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Farm Beginnings® Profile: Karen Haverinen
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Karen Haverinen |
Even when one is born into farming, returning to the land isn’t always easy. Karen Haverinen was the eighth out of nine children. Her parents were in their 40s when Karen came along, so by the time she was old enough to take an interest in farming, older brothers were already in position to take over the dairy operation, which has been in the family since 1898 near Menahga, in northwest Minnesota. So one could excuse her for being a little dazed at the fact that just four years after graduating from high school, Haverinen is on her own farm, producing certified organic milk from a growing cowherd.
“I didn’t think this would all fall into place so fast,” the soft-spoken 22-year-old says. “I thought if by age 25 I was doing this I’d be doing good.”
It’s a bit misleading to say things “fell into place” for Haverinen. She’s spent the past few years learning as much as possible about producing milk in a way that’s profitable and sustainable. She’s also crunched a lot of numbers and talked to other farmers who are taking an innovative approach to milk production. After completing a two-year farm management program at Ridgewater College in Willmar, Minn., Haverinen enrolled in the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings® course.
Twice-a-month during the winter of 2006-2007, Haverinen made the drive to the central Minnesota community of Hutchinson to hear established farmers and other ag professionals share insights on low-cost, sustainable methods of farming. The course also provided workshops on goal-setting, financial planning, business plan creation, alternative marketing and innovative production techniques. In addition, class participants had an opportunity to network with established farmers and utilize them as mentors.
Despite her deep background in all aspects of farming—from the routine chores and daily management to finances and livestock breeding—Haverinen felt she needed some grounding in how to make a living on the land with few financial resources.
“Ridgewater is a great school but I thought Farm Beginnings would give me more of the sustainable, low-input, direct-marketing angle on farming,” she recalls. “In college pretty much everybody wanted to have a larger dairy and manage a lot of cows and have high production. It can be pretty intimidating to feel like you have to invest a lot of money and manage a large herd to make it. With Farm Beginnings, I realized I didn’t need to invest so much and be so big to make it.”
Indeed, she did learn how other farmers were making a go of it utilizing low-cost innovative production and marketing systems such as managed rotational grazing. But Haverinen says Farm Beginnings taught her something else: how to set goals that are more specific than, “I want to farm,” and put in place decisions that makes those goals possible. Haverinen wasn’t a total newbie to goal-setting—she took a class on it in college (“I slept through that class,” she admits sheepishly.) But what Farm Beginnings taught her was how to set goals that coincided with her own priorities in life. Haverinen figured out early on that she wanted to make a living farming on a smaller scale, without stepping on the hyper-speed treadmill of ever-increasing investments in inputs.
“You kind of realize why you do what you do. In Farm Beginnings you had to sit down and think about your values behind the goals,” she says. “I got more comfortable realizing I wanted to be a smaller farmer.”
It wasn’t just the Farm Beginnings instructors that helped Haverinen realize her goals of modest-sized farming weren’t all wet. She actually drew a lot of inspiration from her fellow class participants, who wanted to farm so badly that they were willing to do things on as small a scale imaginable.
“That was inspiring,” she says.
The months following her participation in Farm Beginnings were a whirlwind. Within a year’s time she bought 30 cows and an 80-acre farm near her family’s original farm, launching a certified organic operation that sells to Organic Valley. As of this winter her herd has grown to 71 cows and Haverinen is already wondering whether she will need more land in a year’s time to handle her ever-growing operation (she rents an additional 34 acres).
Even when describing her farm’s impressive growth in a brief amount of time, Haverinen tends to use phrases like “dumb luck.” In fact, she’s been very methodical about expanding the enterprise. For example, Haverinen works closely with an instructor through the Farm Business Management Education Program, an initiative available through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. Through the program, the young farmer works one-on-one with an instructor, who helped her set up a business plan and evaluate its effectiveness, among other things. With the assistance of the instructor, she was able to develop a business plan that was appealing to a lender when she was starting up her operation. It turns out the Farm Business Management instructor is a believer in organics and its ability to cash flow on a moderate scale.
“I wouldn’t be farming if it wasn’t for my Farm Business Management instructor,” she says without hesitation. “It’s nice to have someone advocate for you to the lender.”
It isn’t just the price premiums organic milk can command that made Haverinen an attractive risk to lenders. One of the things that originally attracted Haverinen to Farm Beginnings was the interest-free livestock loan that is offered through Heifer International and which graduates of the program are eligible for. In the end, she didn’t pursue the loan, which would have been for 15 heifers, but the young farmer says in an indirect way it still accomplished its task of getting her herd launched. She was meeting with a banker about obtaining credit for a dairy herd when she mentioned that she was qualified to receive the Heifer International loan.
“He said, ‘Well, if this program is willing to loan you 15 heifers, then you must be a good risk. Why don’t you just skip that step and we’ll loan you the money to buy all the heifers you need?’ ” Haverinen recalls. “In a weird way the Heifer International loan really helped me. It kind of did what it was supposed to accomplish.”
What’s also impressed lenders is her willingness to operate with a minimum of equipment: a small Oliver tractor that would qualify for antique status, a feed mill and a skid steer loader. “That’s pretty much it,” says Haverinen. “I’d rather put the money into the parlor and cows.”
She’s able to get by with so little equipment partially because she is not raising her own hay and supplemental feed. Haverinen buys it from a local farmer using forward contracts that lock in prices. She feels it pencils out better than investing in the land and equipment needed to raise all her own feed. She used managed rotational grazing to feed the cows this past summer, but Haverinen says the worn-out pastures on the farm need to be re-seeded and improved before they provide a significant source of forage.
Haverinen may not be on the 110-year-old family farm, but in a sense she’s part of an extended family farm situation. Several family members are involved with agriculture in various ways. She has a brother who lives about 25 miles away and produces milk for Organic Valley. And a nearby cousin will be selling organic milk soon as well. Haverinen says it’s tough to get away from the farm, but she has young cousins who can help out with chores once in awhile.
She may be only a year or so out of the dairy-farming chute, but Haverinen can hold her own amongst her older peers, as she did recently at an LSP panel discussion on dairy alternatives. The two men she shared the panel with were in their 50s and had years of experience under their belt. After getting over initial jitters, Karen talked easily to the audience about financing, feed rations, genetics and management strategies.
Afterwards, the young farmer was characteristically self-depreciating. “The only reason I agreed to do this is I figured if other people see that somebody as boneheaded as me can make it, then they’ll figure anybody can make it.”
A well-prepared bonehead, that is.
— A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2009 Land Stewardship Letter. For more information on LSP’s Farm Beginnings program, see www.farmbeginnings.org. More information is also available by calling 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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