“I have to take full responsibility for that,” Julie Case says of the fact that in 2015, their family had 15 ewes, and now they have a flock of 175 sheep. You see, becoming a full-time sheep farmer was never the plan, but farming runs in the family, and it has become a way of life. As the President of the Iowa-Grant WFU Chapter, Julie is now sharing this passion with others in the area, and advocating for needed change. On a hot July Sunday afternoon at the farm, while she repaired fencing and bridges, I learned her story.
Julie’s grandparents farmed, and she grew up on her parent’s beef farm in Ontario, WI. Her Dad was the Agriculture Teacher and FFA Advisor at Brookwood High School. Julie was very active in FFA growing up, and served as the Section 3 Sentinel State Officer after high school, before she went to UW-Madison for Agriculture Journalism. At age seventeen, she was Miss WI Angus Princess at the WI State Fair. It was there she met her husband, Krome, who sang in the State FFA Choir.
Years later, Julie and Krome married and lived in Madison where she worked for Madison schools, advocating for children in poverty and with disabilities. They had always said that they wanted to raise their kids in a rural community, and in 2010, when their eldest child was about to enter kindergarten, they decided to make the move and ended up on 47 acres in Avoca, WI. This was the beginning of Straight Forward Farm.
Pigs, chickens, sheep, geese, ducks… they tried it all, and “everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Julie reflected about early years on the farm. They learned quickly and strove to balance childcare, farmwork, and off-farm employment. In 2015, because of the Affordable Care Act and Marketplace, Julie was able to quit her off-farm job. The plan was for her to work in her studio. As fate would have it, lambing season was starting and Julie offered to check on the 15 ewes that were about to lamb. She started hanging out in the barn instead of her studio, and never really left. Each year she added more sheep and took on more responsibility for their care. They eventually pared down all the other farm operations and focused solely on their flock of now 175 sheep. These days, you are hard pressed to find Julie off the farm.
Luckily, her daughter wanted to attend Kamp Kenwood in 2022, which began Julie’s relationship with Wisconsin Farmers Union. Krome’s brother, Max, used to attend and serve as a counselor at Wisconsin Farmers Union Youth Camp at Kamp Kenwood, and had regularly encouraged the family to get involved. After sending their daughter to camp, the family started receiving regular communications from the state office. One of those emails included information about the WFU Emerging Leaders Program. Knowing Julie’s leadership gifts, the family encouraged her to leave the farm to attend the program in 2023. The cohort that year happened to contain other women sheep farmers from across the state, which was an appreciated coincidence for Julie. She found it to be “a very engaging group,” and was excited that they were “proactive instead of reactive,” looking ahead to improve our food system.
Upon her return to the farm, with some additional encouragement from the family, she decided to run for president of the Iowa-Grant WFU chapter in 2023, and was elected. Julie is passionate about supporting mid-career farmers, making federal programs and grants more accessible to farmers, and farmer mental health. She sees the years after starting a farm as some of the most challenging, lacking resources beyond “101” trainings, and believes we need more programs and opportunities to support this “middle” phase of farming. She also sees a need for grant writing support for farmers so that they can access funding resources, especially through the USDA. For Julie, the lifestyle of farming has been very positive for her mental health, and she wants to ensure that this lifestyle can be maintained physically, emotionally, and financially. She also knows that isolation in rural communities is a huge challenge, and hopes that chapter gatherings are one way to build more connection among neighbors.
As a relatively new member, Julie says, “She still has a ton to learn about WFU and what we do, but every time that she asks a question, she appreciates everyone’s willingness to respond.” It encourages her that “if there isn’t an answer, folks say, ‘I don’t know, but I will find the answer.’”
