LOOK INSIDE FOR OUR WPS FARM SHOW PREVIEW EDITION!
March 22, 2025
“All dairy, all the time”™
Volume 27, No. 3
Welcome home, Wade
Muths rejoice as toddler son’s cancer goes into remission By Stacey Smart
stacey.s@dairystar.com
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
The Muth family — Gina holding Josie and Peter holding Wade — gathers outside the barn March 13 at Cedar Lawn Farm near West Bend, Wisconsin. Wade returned home March 4 cancer-free aŌer spending 4.5 months in the hospital to be treated for acute myeloid leukemia.
WEST BEND, Wis. — Last fall, Peter and Gina Muth received news no parent ever wants to hear: their son had cancer. Wade Muth was 18 months old when he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia Oct. 21, 2024. AML is a cancer of the bone marrow and blood. “I was shocked,” Peter said. “It was scary, but it was in God’s hands; it was out of our hands. All you can do is pray about it, and we had a lot of people praying for him.” The Muths milk 200 cows and farm 700 acres at Cedar Lawn Farm near West Bend with Peter’s parents, Kathy and George.
Peter went back and forth between the farm and Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee to help as much as he could while Gina stayed with Wade, who spent 4.5 months in the hospital undergoing four rounds of chemotherapy treatments. “We still had everything going on here too,” Peter said. “With dairy farming, you can’t turn it on and turn it off. It’s 24 hours a day.” Peter went down two nights a week to the hospital to give Gina a break, so she could return home to their 4-year-old daughter, Josie. “We have a great group of employees,” Peter said. Turn to MUTHS | Page 2
Making a home in America’s Dairyland Wolsbergs nd community in western Wisconsin By Dan Wacker
dan.w@dairystar.com
BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. — Luke Wolsberg and his wife, Lis, always knew they wanted to start a life in agriculture. But land and space to start a dairy was hard to come by in their hometown of Lynden, Washington. Luke had visited Wisconsin a few times, coming to World Dairy Expo in high school as well as venturing to western Wisconsin for Organic Valley’s annual meeting in 2023. Later that year, the Wolsbergs decided to take the leap. With a truck, a horse trailer and one Jersey calf in tow, the couple moved to western Wisconsin to start a dairy life of their own. Luke and Lis now operate Double L Dairy. They milk 40
cows in a 9-stall step-up parlor with a 40- by 80-foot sawdust bed pack barn on a rented farm near Black River Falls. Luke grew up on a dairy farm in Whatcom County in the far northwest corner of Washington. His family had been shipping milk to Organic Valley since 2005. Lis also grew up in agriculture, helping on her grandparents’ horse and hobby farm and competing in rodeo. “I was renting a house, working as a herdsman at a big dairy and we started thinking about our future,” Luke said. “I wanted to pursue homeownership, but the West Coast is really expensive. Lis and I are both rural kids and we wanted property. Having the experienc-
Turn to WOLFISBERGS | Page 5
DAN WACKER/DAIRY STAR
Luke and Lis Wolsberg kneel March 3 near one of their calves at Double L Dairy near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The couple is milking 40 cows in a 9-stall step-up parlor.