A beautiful, but dry and dusty day during early bean harvest in rural Steele. Photo by NDAREC/Kennedy DeLap
Whether your family celebrates Thanksgiving with corn casserole, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole or good old mac-and-cheese casserole, there is a farmer to thank for the food.
Hard work throughout the year seeding fields, feeding livestock and harvesting crops ensures your Thanksgiving feast reaches the table, and it’s easy to forget what goes into our meals when we buy them in packaging at grocery stores.
Mike Hagens is one local farmer who helps feed the world. During harvest, the KEM Electric Cooperative and Mor-Gran-Sou Electric Cooperative member sits from dawn until dusk, combining rows of beans and corn he planted this spring.
“The best part, you know, is the harvest. The selling of the grains, the cattle ... your finished product. All of your hard work, all your long hours, all the tough, tough days you put in, to finally see the reward come back at the end of the day,” Hagens says.
Hagens is the fourth generation of his family to farm. Hopefully, his son, Hudson, or daughter, Grace, will be the fifth.
Hagens hasn’t always farmed. He tried to work in an office years ago, but didn’t last long.
“I like being out working and getting my hands dirty. I like being outside. I like working livestock. … Sitting in an office is just so damn boring,” he says.
Hagens also owned a successful sheep shearing business for 25 years. With a crew of 15 to 20 shearers and several wool handlers, Hagens sheared sheep across the country, primarily in the Upper Midwest. The crew would shear around 150,000 to 200,000 ewes and 100,000 lambs each year, Hagens estimates.
Two years ago, he sold the business to take over his family’s farm and sell Pioneer Seed.
But the lifestyle isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s long hours. Combines break down. Fire, wind, hail and snow can wipe out fields. Input prices are high, while the price producers earn for their crops can be volatile.
Hagens says fuel alone can cost around $900 a day during harvest.
“It seems to be most of these small family farms are becoming a thing of the past. … The margins are so slim in farming, you got to have so many acres to make it work,” he says. “Nobody’s getting real rich.”
The hardest part of Hagens’s job? Spending time away from his family. During harvest, he stays in a camper on the farm in rural Steele, 50 miles from his home in Mandan. When he does trek home some evenings, his kids are sometimes already asleep.
“They miss me, you know,” Hagens says.
It takes a special kind of person to be a farmer.
“Hard work, dedication ... sticking with it,” Hagens says.
As we move from the season of harvest to the season of thanks, don’t forget to thank a farmer.
___
Kennedy DeLap is interning with North Dakota Living. She can be reached at kdelap@ndarec.com.
