Dad was a big proponent of saying the farm was always going to be there, so I better be sure I want to do it,” Nick said. “So, I figured I should make sure it was what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to stick to farming without seeing the other possibilities.”

Following high school, Nick attended South Dakota State University in the pre-med program as a biology and chemistry major, with the goal of becoming a physician. Upon completion of his undergraduate degree, he needed to gain some experience in the field before entering med school, so he worked in human medical research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for two and a half years. During this time, Nick came to realize that this career wasn’t for him, either.

“After working at Mayo, I realized that it wasn’t exactly what I thought it’d be like,” Nick said. “I had an image in my head of what it meant to be a physician, and it wasn’t the same as the reality I discovered when shadowing.”

So, he left the research job and came back to the farm to help out with harvest while deciding what to do next. Unfortunately, he picked a tough time to come back – the fall of 2009, in which the Strom operation suffered numerous delays and setbacks due to cool, wet conditions.

“The harvest that year was the harvest from hell,” Nick said. “We were harvesting until Christmas.”

Despite this difficult time, Nick began turning the corner as to whether he should pursue farming for a living.

“When I came back in 2009, I got to help on a whole different level than I ever had before,” Nick said. “I had a lot of fun. I wasn’t sitting there and thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this.’ It started to get to the point where I could see myself doing it.”

After that difficult – yet surprisingly fun – harvest, Nick seriously considered returning to the farm, but he felt held back by a lack of knowledge about how to run a business. So, he went back to school, this time attending North Dakota State University. In 2012, he returned from Fargo with an MBA and his wife-to-be, Jenna.

“Once I realized that we were going to get married and she’d be okay with coming back to farm, that solidified the decision, and I didn’t have to keep on wondering if there would be something else for me,” Nick said. “Farming was probably there for me that whole time, but I needed to get there in my own time. Basically, it was a nine-year path after high school back to the farm.”

However, he doesn’t consider any of this journey wasted time, as he has been able to apply the principles from medical research toward improving his farming practices.

“I didn’t realize at the time that all the stuff I’d done in medical school and research was actually going to be helpful, but now it’s obvious,” Nick said. “The biggest part of what I did then was data interpretation and crunching the numbers. And you know what? That’s the same stuff that we do on the farm. Every year, you think of things you want to try, whether that’s a new product or agronomic practice, and you kind of think of a way to set up your study and make sure the data is not going to be skewed. At harvest, you get to see the results and find out what you’ve learned. In the end, I think it actually ended up making me a lot stronger than I ever would have been had I just started farming out of high school.”

Nick’s father, Alan, fueling up one of the farm’s older tractors. Nick credits his father for being open to innovating with the family operation.

Openness to new ideas and having a willingness to change is important for any farm to remain innovative and profitable, and it’s an attitude cultivated by Nick’s father, Alan. Though Nick has been on the farm full time for nine years now, Alan is the primary manager and decision-maker.

“Dad has always been one to push things the hardest,” Nick said. “He isn’t one of those guys so deep in his ways that you can’t get away from it. My freedom to do some of the things I’m doing comes from his willingness to accept change, and that’s a big, big reason why we’re successful.”

As such, the Stroms have been early adopters to several practices that have improved their yields, such as utilizing variable rate fertility and seeding, as well as converting their tillage practices toward strip-till.

For Nick, his research experience led him to conduct his own on-farm plot trials while learning more about several products and practices from watching Ag PhD, as well as consulting with Hefty researchers Glenn Herz and Rob Fritz. In 2021, he’s planning to conduct full field evaluations on Hefty Naturals products like Alpha Complete, Boost 10, and N-Hydro.

There’s really exciting things going on in the naturals industry right now,” Nick said. “I love doing this stuff. What plants do at different growth stages with certain products and how that makes yield, how to really utilize all the different things Hefty’s is testing, I just think it’s the coolest thing. I can’t get enough of research, so I’m probably annoying those guys to some degree, but that’s where my interest really lies.”

While cultivating a passion for research has helped improve Nick’s operation, for questions relating to regular production inputs, he also draws upon the relationship with his Hefty agronomist, Justin Hanson, to guide him through decisions and help him make the best possible return on investment.

“I could go on forever about Justin,” Nick said. “He’s always going to make sure that I’m getting the best deals all the time by combining crop protection programs. He knows it all, he’s studied it all, so I know I’m always getting the best deal I can get. On top of that, if I have questions or concerns about anything, I don’t have to wait for answers. There’s no stress or anxiety about it because I know it’s going to get done.”

So, though he had a long road back to the farm, Nick has been able to use his experiences to benefit his family’s operation, but no matter your background, he believes that keeping an open mind and being willing to try new things is a trait that will benefit any farmer.

“Knowledge is power, and the thing I love about farming is you can learn something new every day,” Nick said. “I just love it. Every year, every growing season is different, and you take something away that makes you better. If you’re not happy with where you’re at, you have the power to change it.”