Jerky that makes your tongue sing

Shawano County is known for its agriculture, its barn quilts and its lakes.

Now, the county can claim “Wisconsin’s Number One Jerky” on its turf.

Mike’s Country Meats, which makes a variety of the dehydrated meat snacks and other animal-based products, moved into its new home in Tigerton in March, and owners Mike and Lora Nitschke are working to turn a former veneer factory into a meat processing plant and retail shop.

Besides bringing a new selection of meat products to the county, the Nitschkes also bring the potential for up to 20 jobs at their facility.

The decision to move the processing operation from Campbellsport was spurred by an inability to expand at its existing facility, a home operation that started in 1984 as a wild game processing area behind the Nitschkes’ house.

“We started up in our garages. We didn’t have a fridge or freezer, but we had a cooler, and all we did was process deer,” Lora Nitschke said. “Then we saved up money, and he bought equipment. We built a plant specifically for deer processing.”

She said their deer hunters wanted the Nitschkes to make venison sausage, so they became state certified, which allowed them to branch out into other meats as well.

Mike Nitschke grew up around meat processing and knew he wanted to run his own business someday. He worked construction to help pay the bills when he wasn’t processing deer meat, but when Lora was laid off from her job, they decided it was time to try and make a go of it full time.

“I always liked it. It was neat,” Mike Nitschke said.

Once the Nitschkes were able to focus their energies on meat processing, they started to perfect their beef jerky. Mike Nitschke noted that there was a lot of trial and error to make the jerky stand out from other products.

“My sons were in high school, and their buddies were the guinea pigs,” Lora Nitschke added. “They always tasted the jerky and let us know which was good and which was bad and what we should do different. That’s how we perfected our jerky.”

Mike’s Country Meats produces a regular jerky, hot Jamaican jerky and pepper beef jerky. The Nitschkes recently added a jerky flavored with ghost peppers, which are made in Bangladesh and considered to be the world’s hottest pepper.

The Nitschkes are looking at adding at least two more different flavors to their repertoire.

“This is only our fourth week here, and right now we’re in supply-and-demand on our jerky. We were a little backed up on our orders,” Lora Nitschke said, noting that the operation was completely shut down for three weeks in the beginning of March as she and her husband moved everything to Tigerton.

When it became clear that the operation needed to grow to keep up with an ever-increasing demand, the Nitschkes began looking for a new place for “Wisconsin’s Number One Jerky.” The home operation was in a 1,500-square-foot building with only enough room for seven employees, and it was not possible to expand or come up with other products besides the beef jerky.

After not finding much support in Fond du Lac County, the Nitschkes decided to expand the search for a new home. In May 2013, the Nitschkes learned a building was for sale in Tigerton, and the rest is history.

“The village put a nice (incentive) package together, and we’ve found Shawano County very receptive to what we wanted to do,” Mike Nitschke said.

More than a year of renovations have gone into the building, making it suitable for meat processing. A retail store will be part of the building, which the Nitschkes hope to open in a month.

The Nitschkes have a handful of local employees, along with family members, working at the facility. They hope to have 15 to 20 workers by the time they have the building fully operational this summer.

Mike’s Country Meats distributes its products over three-fourths of the state, according to Lora Nitschke. She and her husband are working through the process to set up interstate distribution.

With the new facility at almost 14,000 square feet, the Nitschkes won’t have to worry about building another facility for some time.

“It was either get bigger or get out,” Mike Nitschke said. “We’re not ready to retire yet, and we’ve met a lot of nice people up here.”