Dateline: Plainview, MN , pop. 3408,
The Heart of the Greenwood Prairie
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Country Breakfast on the Farm
Location: Little Valley Dairy
Donny & Holly Thompson, owners
Rochester is in the rear view mirror as we drift eastward through bucolic Olmsted County, a county without a lake, not a single one, in a state with the motto: Land of 10,000 Lakes. Planning to neither fish nor swim today, as investigative journalists our objective is a 5 dollar pancake, cheese, sausage breakfast, on a “reported” dairy farm, with “supposedly” 182 Holsteins☀, 1 crossbred, and 1 Brown Swiss who are “speculated” to produce 27,000 pounds of milk a year.
This is an obvious undercover scam, because we all know milk comes from a refrigerated wall at Trader Joe’s®, produced in plastic milk cartons, free of rBST, @ $1.99/half gallon, between the 2% Greek yogurt to the left and the organic brown eggs on the right.
However, we arrive at the Little Valley Dairy on CR 10 NE, nearly 4 miles south of Plainview, along with 100’s of families who have been duped by this sign:
Time: 6:30 am – 11:30 a.m.
Details: Enjoy a pancake breakfast.
Sponsor: Rochester Ag Committee, Olmsted County Farm Bureau Federation
Do these people look like someone you might trust ?
Tents, tables, vintage tractors, modern combines, milk parlor, barns, hay, more hay, cows, more cows, and celebrities;
“Victor”, the suspicious official mascot of the Minnesota Vikings attempting a ‘field goal’. Behind the facade of this uniform, the now retired Brett Favre, who, has at last found a real job. He still knows how to make a “pass”.
L- Mutant corn on the cob; R-Undercover agent
Donny Thompson in profile, Hollywood material for “Survivor-Dairy Farm”, a series coming to you soon
In spite of all the misconception, the people watching and the breakfast were both delicious. Armed with a full tummy we learned that:
and except for a Dairy Queen, no one can consume 7 gallons of ice cream in a single day.
The sights, sounds, and the aroma combine to make this the most memorable Saturday morning ever.
Thank heavens for holsteins, John Deere, and little girls
¤Holstein- a black and white milk producing hybrid between a buffalo and a dalmatian, with four, very large, ice cream dispensers.
We came away, convinced, that the photo below is true, that milk subsidies are essential, calcium builds strong bones, and running a 970 acre dairy farm is fun, demanding, and at times, very dangerous, and the debt we owe Donny and Holly Thompson defies translation into words.
p.s. These two “tired” imps tried to convince this investigator that hamburger comes from feeder cattle and NOT McDonald’s, so I am off on a new assignment:
ooo❍❍❍OOO are you really Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC ???