Holms share memories of their lives on the farm
By Heather Thorstensen
hthorstensen@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 06/03/2010 9:21 AM
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NEW ULM, Minn.— Last week, Charles Holm looked out his window and noted the peas would almost be blossoming.
At the age of 81, he can recall milking by hand, harvesting peas with a modified grass mower and expanding the farm to accommodate his growing family.
He and his wife, Lauretta, were recently recognized by Minnesota Farm Bureau as owners of a Sesquicentennial Farm, a farm that's belonged to the same family for at least 150 years.
Their land was originally homesteaded in 1858 by his great-great grandfather, Johan Holm, after he immigrated from Germany. Johan passed the farm to his son, John, who transferred it to his son, Joseph, who was succeeded by his son, Henry.
Henry, Charles' father, died when Charles was 16 years old. Charles helped his mother, Milly, with the farm until he got his own farm in Sleepy Eye. He and Lauretta were married and had two children by the time they returned to the family place.
In 1957, when Charles was 29 years old, they bought 160 acres of the family farm.The other 140 acres went to Charles' sister, Adeline, and her husband, Harold Wiltscheck.
For a time, Charles ran two farms. He let go of the Sleepy Eye land right before land values increased dramatically due to a rise in soybean prices.
"I wish I would've waited," he said.
He and Lauretta farrow-to-finished hogs, kept a Holstein herd and grew soybeans, peas, corn, oats and wheat. They ultimately had five children— three boys and two girls.
Charles began using artificial insemination at the family farm.
"You got into better breeding," he explained, because a farmer no longer had to buy a bull to get the bull's good genetics.
He kept the stanchion barn. At first they milked by hand, then used Surge bucket milkers, then switched to a bulk tank.
"Everyone was going out of cans," he said.
Their peas were canned by Del Monte in Sleepy Eye. They would use a grass mower with a special bar in front to harvest the pea vines, which would be wrapped into windrows then picked up and taken to a machine to separate the peas from the vine. Del Monte pea viners would be placed every four miles or so during harvest.
Charles and Lauretta's eldest child, Geri Leavens, remembers they would take some of their peas hometo make soups and other dishes.
She also remembers the big lunches Lauretta would prepare and deliver at noon in the field for the sweet corn and pea pickers.
In the 1960s, the family put up a second silo that still stands. It's 60 feet tall. With their growing family, they needed to expand to more cows, so that meant more feed, said Charles.
He has a black-and-white photograph that shows the old granary and chicken barn. Those burnt down in 1983. He replaced them with a machine shed and round grain bin that same year.
The two oldest buildings on the farm is a shed and the barn. Charles doesn't know when the shed was built, but the barn was constructed in 1906.
Charles and Lauretta's son, Tom, who lives in the farm house now with his wife, Betsy, recalls a winter with so much snow that piles reached the barn's eaves. He and his siblings climbed the mounds and sled down, out of sight of their parents, who were probably busy milking cows at the time.
Tom thinks he was about five years old when he started driving the tractor. Neighbors would drive by and think it was running itself, because he was so small they couldn't see him.
Charles and Lauretta have moved to town, a short drive away.
"It's not many farms that have stayed in the family (as long as ours)," Charles said.