“Milking the Cows is the Easy Part”
Embedded Files
Emily Alff
Team Eisert
A little more than a decade ago, Katie Schengbier, 40, followed her dream to open Leaning Oaks Farm. Now with 40 head of cattle, she’s driven to keep her community healthy by supplying raw milk to families in Union, Missouri, and surrounding areas -- all while maintaining her home and caring for two daughters. “No matter what you’re doing, no matter how sick you are, you have to milk dairy cows,” Katie said.
In 2024, the farm became self-sufficient, but it still doesn’t pay for her mortgage or health insurance. Instead, her family of four relies on her husband of 18 years, Joe, a traveling lineman. For the last several months, he hasn’t had work. “This year’s been incredibly slow for storms. Which is good for the country, for business owners…” Joe said before trailing off. For now, he maintains the farm’s heavy equipment and buildings, sometimes handling favors for neighbors, but he never milks the cows.
This week Katie and Joe decided he would go to California at the end of the week to be on standing call for the winter season. With less than a week of the remaining year left together, she and Joe prepare the farm for his absence. “We’re used to him leaving for a month or so at a time,” she said. “But when you rely on Mother Nature, your pager is always on.”
Katie Schengbier, 40, drinks a cup of coffee with raw milk and honey while a cow is milked at the Leaning Oaks Farm in Union. This is her first year using a milking pipeline on the dairy farm. “Cow comfort is very important,” she said. “A comfortable cow will produce more milk.”
Milk mixes with dirt and manure inside the milking barn. “The whole white picket fence with a cow grazing on lush pastures, that’s something commercial farms have sold. That’s a lie,” Katie said. “In reality, you see it everyday, milking a cow is nothing to romanticize. It’s dirty work.”
Katie feeds cows on the Leaning Oaks Farm. Katie has wanted a dairy cow since she was 8 years old. “Your life evolves around what your cows need every day,” she said. “We do care more than people think we do.”
Katie separates milk from cream into buckets and jars.
Katie reviews pre-order sales for raw milk, meats and other products ahead of a delivery run. Raw milk is legal to sell in Missouri, but it must be sold either off the farm or directly to the consumer.
Katie tallies raw milk and other product sales. “I have not gotten a paycheck yet, but the farm pays for itself,” she said.
Katie talks with her husband, Joe Schengbier, 42, while looking for apple butter equipment at Joe’s childhood home in Leslie, Mo.
Katie and Joe unroll a bale of hay at the farm. Katie said she and her husband depend on Mother Nature for income: “It’s a volatile way to budget.”
Katie and Joe drive to lunch in New Haven, Mo. “No way I could have done it without him helping,” Katie said. “He does all the equipment, the buildings, the maintenance. There’s no farm out there that can survive without all that.”
Katie laughs with her daughters, Lena, 17, and Virginia, 12, and her niece, Harper, 12, in the Schengbier home as they prepare to start their day.
The Schengbier family eats breakfast in their home.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse