Minnesota Farm Advocate Oral History Project Minnesota Historical Society

Interview with Ben Dannheim with comments by Aria Dannheim Interviewed by Dianna Hunter and Ken Meter Minnesota Farm Advocate Oral History Project Interviewed on May 25, 1988 at his farm near La Porte, Minnesota in Hubbard County Ben Dannheim: BD Dianna Hunter: DH Ken Meter: KM Project KM: Well, let's see, The way we begin these things is—this sounds kind of formal—but we'd like to have you jusHistoryt say wh o you are and tell us about the family and your farm, and you know-- Society BD: Okay. I'm Ben Dannheim, and Oralmy wif e Aria. We have two children, Sheila and Dennis. We have a hog farm in northern Minnesota in Hubbard County. KM: How many acres do you have? AdvocateHistorical BD: 120 acres, and I rent 40 besides. So a total of 160 acres. And we farrow to finish about 100 litters of hogs a year. Anything else? [Laughter] Farm DH: Well, when did you come here and what's happened to you since then? Minnesota BD: Oh, okay. We moved here. There wasn't a farm here in 1972 wheMinnesotan we moved here. There was nothing here. So we built the farm. KM: Cleared all the trees? BD: Well, pretty much what's cleared on the yard, we cleared. So there was a little old—kind of an old farmstead here before we moved here, but everything had fallen down. So we just kind of came in and buried it. Started over. KM: What brought you to this place to start farming? BD: We couldn't afford to start farming in southern Minnesota. Land was about a thousand an acre at that time. And land here was $90. KM: That will do it. BD: And I found out after I started farming, why. [Laughs and Laughter] It was only worth 90. [Laughs] KM: So, say a little more about how you developed the property since '72. Project I i BD: Well, we didn't start farming immediately. And in about '76 we started with a pig. One pig. And found out that we have to have more than one pig if you want more pigs. [LaughterHistory] So I went and got a boar, and we started our sow herd. And had a little shack that we farrowed in. Had two farrowing crates. And if the wind blew 20 miles an hour outside, it blew 40 insideOral. But wSocietye made it through 'till we built the new barn in '79. And, it's just been progressing, from one pig to 60 sows, and at one time we were up even close to 100 sows. But we went to farrow to finish from feeder pigs, and we went back down to about 60 sows again. So we could handle it. Historical KM: Something just appeareAdvocated on the table here. Care to describe that? [Laughter] BD: I don't knowFarm. In 1983, my farm management instructor--! went to Vo-ag Income Farm Management through the veterans and then adult. I thinMinnesotak it was in th e veterans class then yet. And he asked me how old I was one night, and I said it was none of his business. And later I found out that he nominated me to be the outstanding young farmer in our area, and you couldn't be over 35 in ordeMinnesotar to get this. I never did tell him how old I was. [Laughs] He must have found out somewheres. So anyhow I got that in 1983, and numerous things happened, I guess, around here. You know. Farmers started realizing that I was a farmer in the community too. And people always called us about questions, how to raise pigs, how to do this and how to do that. And I don't know, we always did that. Am I going too fast here? DH: No. This is fine. BD: Then in eighty—I think it was in the fall of '85. Aria was reading an article in "The Farmer" about the Farm Advocate Program. And she said, "Gee, you ought to be one of them." I said, " I don't know about that." [Laughs] So anyhow we sat down and got a letter together, and sent it down to the Ag Department, and they wrote me back that they weren't hiring anyone, but they'd keep me on their list. And I figured, "Yeah, I've heard that before" when I want to try to do stuff. But then in the spring, or in the mid-winter, Anne de Meurisse called and said they were getting interviews together and I should come down for an interview. So evidently they kept meProject on the list. [Laughs] After the interview I asked them when I could expect to be hired, and they didn't know. So I kept asking theHistorym every month or so. [Laughs] Finally they hired me. That's how I got started doing this. I bet it sounds good. [Laughs] And, yeah, I've been doing it since the spring of '86 now. So I've got two yearOrals in. Society KM: Had you had any financial difficulty on your own farm before that? BD: Well, yeah, you always do, eveHistoricaln if you don't . I always thought I didn't, but I really did. I Advocatejust didn't hav e enough credit to ever get a lot of it, you know? To have a big problem. [Laughs] So I maintained a little problem all the time. Today I'm kind of glad maybe I didn't havFarme a lot of credit, you know? I grew up in town so I couldn't rely on "Gee, I'm an expert farmer, I can farm," you know, to go to the bank withMinnesota. So I ha d to rely on what I could get from them. Probably our biggest crises were in the fact that I could get little dabMinnesotas of money bu t not enough to do anything with. But you'd still try and do it, so you took everything out of your family living in order to do it. So, you know, which way do you win and which way do you lose? You wonder. You kind of went without living so you could do what you wanted to do, and as opposed to if I had had a lot of credit I'd a probably borrowed that money and now not be able to pay it back. It kind of seems a no-win situation sometimes. But we do it because we like to. Not for the financial rewards. [Laughs] KM: So, you felt like you could be an Advocate because people were already asking questions anyway? BD: Yeah, everybody—well, not everybody, but people were calling all the time and asking me about this and that. And I never was a real good reader, but I like to read about different things happening. Especially--! learned how to farm through magazines, actually. Because, you know, I couldn't belong to FFA when I was a kid, or ag class, because if you lived in town you couldn't be a farmer. So I had to learn through magazines and articles, and kind of self-learn. Plus my wife grew up on a farm, and she helped me out a lot. [Laughter] Better give her a little credit, anyhow. [Laughs] I guesProjects I had to teach her how to cook, she had to teach me how to farm. [Laughs and Laughter] KM: So why isn't she the Advocate then? History BD: I don't know! [Laughs] I asked her that too, why she didn't do it. Oral Society KM: What was it like doing your first Advocate session? BD: Training session? Historical KM: No, just you're beingAdvocate an Advocate for the first time. BD: It was different. When I started, I got hired in the middle of a training session thaFarmt they allowed me to come to, because it was kind of a special session that they had that year in May. And they wanted the people that were going to be Advocates to get that one, that training. And wheMinnesotan I went dow n there I had no idea they were going to hire me in the middle of it. And they passed out—for the first time, Advocates got their big blue manuals, at that training. But I didn'Minnesotat get any becaus e I wasn't an Advocate. [Chuckles] So I just had to kind of write a lot of notes and try and absorb as much as I could. Finally about the middle I got a set of manuals. When I came home I didn't know if I knew anything. For about a week it was pretty—you know, the old brain had overworked. [Laughs] Couldn't absorb all that stuff. But it all started coming back then. You know, after you sorted it out, after you started looking through the manuals and stuff. Things would catch your eye. "Oh, we talked about this at the training session," type of thing, like that. And then I went to work with other Advocates on a few farm visits and things. And, I don't know. Whenever you start something new or different, you always wonder, if this was really what you thought it was going to be. I think after I got on my own, it--I think a person should have some training with someone who has done it for a number of years, but I don't think he should stay with it too long either.

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