The steady hum of a milking barn is the sound Kevin Erbsen has built his life around.
In 1957, his parents Kenneth and Pauline Erbsen began Erbacres with a small herd of grade Holsteins. Those grade cattle were quickly dispersed, replaced with registered Holsteins and the family’s legacy in the dairy industry took root. After a lifetime of hard work and numerous state and national champions, Erbacres Holsteins is the recipient of the 2026 Robert “Whitey” McKown Master Breeder Award.
It is an honor that’s taken on extra meaning for Erbacres after one of the hardest years in the family’s history. Today, Kevin moves through the milking barn in Lanark, Ill. in a wheelchair made specifically to navigate the aisles. Following an accident in the barn during the first month of 2026, it could have been easy for the Erbsens to sell their cows. Instead, the unfortunate series of events has brought the family even closer.
“It was a no-brainier for me to keep the cows,” Delana Erbsen, Kevin and his wife Wendy’s daughter says. “I’ve had lots of opportunities to get rid of the cows and there’s never been a thought in my mind that I did not want to milk cows every day.”
A Day that Changed Everything
In January, Kevin was working in the barn with an older cow that was struggling to get up. As she lunged forward with momentum, she caught her nose between his legs, threw him roughly 15 feet into the air and sent his head between the rafters of the barn.
“I had an awful time getting up, and my hands were all tingly and like razor blades,” Kevin says. “My legs were numb for a little while.”
In the hospital in Madison, Wis., the family learned Kevin had suffered an artery dissection. It later led to a brain bleed, and then a stroke.
“We went to Madison thinking that he just needed an IV for fluids, because he had the flu,” Wendy said. “And the doctor said, ‘Well, we’re prepping him for brain surgery.’ So you do some quick phone calls and start realizing the things in your life that are really important and the things that you need to organize.”
That night, Delana drove from South Dakota as a blizzard was moving across the Midwest. Payton, Kevin and Wendy’s son also made the drive to be with their father. Sitting in a hospital, Wendy says she found herself weighing the only life the family had ever known.
“The things that you think about is, ‘really, is the farm everything you’ve worked for — but is it really important?’” she says. While Kevin was their number one concern, she knew the dairy would need attention. “Farming, it’s not a career, it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. It has to be done. ...We had to have something to come back for, and we had to have something there for the kids.... You don’t work for 60 years for nothing.”
The Decision Not to Sell
Within hours of the news, Kevin’s family was at the farm. His oldest of six siblings, Paula Erbsen Bovre lives three hours away in Wisconsin.
“When we got the text from Wendy that Kevin was going into brain surgery, I packed up a bag and got in my truck and drove down here immediately, so that I’d be here for morning chores,” she says. For the first few weeks, all five siblings Bovre, Kathleen Opperman, Carla Mickey, John Erbsen and Carl Erbsen were there helping at the farm.
While Kevin’s siblings and their kids stepped up at home, it gave Delana and Payton a chance to spend time with their dad in the hospital. The extended family played the biggest role following Kevin’s decline, but the Erbsen’s knew long term the responsibility would fall largely to Delana and Payton. Today, Delana remains front and center with the cattle, and Payton has taken over the crops, on top of daily chores and his own ag businesses.
“It’s a different feeling when you see the person that you’ve worked with your entire life, the person that’s been a mentor to you your entire life just laying in a hospital bed, unable to move, talk, hooked up to all these cords. It’s whole different feeling,” Delana says, “At that moment, I knew things were gonna change.”
“Since we were young, we’ve always had to be here for chores. If we weren’t here for chores, we knew Dad was gonna be mad,” Payton said. “It’s been our lives. Now that we’re doing it together, there’s no idea or no thought in our head that would make us wanna sell.”
As Kevin’s surgery was scheduled, Wendy was working the phones for a different reason. She started calling lenders and suppliers to confirm both their names were on every account.
“I’m calling to double-check that our farm bills can be paid if something happened to Kevin,” she says. “Because if Kevin passes, what kind of leeway do we have? Does it stop the farm?”
Wendy says the agriculture industry moved quicker than she expected. Companies FedExed documents for signature, handled changes electronically, or simply told her to take care of it whenever she could get there.
“Those things happen super fast, and that wouldn’t happen in any other industry,” Wendy said. “It’s the agriculture industry that knows each other and supports each other and helps us survive.”
Kevin does not remember most of what came next. His memory picks up at the end of April. Twice during that stretch, doctors told the family to gather together to say goodbye.
“But I’m tough,” Kevin says.
“He is,” Wendy echoes. “Literally the doctor said, ‘We’re amazed that Kevin is doing as well as he is.’ It’s because he’s a farmer and knows how to work hard. That work ethic definitely helped him along the way.”
Relearning Everything
In April, Kevin transferred to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago for rehabilitation. The list of what he had to rebuild was long. He had lost nearly 45 pounds. He had no voice. He could not swallow, and he did not acknowledge anything past the center of his own body.
One of the exercises that rebuilt his vocal cords came straight off the farm. The kids were planting oats, and Kevin was trying to talk Payton through setting up the planter over the phone. “Because I didn’t know how to do it, and they couldn’t FaceTime it. He had to use his voice,” Wendy says.
Carrying More Than One Burden
The Erbsens were not fighting on one front. While Kevin was in the ICU in Madison, Wendy’s father was in the ICU in Washington state with sepsis. He later passed away and she was not able to be there.
“It’s hard to realize you can’t be with your dad when he’s dying,” she said, “but people were there for him and keeping me informed.”
Her father’s funeral fell during a 10-day stretch when Kevin was readmitted in Madison to rebalance his medications and refit his wheelchair. When Wendy asked the care team whether someone else could pick Kevin up because she had to travel, the staff assumed she was taking a trip.
“I said, ‘Well, no, I’m going to my dad’s funeral,’” Wendy said. “And they said, ‘When will you come back?’ And I told them the day, and they said, ‘Well, we’ll keep him.’”
Flight delays on her way home from the funeral meant family friends stepped up to pick up Kevin from the hospital and Wendy from the airport.
“It’s good to be from a small community that knows all about you,” Kevin says.
Support arrived from much further away, too — emails from Scotland, Ireland and Switzerland, from people the Erbsens met through the show ring and the breed.
“There isn’t anything else that works as hard as a dairyman,” Wendy said. “Agriculture is hard, but a dairyman is 24-7, and those people know how to work and know how to help, because they know what it takes.”
245 Excellent Cows and 59 Years of Showing: An Award Amid Adversity
Kevin credits his parents as the reason Erbacres is the recipient of the 2026 Robert “Whitey” McKown Master Breeder Award. His first reaction to the news was surprise.
“Only a handful of people that get it and Whitey McKown was somebody that my dad always looked up to. This is a special one out there,” Kevin says.
Erbacres has bred 245 Excellent cows, 21 Gold Medal Dams and 25 Dams of Merit, and has earned the Progressive Breeders Registry award for 28 years. Erbacres Snapple Shakira-ET, bred by the family, was named Grand Champion of the International Holstein Show and Supreme Champion of World Dairy Expo in 2021, then took a second Supreme Champion title in 2023.
The honor holds a significance the family couldn’t have anticipated a year ago.
“You gotta think, ‘I almost didn’t get this’,” Kevin says.
Wendy adds, “It would have been really easy to sell cows... It would have been really easy to pack things up and say you know one burden at a time but to keep running the farm, having the crops, having the kids and the family all have to step up so much. We’ve asked so much of so many people, so yeah, it’s really special this year.”
Wendy says the family’s faith has gotten them through the trying season.
“Never once did I say ‘why.’ It was always, somebody has a plan, and how can we help others learn from what we’ve done,” she says.
Today, Kevin is back where he has always been — watching his kids do the work he’s done for decades. “The day we came home (from rehab), that’s where he wanted to be,” Wendy says. “So we came in that day, re-situated, and the first place that Kevin went was out to go and look at the cows and wheel into the cow barn.”
A constant in the Erbsens’ lives with many changing circumstances.
