrons. They have been with us for a long time, and they understand pro-
Hernandez served during Iraq War By Abby Wiedmeyer abby.w@dairystar.com
TOMAH, Wis. – Kitt Hernandez served four years in the United States Navy, spending her days on the open water. Today, the fourthgeneration dairy farmer is rooted on land and milks 50 cows in a stanchion barn with the help of her dad, Kurt Westpfahl, and her family – husband, Jose, and their three children, Aidan, James and Jax – near Tomah. Before Hernandez returned to her family’s farm in 2005, she was stationed in Pensacola, Florida. Hernandez had just nished boot camp when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred. “When I saw that second plane hit and I couldn’t call
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
Master cheesemaker and owner Steve SteƩler and his wife, George, stand inside the storefront at Decatur Dairy near Brodhead, Wisconsin. The dairy is undergoing a $6.2 million expansion that will add 24,000-square-feet of space to the facility to be completed by February 2023. duction. They don’t want to roll back.” The $6.2 million expansion will add 24,000-square-feet of
space to the facility which presently occupies a little more than 30,000-square-feet near Brodhead. The dairy broke ground on
home, the reality of it hit me,” Hernandez said. “I told myself, ‘You have to prepare for war.’ Less than a year later, I was over in the gulf.” After graduating as an aviation boatswain’s mate handler, Hernandez was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, on the USS Nassau. The ship is an amphibious carrier with an 860-foot ight deck which was used to land and launch helicopters and other aircraft that were usually transporting supplies or people. At a time when the Navy was just starting to allow women on board, Hernandez said she became the 32nd female to ever board the ship. On the day Hernandez turned 19, her dad was involved in a farming accident. She took a month of leave to go home and run the farm while he recovered before returning to Virginia. After months of training
on the ship, Hernandez was deployed in August 2002. The rst few months of deployment were spent delivering Marines to land who were part of joint forces in Kosovo at the time. Hernandez went on to become the rst woman in her crew to become a tractor driver on board – using tugs to bring aircraft from the hangar bay to the ight deck. She was eventually promoted to tractor king. By the end of her enlistment, she was a landing signalman enlisted, which was another rst for a female on her crew. “I think my biggest accomplishment in the Navy was to be the rst female to do these things,” Hernandez said. “I paved the way for other women on the ight deck to do so.” Hernandez said a team of Navy SEALS came aboard the ship via an aircraft she landed. She found out years later that
the expansion April 1 with plans to have it complete by Feb. 1, 2023. “We’ve been out of room
for a long time,” Stettler said. “We’re growing, and our customers are growing. We’re shipping cheese to different warehouses because we don’t have the space. We have to bring everything back under one roof.” The expansion will include dry storage space, cold storage space, a new packaging room, curing room, new loading docks and a shipping ofce. As a result, the addition will open up space in the existing facility and also offer an area to add more processing capabilities. Decatur Dairy’s 72 patrons from Rock, Green and Lafayette counties ship about 550,000 pounds of milk per day to the plant. With the expansion, volume could increase to 700,000 pounds per day. “We are way overproducing for the space we have,” Stettler said. “It is getting harder and harder to meet industry standards with limited room. The expansion is going to help solve that problem by giving us a lot more space.”
Turn to DECATUR | Page 6
From sea to soil
ABBY WIEDMEYER/DAIRY STAR
KiƩ Hernandez stands on her farm near Tomah, Wisconsin. Hernandez is a Navy veteran and fourth-generaƟon dairy farmer. the team of SEALS included was an adrenaline rush, and the Chris Kyle, the inspiration for best way to cope was to try not the movie, “American Sniper.” Hernandez said every day Turn to HERNANDEZ | Page 7