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John Oncken: Landmark silo gone, and perhaps its history, too

John Oncken  —  5/09/2008 10:09 am

It was surely a landmark standing tall on the hill off Lake Kegonsa Road southwest of Stoughton in Dane County.

Obviously it was a silo of some sort, but what kind?

Farm silos come in many kinds:

-- Historic wooden stave, most of which remain are barely standing if at all.

-- Tile and brick, never very popular, are on rare occasions seen still standing lonesome in a field next to where a barn was located decades ago.

-- Concrete in stave or poured varieties are plentiful all across dairyland. Many are standing next to empty dairy barns with silo filler pipes still attached although crooked, loose and swaying with the wind. Many are being used as forage storage for dairy herds in active dairy barns. New ones still are being built today as the dairy herd in the adjoining barn expands.

-- Blue Harvestores are easily visible as one travels rural Wisconsin. Although the A.O. Smith Company in Milwaukee, who invented the glass lined, steel, blue units in the late 1940s never wanted them to be called "silos," the public never caught on to the term "storage unit." So, silos they are. Under whatever name, they probably did more to advance dairy agriculture through better forage than any other single factor.

-- Then there were a few plain steel silos built in the 1930s and 40s, some of which are still standing and a very few still in use. Steel had a tendency to rust and corrode thus weren't built by the aggressive dairy farmer.

The tall, lonely steel structure standing in the town of Rutland didn't exactly fit into any normal silo category -- at least from a car view.

From close up, it was obviously a steel silo, a much larger structure than normal farm steel silos, other than Harvestores, tended to be.

From close-up, it became apparent that this strange steel silo was in its last minutes of life as two young men were busily cutting a slice around its base with a cutting torch.

Greg Dybevik, who lives in the house just up the slope from the silo, explained that his family had lived there for 20 years and the silo hadn't been used during that time. "There was a fancy barn here that burned down," Greg said. "This silo has been a landmark for a long time but my neighbor Jeff Wethel has been trying to convince us to let him take it down. We finally agreed to have him do it."

But the job was taking a bit longer that Wethal figured. His original thought was that it if he started cutting by 9:30 a.m., the silo would be down by noon. He was already seven hours into the task with the silo still solid as a rock.

Neither knew any of the history of the structure, but suggested that Sue Soldwedel Wollin and her brother Dave Soldwedel, who live on adjoining farms a couple of miles away, might know.

Sue and Dave were offspring of Henry Soldwedel, who during an illustrious career as a dairy processor and marketer put together some 3000 acres in the town of Rutland and named it Stoughton Farms. This was in the early 1960s.

Sue explained that her dad's family ran Del's Dairy in Pekin, Ill. In 1956 Henry and his family moved to Madison where he was manager of the Borden Dairy.

That's when he began buying farmland, first near Token Creek then in the Stoughton area.

Henry Soldwedel moved back to Chicago as president of Borden's, then with partners bought the Sidney Wanzer & Sons milk bottling plant which was later sold to Southland Dairy.

Stoughton Farms continued to grow as more land was purchased and it eventually became one of Wisconsin's biggest beef farms with some 800 Registered Angus cattle. Sue didn't remember the history of the silo, however.

Dave Soldwedel thinks the silo was built in 1973 or thereabouts.

"I know it was experimental," he says. "Harvestore storage units were sweeping the country at the time and dad bought this silo at a real good price from someone who was trying to compete with Harvestore."

"I think it was one of only a very few ever built," he continued. "I remember someone saying there was on in Ohio, another in Indiana and third in Illinois. But, I don't remember the name of the company that built it."

"I also remember that it was air tight, like a Harvestore, but it didn't have a breather bag, rather it had a breather valve on top and it worked pretty well." he said.

Nor does anyone else seem to know where this 65 foot tall, 20 foot in diameter, all steel structure came from. At least, a lengthy Internet search hasn't brought forth any information about a yellow steel silo sold in Wisconsin or anywhere.

Yes, the original color of this thing was yellow, a color that was -- to say the least -- unusual for a silo. Today, after years or standing alone, the silo was rust color with a few spots of yellowish tint visible.

By 5 p.m. Jeff Wethal had cut most all around the old silo and hitched up a tractor on the end of a long log chain and was ready to topple the structure. (Where did he get so much log chain -- a hundred feet or so? A good farmer never throws anything away, " Jeff said. "You might need it later.")

Needless to say, the silo didn't budge but the chain did break a couple times. So it was back to the cutting torch for Wethal.

Meanwhile Tom Dybevik, Greg's dad, got home from his real estate job, and joined spectator row on the back porch of his house.

"I'm afraid that when this silo is gone, the folks who use the Badfish Creek Wildlife Area down the hill will get lost, " Tom said. "This has been a good landmark."

He was referring to the 1260 acre area that Soldwedel had sold to the Department of Natural Resources back in the 1970s. The wetlands area is marshy and is used for hunting, trapping, hiking and wildlife watching. Once farmland, the area is now overgrown and one could indeed get lost if not careful.

Over the years Stoughton Farms shrunk in size as the Badfish Creek area and farms were sold off. The prize Angus herd has shrunk to a few head maintained by Dave and Sue.

The farm where the silo is located was sold in 1979; the barn burned somewhat mysteriously some years later.

At 7:10 p.m. Jeff Wethal had cut through all the steel at the base of the rusty silo and gave the word to a friend, who had arrived on the scene, to fire up the tractor and give it a pull.

Lo and behold, the structure gently fell to the ground, right where Jeff had planned. "I had my doubts for awhile, " he said. "But I did it, finally.

The only thing remaining is to cut the estimated 11,200 pounds of steel into loadable pieces and if the time it took to cut around the silo base is any indication, there's lots of work ahead.

So a landmark is gone. Life goes on. But the question remains, what is the real history of this curious, very rare silo that is now and forever gone?

Surely, someone, somewhere knows. But who?

John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 608-222-0624.

John Oncken  —  5/09/2008 10:09 am