Blossom Queens Visit Shuler Dairy Farm on Tour
Published: Friday, May 22, 2026
Twenty-one community queens from the Miss Blossomtime Pageant learned about local agriculture last Saturday thanks to a tour organized by Farm Bureaus in Southwest Michigan.
Traveling by motor coach, the queens and four Mr. Blossomtime kings stopped at farms and agribusinesses in Berrien, Cass and Van Buren counties. At Shuler Dairy Farm in Baroda, they were greeted by Bill Shuler, who explained the history of his farm and then led them a tour of his robotic dairy. The visit ended with the royalty enjoying soft-serve ice cream from the Shulers' concession trailer.
Bill and his wife Carol, who served the ice cream, farm with their two sons, Billy and Wyatt, who both represent the fifth generation of Shulers to work on the dairy farm. The family regularly opens their 70-cow dairy for tours.
"In the last couple weekends, we've had guests from Spain and Denmark," Bill said. "Last fall, we had Switzerland, Belgium, Britain and Iceland, to name a few."
Bill's great-grandfather, Henry, purchased the farm in 1882, which means the Shuler family has been farming continuously for 144 years.
As the queens moved through the freestall barn, they observed the mature cows chewing their cuds.
"When a cow is chewing her cud, she is doing two things," Bill said. "She is making the particles of food smaller to be digested quicker, but she's also making saliva. She might make up to 47 gallons of saliva a day, and that saliva is going to help that cow like a Tums or Rolaids is going to help you."
On average, a cow will eat about 85 pounds of feed per day, along with about 30 to 40 gallons of water, according to Bill. The cow's body converts all that water and feed into nature's ultimate health food, milk.
The Shulers have both Holsteins and Jerseys in their milking herd. The cows are milked three times a day with the help of a robot that can identify each cow by scanning her ear tag. The milk is transported through stainless steel pipes to a 2,700-gallon bulk tank. A truck picks up the milk every other day and hauls it to a processing plant in Greenville, Mich.
Taylor Costanza of Sodus was selected as Miss Blossomtime, while Dom Lignell of St. Joseph won the title of Mr. Blossomtime. They both had a great time petting the cows, getting their fingers slimed and observing the robots at work.
"I learned that cows are very expensive," Lignell said. "I was kind of shocked. It's cool. I also learned that the tags—the machine knows all the cows. It reads when the last time they were milked and the last time they ate. I thought that was pretty fascinating."
Referring to the robots, Costanza said she was surprised to learn that each one costs $250,000.
"Like that's crazy," she said, adding that one robot costs as much as a house.
In addition to the dairy farm, the Blossom queens and kings visited GreenMark Equipment in Sodus, High Acres Fruit Farm in Hartford, Brookside Farms in Paw Paw, St. Julian Winery in Paw Paw, Fedore Veterinary Clinic in Cassopolis and Dussel Farm Market in Cassopolis. The trip began and ended at Silverstone Gardens in Watervliet.
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