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"Dad said to get away for four years after college to gain real-world experience," he says. "It helped give me contacts on the retail and farm sides."
Together with Deb's husband, Tony Harpenau, the families own equipment in partnership and share labor, but they manage their operations independently.
Their three homes, set back from the road on graded knolls, overlook a rippling canvas of river-bottom crops. To the east, the Loess Hills sweep upward; the Missouri River arcs beneath the western horizon.
Leo's job at a Sioux City, Iowa, packinghouse helped secure a down payment on 160 acres when he was 21. "Dad gave me 16 sows as a wedding present in 1969," says Leo. "That's how Bev and I got started."
By 1977, he quit the packing plant and built a 250-head feeder pig complex. He had expanded to 660 sows by the time he quit raising hogs in 1999. Then he turned his focus to increasing row crops to 2,000 acres. Bev worked as a surgical nurse from 1969 to 1975 and ran the restaurant in Sloan in the evenings from 1985 until they sold it in 2002.
"Bev's been so supportive," Leo says. "She signed off on and helped pay off loans to grow our business."
Krista and Greg married in 1997, after graduating from South Dakota State University. Krista, who grew up on a dairy farm near Rock Rapids, works as a crop insurance specialist at Farm Credit Services in Sioux City. Her risk-management perspective, including life and disability insurance, is an asset. "We're keeping an eye on crop insurance," she says. "It'll be interesting to see if government subsidies decrease."
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