VOLUME 33, NUMBER 5 / MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2017

Child care
on the farm
Colby’s Corner Daycare
is a breath of farm air
PAGE 12

Wahpeton sweet corn donated

to Hurricane Harvey victims
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Page 12 Monday, September 4, 2017 / AGWEEK
Working farmstead offers kids rural second home
By Mikkel Pates
Agweek Staff Writer
MILNOR, N.D. — Rose and Dave
Colby raise a range of crops on
their farm. Their favorite crop is
kids — happy, rural kids.
Rose manages Colby’s Corner
Daycare, a child care facility that
has literally taken over the old
farm house on the farmstead
where Dave grew up, a few miles
west of Milnor, N.D. The rest of
the site remains a working farm,
across the section from where the
couple has a separate farmstead.
The Colbys started a child care
nine years ago and in July 2013
expanded it to a “group 30”
license, indicating the number of
children they can accommodate.
Great outdoors
Rose works with the preschool
with a team of four other teach-
ers, including her daughter Katie
Prante, of Milnor, the assistant
director, and Rose’s sister, Sandy
Clayes, of Hecla, S.D., who runs
the toddler room.
COVER STORY
Much of the children’s time
is spent outdoors, in a large,
fenced yard.
“It’s so good for the kids to
be on the farm,” says Rose, who
juggles the enterprise with farm-
ing tasks.“You’ve got the country
feel. We can learn agriculture.
We can see ducks on the pond.
Sometimes deer come through.
It’s just more of a learning expe-
rience out on the farm.”
The Colbys offer children an
unusual setting that emphasiz-
es outdoor experiences and a
celebration and insight into the
farming background that most
of the children share. Some-
times the setting means bring-
ing a newborn calf in from the
barn in the wintertime, rubbing
shoulders with a peacock or goat
or studying crickets. Ag-related
activities include gardening or a
visit from a veterinarian.
Growing need
Colby’s Corner is a partner in
Bright & Early North Dakota,
which is North Dakota’s child care
Photos by Mikkel Pates / AgWeek
COVER: Farm products like corn become art projects at Colby’s Corner
Daycare at Milnor, N.D.
Many of the play and learning areas in the Colby’s Corner Daycare near
Milnor, N.D., involve farm toys and grains like wheat and corn, produced
on the farm.
quality rating system. Verla Jung
of Jamestown, N.D., is a commu-
nity engagement services coor-
dinator for Child Care Aware, a
program that promotes child care
professionalism. Both are pro-
grams of Lutheran Social Services
of North Dakota.
Jung says child care capacity is
a big need in rural North Dako-
ta. Milnor is in Sargent County,
where only 33 percent of theoret-
ical child care needs are covered
by licensed providers like the Col-
bys. The county has 583 children
under age 12 who could poten-
tially need care but has only 158
licensed slots. Colby’s Corner has
waiting list of a half dozen or so.
Colby’s Corner is notable, Jung
says, in the extent to which it
integrates nature into the child
care program on a daily basis —
both inside and outside.
“Children can be seen painting
trees, observing the many animals Dave and Rose Colby, of Milnor, N.D., spend their
and playing outside in many inter- day farming and working in the Colby’s Corner
est areas,” the organization says. Daycare on Dave’s home place. They spend their
evenings caring for quarter horses, cattle, goats and
DAYCARE: Page 13 sheep on their nearby farm home.

DAYCARE
From Page 12
Always kids
Dave’s parents, Don and Syl-
via Colby, had five children on
the farmstead. Dave was second
to the youngest raised on a farm
known for its Grade A dairy. Three
of Dave’s siblings and nieces and
nephews still farm separately in
the area. When Dave was 19 he
established his own farmstead
about a mile across the pasture to
the east, where he trained quarter
horses and raised crops.
Don and Sylvia moved to Fargo
in 2007. Don died in died in 2008.
Before Sylvia died in 2014, she
encouraged Rose’s plan to convert
her old farm home into a child
care facility.
“She knew I loved kids, and she
didn’t want to see the house be
empty,” Rose says.
Rose grew up on a horse farm
near Plummer, Minn., and has
done child care since she was 13.
Dave and Rose met through horse
events and were married in 2008.
Together they have four daughters
from previous marriages.
Initially, Rose convinced her sis-
ter, Sandy, to come from Minneso-
ta to manage the child care facility.
Rose helped, but she and Dave
focused on the farm that raises
corn, wheat, soybeans, rye, peas,
oats and alfalfa. They also have
some cow-calf pairs and a small
feedlot and raise quarter horses.
But four years ago when Sandy
COVER STORY
married Mark Clayes, the two sis-
ters switched roles. “(Sandy) went
more to farming and I went to
the daycare plus farming, and all
of the above,” Rose says. Later,
Sandy returned to the daycare
full-time as a teacher.
Rose enjoys juggling the two
roles. On the farm she drives grain
carts for harvest and fills seed-
ers during planting. She throws
square straw bales and hay this
time of year.
Rose gives a tour of the con-
verted farm home — the two-stall
garage is converted to a class-
room, with a screened-in door
for a front-row view of the farm-
stead. A front room is a makeshift
library. Some of the changes are
“redneck,” as Rose is happy to
describe them.
Loving it
Rural farm and manufacturing
parents say they love the Colby’s
Corner program setting and staff.
Emeric Erickson, 31, is a grain
farmer at Milnor. He brings sons
Oliver, 3, and Theodore, 1, to Col-
by’s Child Care. His wife, Casey,
works throughout the day as a
telecommuter to the Twin Cities.
“They don’t shy away from
talking about tractors and com-
bines and making it very person-
able with them,” Erickson says.
“It’s almost like an extension of a
4-H club or something.”
Colby’s Corner is open from 5:30
a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with some com-
ing on school buses after school.
That’s been a good fit for workers
at Bobcat Company, where they
AGWEEK / Monday, September 4, 2017 Page 13
Top-left: An attached garage has become a
make world-famous skid-steer
loaders. Jason Kottke, who works classroom, complete with a garage door screen
in the service department for Bob- that provides fresh air and an up-close view of
cat, says his older children are too happenings on the grain farm.
old for Colby’s Corner, but son Top-right: Emeric Erickson, 31, operates a grain
Adam, 3, is at the perfect age. farm and brings Oliver, 3, and Theodore, 1, to
“It’s nice that they’re out in the Colby’s Child Care, where he entrusts them to
country and get a lot of outside
Rose Colby and her staff. Child care helps him and
time,” Kottke says. “There’s farm
his wife, Casey, be more productive in their careers
equipment around, and sometimes
they can go tour some of that.”
and the kids get an ag-friendly experience akin to a
Natalia Heitkamp of Wyndmere, 4-H preschool.
N.D., an assembler at Bobcat, says
she loves how her kids, Marley
and Easton, love Colby’s Corner.
“Anytime Poppa Dave pulls up
on the tractor, she’s just excited,”
Heitkamp says, adding it’s “just
another day at home.”
Day by day
It’s reactions like that that keep
Rose going.
Sure, there are health and safety
inspections to grapple with, and
pondering how to replace a roof
or repair the house. The money is
secondary, and that comes “one
day a time, just like the farm.”
“It’s more for the heart,” she
says, of her motive. “You work
morning to nights, sometimes
skipping fun things to come here,
to work and prepare for Monday.”
It’s all worth it because of the
human development and connect-
ing kids to the farm. She remem-
bers one particular 5-year-old
who cried when he had to go
to kindergarten.
“He told his parents he’d rath-
er be at Rosie’s. He wanted to Rose Colby says her mother-in-law encouraged
do farming,” she says. And then her to start a child care in the home that the
she smiles. in-laws occupied from 1946 to 2007.