Joe K lein

a barn and chicken coop prior to Joseph and Anna Klein – the second generation – taking over the farm. In addition to corn and grain production, the family had 12-15 dairy cows and youngstock. They also grew potatoes and cabbage.

Klein

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“The other big thing they had here were chickens to sell eggs,” Joe said.

Arnold, Joe’s dad, was one of seven children. The third generation on the farm, he began helping his mother after his father died in 1919. He was 15. The original barn burned that same year, Joe said.

Though tragedy struck, so did opportunity. Under Anna’s leadership, the Kleins purchased an additional 40 acres of land in Stearns County.

Arnold married Helen Thomalla Oct. 8, 1946, and the two expanded their family with the addition of their sons, Joe and James.

“Mom died in 1961; Jimmy was 8, I was 10,” said Joe, who added that although his grandmother Anna lived on the farm she, too, was ill. “My dad had to do all the work because we were small. … That’s the way things went here. My job then was to peel potatoes, and I started cooking with bologna, wieners, polish sausage and stuff like that, and then we learned how to fry chicken.”

In addition to taking care of the family meals, Joe and his brother had other important roles on the farmstead. They brought in side income by digging worms and catching frogs for fishermen as well as baling and stacking hay when they grew older. The boys dug four sacks of red potatoes three days a week which were then hauled and sold to Erdrich’s Meat Market in Little Falls, which also bought eggs and cabbage from the family. In the summer months, the family grew and picked cucumbers to sell to the Gedney Pickle Factory in nearby Bowlus.

“When it got light in the morning, we were up at 5:30 picking pickles and it took us until 10:3011 o’clock to get them all picked,” Joe said. “We used to haul in six or eight 100-pound sacks of pickles to Bowlus every third day. That was our income. … We were one of the small- er farmers, but we had our other jobs like I said.”

With an interest in flying, Joe learned how to operate aircraft prior to entering U.S. military service in 1969. He spent nearly three years as a pilot and mechanic in the Army before returning to the farm and taking over duties of corn and grain production with his father by his side.

“That’s when we bought our own machinery,” said Joe, who also worked part time off farm as an adult.

Joe also purchased another 20 acres in Stearns County and constructed a host of other buildings on the farm, including an airplane hangar, while maintaining others over his 52 years as property owner.

His father died in 1996.

Today, the land that supported four generations of Kleins is split between acres of farmstead, meadow hay and those enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. Joe, who has shared his life with Rosie Brix since 1991, no longer tills the fields; however, he continues helping with agricultural production on a neighbor’s property one parcel over.

With no livestock to be cared for and a heavy snowpack waiting on a spring thaw, the Klein farm is rather quiet. Still, the buildings whisper a story of what came before.

“This place has so much meaning,” Joe said. “I don’t know how to explain it. There’s feelings here from the people of the past, and I don’t think they’d want me to sell it.”

Joe plans to leave the family legacy to his nieces, Jacquelyn and Amanda.