The Farm Stays With You
I was seven, maybe eight years old. Dad was rotary hoeing beans in the bottom ground on our farm in Kansas. He stopped the John Deere 3020, waved me up, and let me sit on the fender for a few passes. Then he put me on his lap. Then he handed me the wheel.
He showed me how to straddle the rows. When to pick up the hoe, when to drop it. After a few rounds he sat on the fender. A couple rounds after that, he jumped off and told me to keep going.
I felt like I was on top of the world.
Until I wasn't. I didn't start my turn soon enough and drove straight into the brush at the edge of the field. Dad had forgotten to tell me where reverse was. Fifty years later I still remember it like it was yesterday.
We row cropped soybeans and milo, ran cattle and horses and chickens, and put up thousands of bales of brome and alfalfa hay. Work started every day regardless of the weather. That was just the way it was.
I also remember the day I threw a fit because I wanted to combine milo alongside Dad. He said it wasn't a good idea. He finally gave in. I made it exactly one pass before I was done. Milo dust is the itchiest stuff I have ever experienced. Some lessons you have to learn the hard way.
The good memories are real. So are the hard ones. I watched equipment get auctioned off. I watched it happen to neighbors. There is not much that hits like that. You build something over a lifetime and then you stand there watching strangers bid on the pieces of it. I went to friends' auctions too. It never got easier.
Farming is not something you walk away from. It stays with you.
When I put horses on my property in Ramsey, it was not a coincidence. It was the part of that life I was not willing to let go.
What I see across Minnesota now worries me. Family farms are getting squeezed out, not because the families gave up, but because the system is working against them. Corporate agriculture and development pressure are swallowing ground that took generations to build. When a farmer dies, the estate tax can force a sale before the next generation ever gets a chance to decide what they want to do with the land.
That is not right. And it is fixable.
If elected, one of the first things I will do in St. Paul is push to eliminate the estate tax on family farms passed down within the family. Not as a loophole. As a real protection, with real penalties if the land gets flipped to a developer or a corporate operation the day after the ink dries.
The goal is to keep land farming.
I also want to strengthen the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit program and make sure dairy assistance is actually working for the farms that need it, not just the operations big enough to hire someone to navigate the paperwork.
Minnesota's family farmers are not a constituency. They are the foundation of how this state feeds itself and how rural communities hold together. We should govern like we believe that.
