Wagler Dairy ~story and photos by Paige Langenderfer
G
rowing up in a family with eight children meant everybody had a job. Kenny Wagler was not fond of his first childhood chore, the
dishes. “The two oldest brothers got to go out and work with dad on the farm,” Kenny said. “Dave, Dorothy, and me, got stuck with the dishes. And there were a lot of dishes. Three meals a day for 10 people makes a lot of dishes.” Luckily for Kenny, when he turned 10, he was promoted to taking care of the calves. “I made sure they were fed (bottles of milk) and had feed every morning and night,” he said. “And the older I got, the more I got to do with dad.” Kenny and his seven siblings grew up on the Wagler farm near Morgantown. The farm was founded in 1952 when Henry and Frances Wagler, moved from their Daviess County home in southern Indiana to help grow the Bean Blossom Mennonite Church. “Mom and Dad grew up Amish,” Kenny said. “They were married in the Mennonite Church and had a calling to help grow the church.”
16 Our Brown County • May/June 2022
Henry and Frances moved to Brown County and bought the original Wagler farmstead. They had 167 acres, 18 cows, 4 sows and a farrowing barn full of piglets. “We milked cows, raised pigs and sold eggs at the Morgantown hardware store,” Kenny said. “That’s where they bought the coal to heat our house too.” With so much work to do, the Wagler children were not allowed to participate in any extracurricular activities until their sophomore year of high school. “There was just too much work to be done,” Kenny said. After graduating from high school, Kenny said he was ready to look for opportunities away from the farm. “The older boys were working on the farm with dad and I went out and found a different job,” he said. “I went to work at a rock quarry in Brown County and found out that was harder work than working on the farm.” Kenny left the quarry for a job in Indianapolis with Detroit Diesel Allison as a machinist. While it didn’t turn out to be a lifetime career, he learned things he
