When they were younger, Ivan Strickler offered just a couple of pieces of advice for each of his three sons, Steve, Tom and Doug.
First, they needed to get an education.
Second, they needed to try out a career away from the family’s storied dairy farm.
“If you want to come back to the farm, it might be here, and it might not,” Steve recalled his father telling them.
Sure enough, the farm remained, and while each of the brothers’ career paths diverged, each followed one key element.
All three opted to return to their hometown to establish their own families, and in turn, their own legacies in the community.
Now, the Stricklers have been tapped as farm marshals for the upcoming Farm-City Days celebration, alongside city marshals Bob and Ginny Hawk.
It’s a celebration all three have grown to appreciate.
For Doug, an early Farm-City Days Committee member, it offered exactly what the name entailed: an opportunity for city folk to learn about farm life, and for farmers to experience, at least a little, about life in town.
“It was a way for both groups to understand each other,” Doug explained.
Through the years, the celebration’s focus has shifted. Occasionally, the organizers will host a farm tour — Strickler’s Dairy was a popular spot for several years — but mostly, the celebration is a “homecoming” of sorts, Tom noted.
“A lot of class reunions are now planned around Farm-City Days,” Tom noted. “That has contributed to the celebration.”
STRICKLER DAIRY’S legacy took root, modestly enough, in 1939.
Elmer E. Strickler was looking to move his operation from Colony farther south to Allen County.
He found a plot of land on the northeast outskirts of Iola.
Truth be told, their grandfather had long carried a greater interest in horses than cows, Doug noted, “but he knew where the income came from.”
Elmer’s son Ivan wasn’t certain he wanted to be a part of the dairy.
