Willow Leaves, May 17

Fountain Celebration Set The Dairy Capital Fountain will be turned on right on schedule on Memorial Day, Monday, May 31 at noon. The annual fountain celebration will begin at 11:30 with a speech by town manager Roy Johnson. The Roann Jr. High School band will play for the festivities. Following the first spray and the National Anthem, a day of festivities is planned centering around dairy square. The activities include a barbecue sponsored by the Grange. Angus Fergusson will serve milk from the back of his big dairy wagon. And there is an all-community garage sale slated for the afternoon. Of course, it's sidewalk days for all the local businesses along Main Street as Willow Mills moves outside for the summer. At 7:00 p.m. the annual Fountain Dance will begin. It will last until 10:00 p.m. and features the live entertainment of the Pawns of Injustice. The Pawns are a group of five area young people who have gained local and statewide recognition for their innovative sound. If you’ve ever passed the firehouse on Friday nights when they practice, you know what we mean by innovative. Finally, at 10:00 p.m. there will be the annual fountain plunge. This tradition of nearly thirty years is a highlight of the Willow Mills year. We remind people that you are encouraged to wear appropriate swimming attire for the fountain plunge. We don’t want a repeat of what happened last year when the Plummers who were new in town mistook the plunge for a skinny dip. Just a reminder: Main Street will be closed from 10:00 a.m. on Monday.
Vacation Plans Everett and Althea Thompson have announced their plans to drive to the Grand Canyon for a two-week vacation this summer. They will be driving the Caravan and camping along the way. All six kids are planning to make the trip with them. Althea has promised the Women’s Auxiliary a detailed slide show upon their return. The trip is slated for late July, but the kids are reported to already be arguing about who gets what seat and who gets to drive.	Planning for that Memorial Day Garage Sale? Special 3-line announcement ad just $3.95. Order today!

Dairy Capitol of the Midwest

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the drive to dub Willow Mills the “Dairy Capital of the Midwest” was spearheaded by Drew Fergusson. It had it’s origins in the short battle between Drew and his brother Hayden just after World War II.

Willow Mills was platted with an intentionally large square at its center in which was a water trough for teams and cattle driven into town in the late 1800s. By World War II there had been over a dozen different proposals that came before the town council about what to do with the unsightly waterhole in the middle of town.

There was quite a move on to build a war memorial on the site as was being done in so many towns. But there were less than a score of young men from Willow Mills who fought in World War II, and by some miracle all but one came home alive. Not that the town was ungrateful, but there simply weren’t enough bereaved parents in town to motivate funding a war memorial.

That was when Hayden Fergusson announced his prophecy that the whole area would be beef cattle before his son Angus inherited. Drew rallied the Dairymen’s Association, and among them they called on the civic pride of Willow Mills’ dwindling population to declare the town “The Dairy Capitol of the Midwest.” They raised the astonishing sum of $10,000 to have the giant stainless steel milk can erected in the middle of the watering trough.

It’s fountainhead spills water out over the lip of the milk can 24 hours a day from Memorial Day till Halloween. The fountain is dried out during the freezing months of winter.

For all their effort and civic pride, over half the members of the Dairymen’s Association had sold out or converted to beef cattle within ten years after the statue was dedicated in 1952. By the time Angus Fergusson inherited the remaining shares of Fergusson Dairy from his uncle in 1989, his was the only dairy farm within ten miles of Willow Mills.

But the fountain still spills its liquid tribute to milk five months of the year, and will as long as there is a Fergusson in the County.

Welcome to Fergusson Dairy Farms

So how is it that the owner of the biggest dairy herd in this part of the county is named after the area’s principle beef stock? Well it started back a generation ago.

Art Fergusson retired from the business in 1937 leaving the family homestead to his two sons Drew and Hayden. Drew was the oldest by a good ten years, but Hayden was a savvy young farmer with a good sense of the future. He exhibited that sense by seeing that there was a war coming and joining up before the draft as an officer candidate. He left his brother to run the family business in his absence. There was a clear understanding between the brothers that Drew would get a controlling interest in the dairy operation in return for staying home and managing the operation on behalf of both brothers.

Hayden came home from the war in 1945 a changed man with new ideas and the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army. He married his high school sweetheart, Doris Bechtold. He was ready to change the business. Beef was going to be more lucrative than dairy, he told his brother. It would take just two years to convert the operation completely. The family homestead would support two-and-a-half times the number of beef cattle that it did dairy cows. The heavy labor cost of dairy cattle limited the size of the herd a farmer could handle.

To make a long story short, Drew refused to go along with the plan. Since he held the controlling interest, his decision to stay with dairy cattle held.

Hayden realized he was beaten, but was unwilling to give up his stake in the family business to make his point. So he built a small house on the north corner of the family property. He got his wife pregnant and at his son’s birth he announced that Fergusson Dairy would be the last dairy farm left in the county before his brother would see the sense of it. And to mark his prohphecy, his son’s name would be Angus, and that would be the only kind of cattle people were interested in by the time his son inherited.

Then he announced that he had rejoined the army and had his rank as Captain restored. Angus was ten years old when his father, Major Hayden Fergusson was killed as one of the last casualties of the Korean conflict.

Drew never married and treated Angus like his own son, making sure he got a college education at Purdue University. And when Angus inherited the entirety of the Fergusson homestead in 1989, it was the last dairy within 10 miles of Willow Mills. He sold off 80 acres of the homestead, along with the family home his uncle had occupied till his death.

But instead of converting the operation to beef, Angus modernized and doubled the dairy operation almost overnight. What neither his father nor his uncle could realize was that having the only dairy in operation, it would also be the most profitable if managed correctly. And Angus has done just that since his 30th birthday in 1977.