Meet Ed Janus at our Wisconsin Cheese Tasting at Zingerman’s Events on Fourth on December 8th!
Find out more information and how to register here!

Tell us a bit about you. You didn’t grow up in dairy farming!

I was born in Washington, D.C. in a Jewish family that had moved there from Chicago, my father was a federal attorney in the New Deal era, and went on to become a Federal judge. Food’s been in my family for a long time. One of my grandfather’s owned the fanciest restaurant in St. Louis. It was called Bennish’s. My mother was a wonderful cook.

I studied anthropology. After I graduated I went to work with Dr. King in Chicago. I was involved with doing welfare organizing—trying to help women who were not getting a fair shake from the welfare administration get what they should have had coming to them. Skipping ahead a few years I ended up coming to Madison to be part of spiritual movement here. The group owned a farm and that’s when I first got into dairying. It was beautiful. The idea was basically local food for this restaurant that we were running in town. We had a 30-cow herd which was typical size then. We did all the crop work ourselves. I loved it! It was during the Nixon impeachment hearings. We used play them on the radio while we were milking. I’m not sure if that raised or lowered the milk yields. Financially it was very difficult though so I ended up leaving.

What came next?

Well, I went to start a minor league baseball team. The Madison Muskies. And then I started one of the first micro breweries—Capital Brewery in Madison. This was long before everyone was doing it they way they are now. The last 20 years or so I’ve been doing radio shows for NPR, particularly on education. And doing more and more work with Wisconsin dairy farmers.

How’s the history in Wisconsin different than it is in other dairy producing states?

More than anything I think the key is to understand that Wisconsin dairying was really the triumph of an idea. It’s one that we now take as commonplace, but one that is so deeply woven into Wisconsin’s image and history. It was “Progressivism,” with a capital “P.” Progressivism really came out of the enlightenment. It was about figuring how to help farmers work smarter. Basically it was about teaching them how to do modern industry so that they could make a living. The idea, the themes, of this “Progressive” song can still be heard today in Wisconsin dairying.

It really came out of the Enlightenment. People really believed in what they were doing. They preached the gospel of the cow. Historically, the Europeans had continued to move west and in the process, they kept ruining the land. And then they’d just move west again. They got to Wisconsin and they ruined the land here with wheat and speculation. But these guys from NY came and they wanted a way for farmers to stay on the land. A way to make them successful. Not overnight success. They wanted to enrich the soil. They talked about this great conservation ethic. Saving the land. They were almost like missionaries in preaching for their cause. But a lot of people came to believe it and make the idea real. That’s what our dairy farmers have done.

The Progressive model has becomes part of their character. If it weren’t for Wisconsin’s dairy farmers and cheesemakers we would never have this amazing landscape. The cows have done a lot more for our state than the politicians. The idea of Progressivism really elevated farmers to be the equal of city people. Before that farmers were basically nothing.

I loved the book. What did you like best about writing it?

I loved the act of writing it! Because I was able to, forgive the hyperbole, uncover the “mind” of history. By writing the book I was able to “read” the marvelous thinking that shaped the world of today and I am now able to see the unseen as it appears in our barns, fields, and kitchen tables. I now like to say that I hope my readers too will be able to read this mind and enjoy its intelligence as I was able to do by writing “Creating Dairyland.”

What are a few of your favorite stories from the book?

Here is just one which, alas didn’t actually make it into the book but into my heart.

I spent the day with two elderly bachelor Norwegian brothers (I did feel a bit like I was channeling Garrison Keillor) in a place called Coon Valley. I went because the brothers had witnessed the first federal soil conversation project but I came away with something valuable. To wit:

I was walking around with Ernest (he is the brother who speaks while his brother Joseph is the brother who speaks not.) As we walked Ernest confessed what he described as his deepest regret, his shame, the thing he feels most badly about. He told me that when the brothers were selling their herd as they prepared to retire, their oldest cow had somehow found a way to hide from the buyers (and the butcher). But Ernest noticed and went to find her to return her to the herd, and she was sold with the rest of them.

Afterwards he was deeply ashamed; ashamed I think because he had chosen money over his human connection to a dependent being that had faithfully served him and deserved better from him.

As we walked around his place we passed the barnyard where there was a small herd of beef cows. And there in the midst was one dairy cow. One dairy cow! He pointed her out and told me she was a pet; “I just like to see here there.” I like to think this was repentance for his sin of not taking care of someone who needed him. His violation of one of dairying’s important moral injunctions.

In the book I talk quite a bit about the intimate relationship between dairyman and cow and the injunction to care for “that which takes care of you.” Ernest Haugen showed me the true face of Wisconsin dairying. That’s why I dedicated my book to him.