For 45 days each fall, Cozy Nook Farm near Delafield, Wis., turns 20 acres of pumpkins into an opportunity to bring customers onto the farm and generate income beyond milk. After Thanksgiving, Christmas trees and handmade wreaths carry that work into winter.
For Tom and Joan Oberhaus, along with their son Charlie and partners, Danny and Brittany Gerrits, diversifying has helped them invest in their dairy, support the next generation and keep milking cows in an area where nearby development makes expanding the herd difficult.
At Cozy Nook Farm, pumpkin and Christmas tree sales bring customers to the farm during two busy seasons. The extra income helps pay for dairy improvements and gives the family another way to keep the operation moving forward.
A Pumpkin Patch with Roots
In 1963, Joan’s parents started selling pumpkins to help pay for college for Joan and her three siblings. What began as a college fund eventually became an income source that helped the family invest in its dairy.
After college, Joan worked for Dairy Herd Improvement and Guernsey organizations, where she met Tom. They returned to the farm in 1985 and began working alongside her parents.
The couple purchased a house and 60 adjoining acres through a land contract, with seven years of large payments ahead of them. They were milking 38 Guernseys, and both worked part time off the farm to help cover expenses.
“The farm just wasn’t able to support two families,” Joan says of those early years.
To bring in more income, the couple added Christmas trees to the pumpkin business, creating another sales season after fall harvest. Over time, revenue from both businesses helped pay for improvements that selling milk alone would have made harder to afford.
“The pumpkin crop has let us, build a freestall barn and put up the parlor,” Joan says. “We’ve got some new equipment once in a while. You know, all those things happen because you’ve got an extra income.”
The seasonal work has also given Joan and Tom a chance to connect with customers beyond selling milk.
“It’s been really good for us,” Joan says. “We were both at that stage where milking cows every day, yeah, it’s fun. But it’s also fun to do this thing and be able to connect with the consumers and tell our story.”
Today, the dairy milks between 80 and 90 cows, primarily registered Brown Swiss and Guernseys, along with Ayrshires and Holsteins. Milk ships to Prairie Farms, where it is made into cheese. The farm also sells cheese curds and other varieties to market customers, adding another direct-sales component to the operation.
A Partnership Built Around the Farm
Today, Tom and Joan work with their son Charlie, who handles trucking and much of the machinery work, along with Danny and Brittany Gerrits. Danny started working on the farm in high school and knew he wanted to pursue farming, but opportunities on his grandparents’ farm were limited.
Tom’s stroke in 2017 prompted the family to think more seriously about the farm’s future and formalize a partnership through an LLC. The partnership includes Tom and Joan, Charlie and Danny and covers the cows and machinery, while Tom and Joan retain ownership of the land.
“After Tom’s health scare, it was time to sit down and figure out how we were going to make this work going forward,” Joan says.
When the family decided to bring in a partner, Danny was a natural fit.
“He’d been here for several years and knew the operation like it was his own,” Joan says. “He knew how things worked, so it made sense to bring him in.”
The partnership helps the family share responsibilities across the dairy and seasonal businesses. When Danny married Brittany, she also became a partner in the operation, taking the lead on most of the farm tours. Pumpkin season can be especially demanding, and the family brings in extra help wherever it can. Joan says the arrangement has worked well so far, even if there are always things they could have handled differently.
Twenty Acres of Pumpkins
The family plants about 20 acres of pumpkins each year, starting around June 1. By fall, the market offers roughly 120 pumpkin varieties in a range of colors, shapes and sizes, along with 14 varieties of squash, gourds, Indian corn, broom corn, corn stalks and hay bales.
For some children, Cozy Nook Farm offers a chance to work with livestock they might not otherwise have access to and experience showing an animal at the county fair. About 18 children showed the farm’s heifers at the county fair this year, with seven advancing to the state fair.
The children can lease a heifer for the summer, learning to care for and show the animal. When pumpkin harvest arrives, they help pick pumpkins instead of paying to use the heifer.
Brittany calls the arrangement “sweat equity.” It gives the kids a chance to gain experience with livestock while helping the farm with the extra labor needed to harvest pumpkins and stock the fall market.
“You have kids who might not otherwise get the chance to have an animal or show at the fair,” Brittany says. “They get to learn how to take care of it all summer, and then they come back and help us with pumpkins. It works out well for everybody.”
That help adds up. This year, the crew harvested about 13 full trailer loads of pumpkins to fill the shed and other storage areas. Harvesting and stocking the market takes a lot of hands, especially when the fall rush is underway.
“We need a lot of help to get everything picked and ready for people to come in,” Joan says. “Once we get into the season, there’s always something that needs doing.”
The family works to finish the fall market by Oct. 31, then spends the first few days of November cleaning up before turning its attention to Christmas trees and holiday sales.
Joan says the family has considered adding more attractions, but each new activity would require more labor and parking.
“Everybody says we need a corn maze or another attraction,” she says. “But then you need more people to run it.”
While additional activities could bring in more money, they would also take time away from other parts of the business.
“You might make more money, but it’s also more work,” Joan says. “There’s only so much time I have.”
Rather than building a larger entertainment business, the family has kept its focus on the dairy and seasonal markets.
“We don’t want to be an entertainment farm,” Joan says. “We’re happy to have hundreds of kids come through each year, see the cows and learn about dairy farming. We enjoy sharing what we do, but we don’t feel like we need to keep adding more attractions.”
Today, the family charges customers for the products they buy and hayrides, without building the business around admission fees and a growing list of activities.
2,000 Christmas Trees
The Christmas market opens the Friday after Thanksgiving, with fresh-cut Wisconsin trees and handmade greenery. Cozy Nook buys its trees in bulk rather than growing them on the farm, offering Fraser, Balsam and Cannon firs ranging from four-foot tabletop trees to 16-foot trees.
The family sells more than 2,000 trees during the holiday season. Last year, more than 600 trees sold on opening Friday alone. Joan says the family has developed a steady customer base, with shoppers returning year after year for their trees.
“The first day is always busy, and it’s fun to see people come back year after year,” Joan says. “A lot of them know what they want, and they come here to get their tree.”
Joan also makes about 400 door swags each season, using evergreen branches, broom corn, pinecones and bows she prepares ahead of time. The family makes Fraser fir wreaths in two sizes and buys additional Balsam wreaths to meet demand without adding more work.
“We don’t do farm tours during the Christmas season like we do in the fall, but we still enjoy having people come out to the farm,” Joan says. “It’s nice to see families come back and make getting their tree here part of their Christmas tradition.”
Diversification Without More Cows
Located on the outskirts of Milwaukee, Cozy Nook Farm faces limits on dairy expansion as residential development moves closer to the property. Rather than focus on growing the herd, the family has found ways to make more from the operation it already has. Pumpkin and Christmas tree sales bring in income during two distinct seasons, helping pay for dairy facilities and equipment.
The seasonal businesses have become part of how the family sustains the dairy and keeps it viable for the next generation. They also give the family a way to connect with customers and share the work behind the products they sell.
“Everybody’s got their little niche in the world,” Joan says. “This is ours.”
For Danny, the relationship between the dairy and the seasonal businesses captures why diversification works at Cozy Nook.
“Tom once told me that having cows helps us sell pumpkins, but selling pumpkins is what allows us to keep the cows,” he says. “That really stuck with me.”
In a community where adding land and growing the herd are difficult, the family has found a way to keep milking cows by building on the business it already has.
To read more stories about farms diversifying their operations, check out:
