GREENE

Iowa Energy.”

After completing his military service, Wilson moved back to Iowa and worked for Gardiner + Company, which specializes in auditing and accounting services for agribusiness and cooperatives. He later served as an internal auditor for West Central Cooperative before accepting the chief financial officer role at Western Iowa Energy. While at West Central, he completed the MBA program at Iowa State University.

“I was excited to move back to the Paton area and raise my four sons close to their grandparents,” said Wilson, whose parents are Rex and Virginia (Squibb) Wilson. “I also like living close to where my ancestors lived.” ride my moped to do chores for them.”

That farmstead is located just east of Wilson’s property and is a Heritage Farm.

Wilson proposed to and married his wife, Brandy, on their Century Farm property in 2022. They have seven children between them and two grandchildren. They both look forward to spending quality time at the farm during holidays and special occasions with their children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren for decades to come.

After graduating from Paton-Churdan High School in 1989, Wilson served in the U.S. Air Force for 11 years. While stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, he completed an undergraduate degree in accounting at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) in 1998.

Wilson also wanted to study agriculture, but UCO didn’t have an ag program.

“My advisor told me to take the oil and gas minor,” Wilson said. “That turned out to be a good fit for my career with Western time when we had up to 700 head of cattle. We had yearlings in September and fat cattle where Dad lived and then we had 500 light weights that came in from Montana in October.

“It was a lot of work putting feed in the silos and getting it back out. Dad would run the chopper, and I’d take the load home. My wife would be there, and she and I would rake it off into the blower into the silos, and then pick up another load. Frances worked hard, and we all did. I enjoyed all of it.”

Delbert’s daughter Kim resides on five acres of the original 240. Trent farms with his father, and his son Hunter also contributes to their farming efforts.

“Hopefully, someday one of them will want to continue the tradition here with owning this family property,” Wilson said. Honoring Iowa’s rural heritage and helping rural Iowa thrive are important to Wilson, who serves on the boards of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, the Iowa Biodiesel Board and California Advanced Biofuel Association. “I’m heavily involved in agriculture through renewable fuels, and having a Century Farm is huge to me. My family and I are proud to carry on this legacy.”

By LORI BERGLUND Farm News writer

There are farmers who have more acres, or bigger equipment, but the Carlsons that are so plentiful between Stratford and Stanhope are a family to be reckoned with when it comes to longevity and the family farming tradition.

Christian and Maria Carlson could never have imagined what they were starting back in 1867 when they purchased 40 acres of farmland in Marion Township near Stratford. Christian and Maria left Sweden to build a better life on the rich prairie sod of Iowa.

Their descendants must have liked it here, because so many of them are still here — and still farming.

The Carlson name appears on more century and heritage farms than almost any other name in Hamilton County. While the Johnson name appears the most, with 11 century or heritage farms, it’s not known how many of the different Johnson families are related.

With the Carlsons, it’s easier to trace.

If there is a family patriarch for the Christian Carlson family today, it is Keith Carlson of Stratford. He verified that all of the Hamilton County Carlson farms that have received either the century or heritage farm status can trace lineage back to Christian and Maria.

They include:

Wendell and Ruth Carlson, Stratford, Century Farm, 1977.

Roger and Vera Carlson, Stanhope, Century Farm, 1996.

Brad and Karleen Carlson, Jewell, Century Farm, 2013.

David Carlson, Stanhope, including siblings Ronda Nass, Steve Carlson, and Lori Hanson, Century Farm, 2015, and Heritage Farm, also 2015.

Doug and Sheila Carlson, Stratford; two tracts, one Century Farm in 2022, and a separate tract, Heritage Farm, also in 2022.

To clarify, not all of the Carlson farmland originated with Christian and Maria Carlson. Wives and mothers may have brought land into the different family branches, or it was acquired later by following generations, even through aunts and uncles.

One thing seems certain — descendants

Hamilton

Maria Carlson was $7.50 per acre. Selling prices for Hamilton County farmland in 2022 ranged from $10,900 to $16,700 with an average of $13,949.

While that’s an impressive capital gain, the investment made by Christian and Maria did not just grow capital, it grew children, sent them to college, and brought many of them back to be a part of their community, their church, and the local schools. Locally owned farms contribute locally, and the Carlsons have always sought to be a part of their community.

Doug Carlson recalled Wendell Carlson as a good businessman, a kind farmer, and a person who cared about his neighbors.

“They were a very Christian-oriented family,” Doug Carlson said.

of Christian and Maria Carlson know how to keep a farm in the family. As awarded by the Iowa Farm Bureau and the Iowa Department of Agriculture, century farms have been in one family for at least 100 years. Heritage farms have been in one family for at least 150 years.

For the Carlsons, it has not always been easy, but they offer little doubt that it was always worth the effort.

“Sometimes I wish they (Christian and Maria) had come to better land because this land needs to be tiled so much to make it work,” said Keith Carlson.

Now retired, Keith Carlson has been a longtime and very active community organizer in Stratford. He not only farmed, he founded his own business, Agri-Education. Carlson was instrumental in the establishment of the popular Athens Woods Estate in Stratford. He started his career as a voc-ag teacher and later became a journalist, serving as the first editor of Monthly Farm News in the 1970s, the predecessor of today’s Farm News.

“I always did a lot of other things besides farming, because I learned that I couldn’t just farm; I also had to depend on myself,” he said.

Carlson’s son and daughter-in-law, Doug and Sheila Carlson, today own and operate the family farm near Stratford. They collected both Heritage and Century designations on two different tracts of land at the 2022 Iowa State Fair. The couple lives on the heritage farm, purchased in 1867 by Christian and Maria Carlson.

The work ethic the couple brought with them from Sweden more than a century and a half ago has been handed down through the generations. “My parents taught us to work hard, to try to be good neighbors, and give a helping hand when needed,” Doug Carlson said.

Doug’s parents, Keith and the late Martha Carlson, had one other son besides Doug, Michael Carlson, who passed away last summer. While Michael farmed for awhile, in later years his health did not allow him to work the farm.

This Heritage Farm tract was owned by Wendell and Ruth Carlson when it gained Century Farm status in 1977. At that time, Wendell Carlson noted on the application that the original price paid by Christian and

The Century Farm awarded to Doug and Sheila Carlson in 2022 actually came, not from the Carlson side, but from his mother’s side of the family, the late Martha Carlson.

Martha Carlson was the daughter of Clifford and Helen Carlstedt. This Century Farm originated from the maternal side, as Martha’s mother had been an Angstrom before marriage. Olof Angstrom, Doug Carlson’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, also came from Sweden and purchased 80 acres in Webster Township near Stratford in 1884.

The Carlsons, Doug noted, always had more family reunions than the Carlstedt/ Angstrom family, so he was able to get to know more of them a little bit better.

Keith Carlson looks back to previous generations and appreciates all that they taught him. “My grandfather (Theodore Carlson) taught me how to drive a tractor, even though my dad told me explicitly not to ever drive that tractor,” Keith Carlson recalled. “It was a Farmall B. Grandpa said, ‘Get up there, you’re old enough.’ I was about 9 years old.”

Today, things are a little different, but lasting lessons remain.

By CLAYTON RYE

Farm News writer

FOREST CITY — Lyle and Velma Jefson were parents of 14 children, eight girls and six boys, that spanned 19 years from oldest to youngest. Lyle Jefson passed away in 1994 and Velma in 2005.

The Jefson family enjoys storytelling, and family gatherings result in the making of new stories and the telling of old stories. The stories can be from long ago when John and Matilda Durant, who had 10 children, first bought the Century Farm in 1896.

John Durant, a soldier in the Civil War, was mustered out of the Army in 1865. In 1870, he moved to Iowa and lived on a farm, trading land until 1896 when he bought the Century Farm in Hancock County, just south of Forest City.

One of the Durant’s children was Seth Benjamin, also known as S.B. Over the course of his life, S.B. Durant was known