ountry C Friday, November 19, 2021
cres A Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
Volume 8, Edition 34
Raising
feeder lambs
PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE BEHNEN
Garth Hazen (from left) and Dan, Mike and Tom Lippert have distinct businesses but work together as family in their multi-generational sheep businesses near Blomkest and Willmar.
Lippert, Hazen family work together in multi-generational enterprise BY CHRISTINE BEHNEN | STAFF WRITER
B
The sheep are shorn, though wool is not a focus market.
ST R
Publications bli ti The newspaper of today is the history of tomorrow.
This month in the
LOMKEST/WILLMAR – In a unique twist of fate, a decision made in 1932 to buy six ewes for $3 a head became the inception of a multi-generational sheep business which continues to this day, and upon the same family lands. Ninety years later, this is the story for the Lippert and Hazen family in the Blomkest/ Willmar area. One generation is comprised of brothers Dan and Mike Lippert. Dan’s son, Tom, and son-in-law, Garth, are the newest generation as of the last 10 years. Even though Mike is newly retired, three businesses have the benefit of the larger family’s help and resources. On the crisp fall day of Nov. 4, all four men gathered to share their enterprise and family history. A new load of 540 lambs had arrived just that morning from Montana and were settling in. Separated into other pens were older groups of lambs belonging to
COUNTRY:
Watch for the next edition of Country Acres on Dec. 17
Dan and Tom. These lambs, having passed their young lives until now with their mothers on the range, their three- to four-month Minnesota sojourn will see them grow from 80 or 90 pounds up to between 150 and 160 pounds. The season for feeder lambs begins in August, with a new load arriving from Montana and Colorado about every three weeks going into October and November. When they’ve grown to weight, most will go to the packing plant, and from there, perhaps to a dinner table near or far. Some may sell to the ethnic market, and others direct to locals. Tom proffered a shovelful of a feed mix of corn, alfalfa, soybean hulls and protein pellets. Slowly, the lambs will go from grass to rations of increasingly high carbohy-
Lambs page 2
7
Over-looked benefit Diane Leukam column
15 Thanksgiving Q&As With our Advertisers
21 Country cooking Albany
9
The beginning Nancy Leasman column
18 FFA student ROCORI FFA Chapter
25 Heritage turkeys a fit for Traeger Avon
10 75 years of small implements, parts Millerville
18 Growing into hard work, farming, family values Alexandria
