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Farm Beginnings™ Profile: Reagan & Kevin Hulbert
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Reagan & Kevin Hulbert |
June in southeast Minnesota. It’s that time when a grass-based dairy operation provides a peek at its potential for the year, what with newly green pastures blanketing the hills and cows hitting their milk-producing stride. On just such a day south of the town of Lewiston, Kevin and Reagan Hulbert are showing their potential as well. The morning milking is done, fresh grass seed has been spread and the cowherd has been turned out to pasture for the day. The young couple points proudly to the ruler-straight fences they have erected on pastureland that just a year before was planted to corn and alfalfa. In spite of a wet, sometimes miserable, spring, the milk cows and newborn calves now look vibrantly healthy. The Hulberts have only been milking a couple of weeks, but production is better than they had expected.
The relative calm on this Saturday morning belies a hectic couple of years, during which the couple quit city jobs, worked on a couple of dairy farms, took the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course and searched far and wide for a farm to rent. It hasn’t been easy, but the Hulberts now have enough experience under their belt to know they can make a go of it in farming, even when January’s dark cold makes bright June mornings like this seem a remote memory.
“I’ve had a lot of jobs in the animal science field,” says Reagan confidently. “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”
The couple, neither of whom grew up on farms, credits Farm Beginnings with providing them the tools to begin realizing their potential on the land.
For Kevin, the call of farming came in the late 1980s via the public address system at his high school in Lewiston: “If you want a job, come to the counselor’s office.” Kevin bit and soon the town boy was biking to work on a farrow-to-finish hog farm. That was all it took.
“I liked it,” says Kevin. 34. “I like working outside. I like soil. I like animals. You just kind of get a passion for it.”
Reagan, 29, grew up in the heart of northern Minnesota’s iron ore mining region but has always liked working with large animals and considered becoming a veterinarian for a time.
Both of the Hulberts have animal science degrees from the University of
Minnesota and worked at the school’s dairy barn. After he graduated in 1996, Kevin worked in computers, and the couple bought a townhouse in the Twin Cities. But they also kept researching what it would take to get into farming. Kevin has an extensive agricultural library, including every copy of The New Farm he’s ever been able to get his hands on. The now defunct magazine—an
Internet version exists at www.newfarm.org—carried numerous articles on low-cost sustainable ways to farm. Kevin was particularly intrigued by a 1990 article about farmers who were using managed rotational grazing to produce milk on grass. At that time, this system was proving itself in North America as a viable alternative to expensive
confinement dairying.
“To get in when you’re young, grazing is the only way to go, as far as I’m concerned,” he says.
He introduced Reagan to grazing and she was impressed by its financial competitiveness when she ran the numbers. She also liked how healthy the cows were under such a management system.
Through Kevin’s Lewiston connections, they found out about Farm
Beginnings, and in the fall of 2003 started commuting from the Twin Cities to Plainview, Minn., to take the twice-monthly classes. Farm Beginnings provides participants an opportunity to learn firsthand about low-cost, sustainable methods of farming. Students take part in a course that teaches goal setting, financial planning, business plan creation, alternative marketing and innovative farming
techniques. Established farmers and other professionals present at the seminars and provide a strong foundation of resources and networks for those interested in farming.
There are also opportunities to connect with established farmers through farm visits and one-on-one mentorships. The couple says the course helped them see that farming was doable, and pushed them to do some realistic planning.
“Let your goals steer you instead of your wants and needs,” says Kevin.
“You also learn what’s your passion,” says Reagan. “You learn who you are.”
They soon found out about area farmers who needed cows milked during
Christmas holidays and gained hands-on experience that way. Two Lewiston dairy farmers, Dale and Carmene Pangrac, served as their mentors and helped them hook up with Lewiston area farmer Warren Hoppe, who produces milk using managed grazing. In early 2004 they sold their townhouse and moved into a mobile home on the Hoppe farm where they worked for about a year.
“People thought we were nuts,” recalls Reagan.
Reagan also worked on a 1,500-cow full confinement dairy for a time. The last six months of 2004, the Hulberts intensified their search for a farm to rent, looking close to home as well as in Wisconsin and even Nebraska. They visited farms armed with a digital camera. Later, they used a TV to display the photos they took, showing them to experienced dairy farmers like the Pangracs so they could get a second opinion of the operation’s siting, buildings and milking equipment.
“We don’t want to fail,” says Reagan. “I want all the skeletons out of the closet.”
After farm visits they would also sketch out an operation’s layout on a dry erasable white board to help them in the decision making process. The Hulberts put ads in newspapers and on the Internet, e-mailed people, and asked lots and lots of questions.
They also used more basic methods of seeking a farm as well.
“At one point I actually opened the Lewiston phone book and started calling,” Kevin recalls with a laugh.
The Hulberts were surprised at the responses they got during their search—some wouldn’t take them seriously and had a laugh at their expense.
But the couple was undeterred.
In April, all that preparation and determination paid off when the Hulberts began milking their own cows on the farm of Ray Radatz just outside of Lewiston. The farmer, who still raises crops and replacement heifers, had gotten out of the milking business the summer before and was willing to rent some land and facilities. This turned out to be a nice turn of events for the Hulberts: unlike
some of the defunct dairies they had looked at, the milking parlor and other facilities on the Radatz farm are still in excellent shape. It even has a farm office attached to the milk room. The one downside was the farm had been a full confinement dairy, which meant there was no pasture for grazing. But the
Hulberts have made up for that with some hard work. They converted 30 acres of former crop ground into grazing paddocks. They then invested about $5,500 in portable fencing and started milking.
That was when the reality set in.
“It would take two, two and a half hours just to milk 20 cows that first week,” recalls Reagan. To the couple’s chagrin, that was about how long it used to take Radatz to milk 100 cows. And all that hard work produced a disappointing first milk check: $450.
But these days the milking goes much smoother, and the milk checks are growing. The Hulberts have built up a herd of 54 cows, and milk 38. The herd is made up of calves they got through their work arrangement with Hoppe, as well as from another grazing operation. The cows’ recent history has proven to be an immense advantage: sometimes cows that have been confined have a difficult time
adapting to a pasture-based system.
Not these bovines. “When we let them out they champed the grass right down,” recalls Reagan. “They know how to graze. There was no adjustment there.”
Fifteen of their heifers were procured through a Heifer International no-interest livestock loan. As Farm Beginnings graduates, the Hulberts qualified for the loan, which they have five years to pay off (during the first two years, no payments have to be made). The Heifer International loan primed the pump for more cow-buying credit.
“That was the only way we would have gotten the bank loan,” says Reagan.
“Once we told the bank about the [LSP/Heifer International] loan, they opened their eyes and said, ‘Aha.’ ”
For now, Kevin is commuting to La Crosse, Wis., to work as a computer specialist for a security firm. Reagan does the farming during the week, and they both work on the dairy during weekends. And the Hulberts aren’t done preparing for their future in farming. As a result of their involvement in Farm Beginnings, they are taking farm analysis/record-keeping classes through the Minnesota Farm Business Management Association.
Their goal is to grow the milking herd to around 60 or 70 cows, a size that may allow Kevin to quit his job, and then start looking for a farm to buy. Their fencing is portable, and they’ve kept their equipment to a minimum (they own one 70-horespower tractor and a four-wheeler, plus some calf hutches) to keep costs down and facilitate mobility. Even the mobile home they own in Lewiston is part of their plan: once they find a farm to buy, they can move the house to the land.
The Hulberts’ farming dream is still more potential than reality. But as Reagan points out, they didn’t come by that potential naturally—they prepared for it.
“We’re very ready for this.”
—Originally published in the July/Aug./Sept. 2005 Land Stewardship Letter
Click here for more on Farm Beginnings™. You can also call 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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