Auburndale Ag Students and Advisor Discuss Auburndale's Dairy Breakfast
Monday, June 23rd, 2025 -- 11:01 AM
The Auburndale Dairy Breakfast was held on Saturday at the High School Shop.
Dale Erickson attended the event and spoke with Auburndale High School Students Brenna Thiel & Colman Becker as they discussed various activities of the FFA Chapter. He also spoke with Mark Cournoyer, Ag Educator at Auburndale about the breakfast and activities of the Auburndale Chapter.
(AI assisted transcription of the interview by Otter.ai):
Dale: "And joining me is Brenna Thiele, and she's going to tell us a little bit about the Auburndale FFA and some of their activities, including state convention just a week or so ago."
Brenna: "So, last week, we came back from Madison, where we took our officer team, so our previous officers, and then this year, upcoming new officer team. I believe it was a 96 state convention."
"We spent four days down there, attending different sessions, workshops, just kind of learning different things about things that we can improve in our FFA, as long as getting to see the state officers go through their different thing."
Dale: "The Auburndale chapter received some awards at the state convention. Can you tell us a little bit about those?"
Brenna: "So this year, we received our National Chapter Award. We were in the Silver Division, so not exactly what we had hoped to get. But basically that award is based on the different events that we do and how that kind of showcases off our FFA and then one of our officers, Eden, received a Pride Award. So, that was something really cool that we got to celebrate this."
Dale: "A lot of activities going on with the Auburndale FFA and Coleman Becker is here to tell me a little about their officer retreat."
Coleman: "So, in this upcoming week here, we're going to be going up to Manitowi waters and we're going to spend four days up there, just our officer team, and we're going to be doing a bunch of team building experiences and just have a good time up there."
Dale: "Some of the other activities that the Auburndale FFA does throughout the year, one of them is the pumpkin glow. Can you tell us a little bit about that?"
Coleman: "So, our pumpkin glow, we carve 500 pumpkins, and set them out on our trail, and we put little lights in them and everybody can come and walk through."
"It's a public event and it's a free will donation. And all the money that we receive goes to our local Toys for Tots and we take that money and we go to Hillers and we buy out the store of all their toys."
Dale: "Brenna, can you tell me a little bit about the bed build project?"
Brenna: "The bed build is another one of our fundraisers that we have. So, we have that in our school shop, where we have community members, FFA alumni come and build beds for kids that maybe don't have that."
"So, we do something that we call our ice glow, which is basically the same thing as our pumpkin glow, but we line our school forest trails with blocks of ice and they're colored and got different things in them, and have lights."
So, the money from that is raised and goes towards the bed build, where we build, I don't even know how many beds, for different kids in the community that need them."
Dale: "One final thing I want to touch on with the Auburndale FFA is your sunflower test plot."
Coleman: "So, we have a sunflower field, and that's open to the public to come out and take pictures and there's a mailbox there for a free will donation if you want. And then our test plots, that's actually deer food plots, and we've got 14 different varieties of seed and then a 15th is the complete mixture."
Dale: "And joining me is Auburndale High School ag instructor Mark Cournoyer. Can you tell us, Mark, a little bit about what it took to put Today's breakfast together?"
Mark: "Oh my gosh, a whole lot of air conditioning, that's for sure. You know, every dairy Breakfast has their specialty. And so for ours, we always have had it in conjunction with music fest for the last 25 years."
"And so it depends on, you know, the beginning, we started out in the shelter house, and then we had the shop built here, and like, let's move it down to the high school and have it here in conjunction."
"And so our audience is a little bit different. We have a lot of softball uniforms that come through, but providing a good car breakfast for those people there does a lot, you know, and having in the shop here provides, you know, we got a space. We have concrete."
"Our parking is all established. It's all lined out. So, Monday night, Monday night for our FA meeting, we came in here and we just laid tables. And hour and a half, we transformed it from the shop into the dining facility."
"And then last night, we came for an hour and set our grills and fired all that and come in at six in the morning and put the final touches on. And we had pancakes flying by 25 after seven this morning."
Dale: "A little earlier this morning, you recognized some folks that have been long involved with the breakfast here at Auburndale. Can you tell us a little bit about them?"
Mark: "Jean Striegel and Jim Burton, ever since we started our pancake feed in 1960 they've been here and they were freshmen in high school at that time and they just sort of became pillars in our community, whether it was Lions, whether it was Lions in both Auburndale and Rozeleville, fire department, electrician in there, and farming in their respective trades, but they were always here for us."
"And so Senator Corey Tomczyk came down and they had a congressional citation to them for their years of service, to our FFA, to our community. They were presented with a flag that was flown over the Capitol and we told them that they won some raffle prizes, but lo and behold, it was this, and so Senator Tomczyk was here to present them and that's we feel very fortunate to have people in your community who would just give for the sake of the betterment of their community, and, you know, for the cause."
"And they've always been here for our cause. And whether it's mentoring younger pancake flippers or picking up a milk trailer yesterday, it's those little things taking an hour of the day that you know, the power of an hour, what you can do for somebody else."
Dale: "Well, you're a fellow that gives a lot, too. And I've met some of your students and you have some unique things in your program here at Auburndale High School. Can you tell us a little about the things that are unique to the Auburndale program?"
Mark: "Well, we have a school forest that is just down the road, 900 feet from our school, and that provides 40 Acres of unique outdoor laboratory activities."
"And our dairy breakfast is one of those things that back in January, we work hard at laying out our maple syrup lines. And then in March, we have a good month of maple sapping and things like that."
"And we have another individual that has a maple house, that they're 900 feet to the south of us, that we drop our maple sap off at, and we work on halves."
"And this year, we hauled out 3100 gallons of sap down there and had it processed, which then that feeds both our dairy breakfast and our pancake feed in spring."
"So, that's that's one of the small things here, as far as dairy breakfast and getting the kids involved in that operation, because it's truly a Wisconsin thing, like you have cheese curds and you have cranberries, but to be able to say you've tapped a maple tree and seen that whole process, that's a huge thing."
We have our meats lab. We just had a renovation in 2021 so they took out what used to be a print shop, and we turned that into a meats lab, and then storage for welding."
And so we actually made the snack sticks for our professional development event for our ag teachers coming up this current week. So, I call them seventh grade snack sticks, because it's so easy, even a seventh grader can do it."
"So, they did. And so the meat lab that's also used in conjunction with Mid-States butchery program that they have for a night class. So, rather than building another structure, we had this building here with all the equipment."
"And so now they're having a master meat crafter, teaches the class, teaching people from age 16 to 86 who want to come and learn that craft. And they do that at night."
"We have a new greenhouse, which we grow plants for a plant sale. And then, if you've ever been past St. Vinny's in Marshfield, what we have left, and what we over grow goes to our different communities."
"So, St. Vinny, Arpin, Sherry, Auburndale Parks all get a piece of our greenhouse because it's just the ability to reach out and give, because it's the same, those same communities that support us, you know, we like to give back to them, so it's fair all the way around, and it teaches those kids that you know what, it's okay to give and help your community and be proud of your community."
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