Back in the 1960s, I used to spend some of my summer days out in Dousman, Wisconsin — in western Waukesha County — on my grandfather’s dairy farm. While my grandfather was an old-fashioned  family doctor, he still kept the farm alive by hiring a foreman to run the farm on a day-to-day basis and hired local help like a local named Gus Max — it seemed he partied hard at night and worked equally hard during the day. We would help gather the hay and stack the bundles in the super hot hay loft and enjoy a cold beer at the end of the day even though we were underage because we had carried our weight like men.

Those days are gone now with the small dairy farms being eaten up by corporate-style farms. Locals like Gus Max have migrated to the cities and in their place, it is immigrant labor — many of them undocumented who have taken their place, following in the footsteps of my own ancestors.

Back in the 1840s, my ancestors in Bavaria, Germany were approached by U.S. representatives to come to Wisconsin with the promise of land. In Germany, it was only the oldest son who inherited the family farm. So they emigrated to Wisconsin in 1847 where they had the opportunity to own and work their own farms in Dousman.