By Joe Kertzman, managing editor, Badger Common’Tater
Raised on a potato farm in Antigo, Wisconsin, Sam Ourada had his sights set on something else—he was going to be a soil scientist or chemist. As Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote in his 1786 poem “To a Mouse,” “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
Sam’s plans didn’t really go awry when he left his father’s farm to attend college at UW-Stevens Point. First, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in soil science and chemistry with a minor in resource management, and then business opportunities presented themselves.
Sam’s father and brother, Ken Ourada Sr. and Ken Jr., owned Lucky Devil Farms in Antigo. “I really wasn’t into farming when I was a kid. I was going to college to get a real job,” Sam says. “I liked grading potatoes and helping ship them with my father and brother, Ken Jr., but other than that, I would have rather been fishing.”
Now, as a partner in Wisconsin Central Farms, Inc. of Nekoosa, and owner of a vacation home on Petenwell Lake, Sam can do both—grow potatoes and go fishing.
