Steve Fresk’s story is familiar in parts and undoubtedly unique in others. Steve grew up on his family’s farm working with livestock and crops as many of us have. Yet he didn’t start farming himself until he was fifty years old. As he often jokes, “instead of getting a Corvette and a blond girlfriend, I started farming for my midlife crisis.”

Steve’s Farming Roots

I grew up on a family crop and livestock farm near Slayton, Minnesota. My dad and my uncle were identical twin brothers, but each of them had his own place. I was the afterthought of a generation; dad was forty-four years old when I was born, so I was always the “little guy” around. 

We fed cattle and also raised hogs farrow to finish. I had bad enough hog allergies, so I was always a cattle and crops person growing up. When I was a junior in high school, dad was hurt pretty bad in a tractor accident. Then, my uncle had a heart attack. They were both sixty-two and decided to go on Social Security and quit farming.  

Foundations of Curiosity

My dad and uncle told me that if I wanted to farm, they would have hung on another couple of years. But they both encouraged me to go do something else first. There's a more interesting back story; my father and uncle were identical twins. And they both graduated from the University of Minnesota Ag School, which would have been really unusual at that time. (This was in the 1920s.) They took turns going to college so one could stay home and help grandpa milk cows.

After they both graduated from college, there was only room for one of them on the farm. I don’t know how they determined who did what, but my uncle stayed on the farm and my dad became a county agent. Dad also played semi-pro baseball until World War Two. After the war, he and mom decided to farm full time and they went back to the family farm. By that time, my grandfather had retired and there was room for dad to come back and work with my uncle.

I like to share this backstory because when I was younger, and my dad and uncle were ready to retire, they strongly encouraged me to go do something else before taking up farming. My dad had seen the world, came back, and loved farming. So I went to the University of Minnesota and earned a degree in agricultural education with the intention of becoming a county agent. 

Landing in the Seed Business

When I graduated from college I went overseas to Poland as an International 4H Youth Exchange Delegate. As an aside, while I was overseas for six months, I’d also had a “trial separation” from my now-wife. We decided we couldn’t live without each other and decided to get married. 

When I came back, the University of Minnesota Extension Service was in a hiring freeze. So, to be gainfully employed, I took a job at DeKalb seeds. At the time, I thought I would just work there until an extension job opened up. However, I wound up working in the seed industry for thirty-five years as a sales manager. I worked at DeKalb, Brevant, and Northrup King, which was one of Syngenta’s legacy companies. To finish my career in the seed business, I was the national sales manager and partial owner of Legend Seeds out of De Smet, South Dakota.  

Coming Back to the Farm

When I was in my forties, I hired a young gentleman to be one of Northrup King’s first seed advisors. At that time, that position was a full-time, independent, entrepreneurial seed dealer. He was extremely successful at it, but at some point, corporate changes came along and dissolved the program. At that point, he had the opportunity to start farming. 

At the same time, I was managing my family’s farmland: my father had died earlier and I had always managed it for my mother. After my mother died, people started calling to ask me what I was going to do with the land. Just to put them on a bit, I would say that I was going to start farming it. 

I lived forty-five miles from the farm and didn’t own any equipment. The young guy I had hired as a seed advisor asked me if I was serious. I said, well, I don’t know. And he told me, “well you should be. You can rent my machinery to farm your land.” 

And so at fifty, instead of buying a Corvette, I started farming for my midlife crisis while still working full-time in the seed industry. I retired from the seed business at fifty-eight to farm full-time. I also have a couple of part-time jobs I do off the farm and I also do some volunteer and church work, which seems to keep me busy enough for a seventy-one year old.

Exploring a Unique Operation

Steve’s operation is unique for many reasons. One, as you’ve learned, he began farming later in life. And, as he’s alluded to in this article, he doesn’t own a single piece of equipment. In Steve’s next article, we’ll take a closer look at the ins and outs of his Southwest Minnesota farm.