"I've always had a dream of having a well-bred herd of cows, with a good reputation, and having a farm that was a show place," Carncross says. "I realized that it's hard to find the money to get there on your own."
And so he came home to his dad's farm to find his dream. His father, Gordon '70, MS'71, graduated with degrees in dairy science and came home to farm with his father, Warren. The farm's name, Wargo Acres, comes from their first names.
"When my dad came home from school, he made some big changes," Craig says. Gordon got rid of the pigs, and, more importantly, upgraded the herd so it now includes only registered Holsteins. Today, in addition to selling milk, the Carncross family sells young stock, earning a good price for each heifer based on genetics and a reputation for quality.
The Carncrosses recently joined a new group of dairy farmers that has purchased a cheese plant and started Chippewa Valley Cheese. The group markets its own premium cheeses, with the goal of paying the fifty member-farmers a price of $15 per hundred pounds of milk. With traditional plants paying as little as $9 in recent years, the price sounded good.