Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

2025 Suffolk Gathering

by Joe Mischka T he North American Suffolk Association held their annual Gathering event in mid October at the farm of Brian and Doreen Berndt-Paral in Hartford, Wis. The association held their annual meeting Saturday night, October 11, and spent the rest of the weekend talking and working Suffolk horses. The Berndt-Paral farm is a medium-sized dairy operation, milking 650 cows on average. The farm is no-till — using cover crops for weed suppression.

Attendees at the Gathering watched horses plow with sulky, gang and walking plows, break up clods with a cultimulcher, dig potatoes and work in the round pen. A highlight, at least for me, was watching a potato digger brought by Joe Cervenka, who had recently restored it. Michelle Pinney Burgmeier volunteered to hook her horses to the machine, and we marveled at what a good job it did in plucking out the spuds with little damage. This model spins a wheel almost parallel to the ground. Others run perpendicular.

Andrew Nidy shows his son how to pull a cultimulcher with a Suffolk team owned by Andrew and his wife, Jennifer.

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