Raelyn and Weston – the family’s next generation – are ready to head out for their afternoon chores – feeding the kitties and chickens.
He took over the cow herd from his grandfather in 2016. And he feels fortunate that neighbor Darrel Hansen asked him to farm his crop land. “Darrel’s kind of been like an extra grandpa to me. Every Thursday, Grandpa would golf and I’d go down to Granite to help Darrel mow.” The family also attends Grandview Covenant Church with the Hansen family. A year after starting on Darrel’s land, Tom Miller (former owner of Miller Loaders in Granite) asked Dylan to start farming his land. “He told me he wouldn’t want anyone else to do it. So that’s always a good thing. It’s nice having the Millers as neighbors. They’ll weld me up anything.” He also rents farm land belonging to Alan Enger across the Big Sioux River in South Dakota. “It’s nice, everything is pretty close. Even the South Dakota piece isn’t too far away.” His sister, Brooklyn, is an operations manager for Verizon in Sioux Falls, but also owns some cows and helps her brother with the cows in the spring. Their grandfather helps truck the corn and beans in fall. “Otherwise, I do pretty much all the tillage and planting and spraying,” Dylan said. Wife Kelsey is a NICU nurse at Avera, working three 12-hour shifts per week, rotating between days and nights. Kelsey is originally from Kirkland in northern Illinois. “My dad farms, so I grew up in a farming household, too. Kirkland is a small town, so it’s pretty similar here to what I grew up in. It wasn’t some crazy transition. It is hard to be away from my family. But we usually see them once a month so we’re very fortunate,” she said.
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July 2021 | www.agemedia.pub | The Farming Families Magazine
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