People’s Bank

church ceremony and party. She is an assistant for the civil engineering squadron. During the week, Abbey is an Air Guard employee of the state of Iowa. When she’s deployed or on monthly maneuvers, she’s employed by the federal government. “I do the same job that I do during drill weekends. I just get paid differently.” Abbey has dipped her toe into helping with the sheep. However, Cody said, “She thinks she's the sheep whisperer after she loaded 1 load.” Abbey replied, “You told me it was going to take us 2 hours to do this. And I said, ‘No, it's not.” And it took us just 12 minutes.” Cody plans to come back to the farm when his dad retires. In a jestful spirit, he said he plans to retire from John Deere at age 40 and Abbey will do the same from the Air Guard. Then they’ll just farm as a hobby.

LOVES FINISHING SHEEP

For now, Dave is content with the size of their sheep operation. “Labor is the big issue holding us back.” Angie agreed: “It was different when Cody was home in high school and his buddies were around to be a couple extra hands. They’d run down and check on the ewes and lambs at midnight.” Dave added: “There was always somebody willing to do the work.”

Some producers have been moving to sell their sheep at lighter weights, but Dave holds onto them until they’re finished. “I love the finished product. The majority my work is in January, February and March when they're being born. That’s the most intense time of the year. It’s time consuming but I enjoy it. Then we go right into field work of course.” He starts selling sheep about the end of June and continues to sell every week up until about November 1st. A contract with Superior Farms out of Denver takes the guesswork out of the market. He delivers to the buying station at Hawarden. Everything goes on a truck to Denver.

Angie and Dave are enjoying the transition to being empty nesters. “Life was always fun before, but in a different way. We used to be running off to sheep shows and football games and dance competitions,” she said. Dave added: “Now we're kind of running for ourselves, you might say. Angie bought a convertible to help us take off into our next stage in life. We both work hard. There's no doubt about that. We put in long hours and now we’re able to take the time off for ourselves.”

STRONG PATRONAGE

$890,000 in dividends paid to patrons in 2021.

All deferred equity paid up to 2013.

Our Coop is designed to grow with your needs, and support your interests – both on and off the farm.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Donations and other support provided annually to multiple FFA programs, local fi re departments, town projects, livestock shows, school programs.

26336 C-12, LeMars, IA 51031 712-562-6544 | www.craigcoop.com

The McCormick Reaper revolutionized grain harvesting in the U.S. and the world.

HARVESTING CROPS IN THE 1870S AND THE BIG CROP OF 1895

The following story is excerpted from the book “The Story of Sioux County,” written by Charles L. Dyke and published in 1938. While the book includes some history of the county as a whole, it frequently focuses on the story of his family who were early pioneers in eastern Sioux County. He was born in 1867 in Wolvega, Friesland, The Netherlands. After coming with his parents and eight siblings to the U.S., the family first lived in Wisconsin before homesteading near Hospers in 1872. After marrying Gertrude Maris in 1897, he made his home primarily in Orange City until his death in 1957. He co-founded the Sioux County Capital newspaper and was its associate editor for many years. Some edits have been made to the text to account for length.

(The first reaper we saw) only cut the grain, while a man rode on the rear of the machine and raked it from the platform with a wooden rake, but much grain was still cut with the cradle (a heavy scythe) … The cradle was a great improvement over the sickle or crescent shaped knife that is still used to trim corners or ends.

When we came to Sioux County in the fall of (1872), there was about 5 acres of broken land on the homestead, which father sowed to oats the following spring. As we had no reaper, our neighbor Bastian Van Iperen came with his McCormick reaper which was a self-rake and cut the oats … We all thought that it was a wonderful invention.

The Walter A. Wood reaper … had the advantage over the other kind of reaper in that it delivered the grain in a compact bunch that was easy to bind, while the spread out pile of the other