Join us this August First Friday for a signing with author, Corey Geiger. Corey will be available here at Yardstick from 5-8pm to chat and sign copies of his latest book, THE WISCONSIN FARM THEY BUILT--TALES OF FAMILY & FORTITUDE. The event is free and open to the public.
Known to friends as the “Dancing Dairyman,” Corey Geiger danced his way onto Steve Harvey’s Family Feud television show, Texas Two-Stepped on the colored shavings during the Supreme Champion ceremonies in front of a crowd of 4,500 at World Dairy Expo and competed at the Fred Astaire Cross Country Dance Competition national finals, where he and his wife, Krista Knigge, won top amateur couple honors in their division.
Krista and her family’s dairy farm hosted The Bachelor, NFL Films and CBS Sports, all of which aired on national television. Corey and Krista own cows at this family farm business.
In 1995, this University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate joined the Hoard’s Dairyman editorial team and its publishing footprint dating back to 1870. In 2013, Geiger was tapped as the publication’s fifth lead editor. Five years later, he spearheaded the effort that brought Hoard’s Dairyman China to the marketplace, joining its English, Japanese and Spanish editions. Geiger was elected the sixty-fifth president of Holstein USA in 2019. He was co-editor of World Dairy Expo’s fiftieth anniversary book, We Need a Show, and served as fundraising co-chair for the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center, a $13.5 million educational facility. He has spoken in Canada, China, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and twenty U.S. states. He remains true to his farming roots, managing the cropland and facility maintenance on his family’s farm that dates back to 1867.
About THE WISCONSIN FARM THEY BUILT--TALES OF FAMILY & FORTITUDE: After his mother, Anna, was killed by a train, Elmer Pritzl was thrown into adulthood at the tender age of sixteen. A clever and crafty fellow, Elmer quickly found work at the local foundry. Promoted to foreman by age eighteen, he began supervising men double and even triple his age during the depths of the Great Depression. However, that professional career track ended abruptly five years later when Elmer fell in love with a farmer’s daughter, Julia Burich. Six months after their wedding, Julia’s father passed away, and with no living male relatives left in her life, Julia’s mother, Anna Burich, asked, “Elmer, will you run my farm?” So, Elmer, born a city boy, transformed his life and began a love affair with a Wisconsin family farm. Corey Geiger, international agricultural journalist, pairs his rural roots and lively storytelling talents to capture six generations of life in America’s Dairyland.
