They dated three years and were married on May 21st, 1960, at the St. Victoria Catholic Church.  "I was only home one year after graduation and then I got married," said Darlene.  "He robbed the cradle."  After a honeymoon trip to the North Shore and Duluth, they returned to Victoria and moved in with Darlene's parents and brother.
Wilbert, who was still working construction, now began helping the Kruegers with farm work.  "We always worked together," said Darlene.  "I drove tractor, did the field work, baled hay, raked a lot of hay, cultivated corn.  A lot of the time my mother would take care of the kids for us.  We had a bedroom upstairs and that's all we needed."
"In 1962 I took over her dad's farm and dairy farmed with 34 cows," said Wilbert.  Why 34?  "Because that was the number of stalls in the barn," he replied.  "It was a normal amount of cows for that time.  Today it would be considered small."
Wilbert said that, at first, in the early dairy years, all the milk went into 10-gallon milk cans that were placed in a farm cooler and picked up every day by a milk truck. 
"Then, about 1965, we put in a bulk tank with a coolant around it for all the milk," said Wilbert.  "We didn't have to lift any more cans because the milk trucker pumped the milk out every second day.  In the early '80's we put in a pipe-line milking system, and the milk went directly from the cows to the bulk tank."
"Later on we added beef cattle," he said.  "When we got two balers, the work got a lot easier, especially because of the 800-pound bales.  We could set them out and only check them every two to three days, but we still fed the corn silage every day."
The 134-acre farm wasn't quite large enough to meet the needs of the dairy herd and beef cattle so they rented Art and Catherine Diethelm's farm in Victoria "for the hay" and a neighbor's farm "for corn and alfalfa."
As their four children grew up, it became obvious that farming would not continue into another generation.  None of their kids were to carry on the tradition.  As with many other young adults across the nation, they wanted to try other avenues.
Today, daughter Mary Roettger is a Deduction Specialist for a Jennie-O Turkey Store.  She and children Alyssa, 17, and Kayla, 14, live at Barron, Wisconsin, which is about 125 miles from Victoria.
Daughter Carol Carlson is an accountant for a Bumper to Bumper shop where her husband Steve also works.  Their children are Beth, 14, and Jake, 10; they live in Carver.
Son Bob is a foreman for Machtemes Construction.  Wife Stacy is a first grade teacher at Bluff Creek Elementary.  They have two children, Kelsey, 9, and Olivia, 1, and live in Waconia.
Daughter Donna Amoe is a Health Unit Coordinator for Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia.  Husband John is a cabinet maker for J.D. Woodworking in Chanhassen.  Their children are Amanda, 9, and Tayler, 4; they live in St. Boni.

Together they had worked the land during all of their growing up years so, as might be expected, selling the farm wasn't easy.  But it became final in November of 2001 when Hartman Communities, a Victoria developer, became the new owner. 
Did the Storm of '98 have anything to do with the Kelzers coming of age and deciding to sell?  "Yes, it did," admitted Wilbert.  "When the big sheds went down in that storm, that did it."
It was May 15th, 1998, when tornadic winds damaged and destroyed several areas of the Victoria landscape, requiring city-wide cleanup and cooperation.  Its devastation was reported and photo-graphed extensively in the June, 1998, issue of the Gazette -- exactly five years ago.  When the Kelzer sheds were destroyed, Wilbert and Darlene didn't feel like rebuilding.  That, and some health problems since corrected, signaled a time to start listening to the buyers at their door.
Watching the farm site being demolished on purpose was as difficult as watching them be destroyed by Mother Nature.  "My dad had bought the farm in 1938 from the Rother family," said Darlene, "and I can remember the barn being built.  I was seven years old."  Carpenters on the barn were all Victoria men:  Hank, Frank, and Eugene Diethelm, Marvin Strauss, Calvin Robling, Ray Schmieg, Tony Aretz, and a lot of neighbors came to help.
The floor of the barn was made with timber from an old wood silo and it appeared, even to the present day, to be in good condition, but when the Kelzer kids tried to salvage the thick beautiful wood, it splintered as the large and long nails were pried out of it.
"It was the worst for me to see the barn go down," said Wilbert.  "It was a real nice barn yet.  They also took down the chicken barn, the silo, two other machine sheds ... and a couple buildings got moved."
As Darlene watched the giant claw of the backhoe rip into her old house, memories from each room flashed before her eyes.  She saw her babies again.  She saw herself as a youngster.  She saw her parents.
Stated Wilbert, "I always said we'd live on Darlene's home place.  We wouldn't sell nothing until we had the rights to the best lot."  And so the Kelzers are now residing on the best lot in Water-mark.  They moved into their new home on March 14th, 2003.
"The old house had stood up real good," said Darlene.  "It had a rock wall basement and it was strong.  I remember when it had a dirt floor and we later put in cement ... but I was ready for a new house."
"I just love it here," said Wilbert of the best lot in Watermark.  "I saw deer walking on the ice this winter as the house was getting done.  We've got lots of birds ... cardinals, Baltimore orioles, finches ... pheasants ..."  Just then another flock of honking geese flew over their house head-ing down to the lake in the near distance.
"That lake doesn't have a real name," he said.  "We've always called it Little Lake.  The one you see in back of it is Krey Lake.  They've got fish, all kinds of fish.  There's a stream that connects all these lakes to Lake Minnetonka so they're pretty fresh."

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