Farm, Foods Store Good Fit For Ruegseggers

By Ron Johnson Dairy Editor
Thursday, October 16, 2008 7:44 AM CDT

Ken Ruegsegger enjoys milking cows. Yet he has found that life raising livestock and running a unique, small-town store can be pretty good, too.

Ken and his wife, Sherrie, own and operate Paoli Local Foods. It’s an emporium that features locally produced meat, milk, cheese, butter, and fruit, along with an interesting mix of natural and organic foods.

Chief among its attractions is Ken and Sherrie’s grass-fed beef and other meats from their own small farm. Things are going well for the store, in the small-but-busy Dane County community of Paoli, just 10 miles west of Madison.

Still, Ken readily admits to missing his first love n dairying. Ken was raised on the farm that he now calls “home,” some 20 miles from the store near New Glarus.

He took the farm over from his parents and milked 65 cows for 13 years. In some ways, Ken was a prototypical Wisconsin dairyman.

He built the herd average to more than 20,000 pounds of milk during the late 1980s, earning milk quality awards along the way. Nevertheless, Ken chose to walk away from dairying.

He says, ““I didn’t like the idea of some big company… telling me how much I needed to make for what I do every month. I sold the cows (because) I just couldn’t get anywhere…”

From there, Ken worked in construction and began raising a few beef cattle and hogs, selling the meat to friends and neighbors. He liked the better prices he was able to receive by selling meat directly to his customers. Gradually, the meat business grew from six calves raised a year to 175 head now.

Along the way, Sherrie and Ken added laying hens, meat chickens, turkeys, and lambs. All their livestock is raised on pasture. Plus, they receive no growth hormones or antibiotics.

“We don’t touch our animals,” says Ken. “They’re born on our farm and they feed themselves, spread their own manure. They watch us. We don’t herd them. They just kind of watch us do what we do. It’s kinda neat.”

Their business has grown to the point that this year the Ruegseggers are tending 550 laying hens, 28 lambs, 27 pigs, 340 meat chickens, 120 turkeys, and 175 head of beef. In addition to raising stock on their own place, Ken and Sherry rent three farms.

The store in Paoli has been open a bit more than a year. Ken recalls driving past the building, seeing the “for rent” sign and immediately contacting the owner.

Sherrie and Ken remodeled the 1,200-square-foot building to include a small kitchen in the back, a storage area, walk-in cooler, restroom, serving area, sales counter, and the main store space.

Today, Paoli Local Foods, right along County Highway PB that bisects the town, is a popular stopping point for cyclists who zip along the Badger State Bicycle Trail. It’s also a place where local folks stop by for sandwiches, lunches and dinners.

On the morning Agri-View visited, Ken was busy in the kitchen, preparing his farm-raised chicken for slow cooking in a crockpot. An especially popular dish is the store’s homemade lasagna. Its goulash goes over great, too.

“We’re really known for our goulash,” says Ken. “Nobody makes goulash anymore.”

Sherrie makes her carrot cake from scratch, going so far as to grate the carrots by hand. Her homemade pies don’t stay on the shelves long, Ken assures. The butter used in the pie crusts is churned using the cream from grazed cows, he adds.

Roast beef sandwiches made from the Ruegseggers’ grass-fed Black Angus beef are a “specialty,” according to Ken. That beef, he says, is “so good” that many people eat it without so much as salt or pepper.

Oh. If you buy a couple of steaks from Ken and Sherrie’s grass-fed cattle, try to avoid the temptation to pour either catsup or steak sauce on them. Or at least don’t let Ken know about it. Using either condiment on such good meat, he says, “would be an insult.”

People searching for that special cheese, milk or butter can find it at Paoli Local Foods. The store stocks milk from a nearby on-farm bottler, plus goat cheese, raw-milk, grass-fed and organic cheeses. Ken points out a 10-year-old cheddar made in Darlington. He also sells a six-year-old cheddar produced from the milk of grazed cows.

As the name of the store implies, the emphasis is on “local” whenever possible.

“We have a lot of things you can’t find anywhere else.

“…We have more local foods per square foot than any other store I know of,” Ken comments.

There’s farm-raised trout from Wisconsin, countered by wild Alaska salmon and alligator meat n the latter two hardly “local” in the strictest of terms. But Ken employs a generous and practical definition of “local.”

“’Local’ is as close as possible,” points out Ken.

If he can source a suitable product next door, fine. If not, he tries to buy it within a few miles, with the circle widening as much as it needs to.

A prime example is blueberries. Ken says he can only buy 12 pints of blueberries from a farm three miles away. That means the ever-widening circle of “local” brings him the rest of the berries from northern Wisconsin and Michigan.

Regardless, “The less miles it travels down the road, the better,” Ken says.

That’s because the money goes to local farmers instead of mega distributors, wholesalers and retailers. And, less fuel is used to transport the food. That, in turn, increases the likelihood of freshness.

“Local” can imply other things, too. It might mean that the food was produced in a more natural way, or perhaps organically. But in general, the term carries with it the notion of “better quality,” Ken agrees.

Better quality from local foods can often be tasted. Ken gets apples from three miles away. They don’t look perfect because the trees haven’t been sprayed. But they make up for the imperfections in taste.

“You can taste the quality. They snap, and the juices squirt in your mouth,” Ken describes.

There’s a concept of trust associated with “local.”

“That’s very important,” says Ken. “I quit raising vegetables because I can by them from people I know. I trust those people.”

Ken says the store is headed “in a positive direction.” But it and the farm n and Sherrie’s job in Madison n keep them plenty busy. The store is open Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but Ken is often there until 10 p.m. Add in the farm chores and going to farmers’ markets at Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Milwaukee, Portage and Dodgeville.

“We’re very efficient about how we work,” Ken states. That means getting by with six or fewer hours of sleep each night.

He emphasizes that the farm and store would not succeed without Sherrie.

“She’s totally supportive…She’s a trooper,” Ken declares.

After 16 months in business, Paoli Local Foods is turning out differently than Ken envisioned. He says, “I thought we’d have more of a grocery store. It’s turning out that people come here for our meats.”

The farm has evolved, too.

“I never dreamed that we’d be as busy as we are,” Ken confides. “Every year we sell out of fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving.”

How do they handle all the work? “…We love what we do…” Ken answers.

For the record, though, Ken would rather be milking cows once more.

“Oh, I loved it,” he says. I’d do anything I could to go back dairying again.

“My dream… was to retire milking 20 cows,” Ken continues. “If I could milk 20 cows twice a day and make cheese out of it, and bottle some milk n the only thing better than that would to do that in Switzerland, where my family’s from.”

He remembers hearing stories from his grandfather about summers spent milking cows and making cheese in the mountains of Switzerland.

“I’ve never been there (Switzerland). But it’s a dream,” Ken says.

Still, with his own small farm and Paoli Local Foods, Ken seems satisfied. He assures, “I love everything I do.”

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