When it comes to stewardship, no one is more suited to the work than farmers. It comes with the territory. No other profession even comes close. Farmers inherently understand the importance of taking care of their ground, as the world relies on how well they do their job. Farmers also understand that if you take care of the land, it will take care of you in turn – but moreover, it gives you the means to provide for others.

For many farmers – and especially for Lud Hohm, 71; Jesse Hohm, 41; and Dan Strutz, 40, who farm near Yale, South Dakota – that principle of stewardship is closely intertwined with their faith.

“Ultimately, when it comes to stewardship, it’s knowing that the reality is the land isn’t really ours, it’s the Lord’s,” Dan said.

Lud, Jesse, and Dan are part of the congregation of Mennonite Brethren, and they trace their faith and agricultural roots back hundreds of years.

“They were farmers by trade from way back in the Reformation era that were trying to live out their faith,” Dan said. “Mennonites want to be a people of peace and good stewards of the land, with a very agrarian culture and history over the past 500 years.”

Founded in Holland in the 16th century, the Mennonite faith eventually migrated to Prussia (modern day Poland) and parts of Russia in search of religious freedoms. Eventually in the late 1800s, many Mennonites fled from persecution in those regions and came to the United States. Much of Lud’s ancestry can be traced back to this era, and these migrations led to the establishment of Hohm Farms.

“Three-quarters of my relatives came to South Dakota from Russia in the 1880s for religious freedoms,” Lud said. “My grandpa came from Germany through Ellis Island in the early 1900s. He couldn’t speak English and didn’t have money, but he had a sponsor in South Dakota, so that’s how we got here.”

As a kid growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Lud didn’t know for sure if farming was what he wanted to do for a living, but he remained open to that prospect. He went to SDSU for college, graduating in 1976 with a degree in agronomy. Originally, he and his wife, Julie, were on the path to be missionaries doing ag-related work abroad, but circumstances led to them returning home to farm.

“Long story short – doors closed, and I felt that God was telling us to come home and farm, and we’ve been doing that ever since,” Lud said. “My dad was a very good farmer and a good teacher, and that was ingrained in me.”

Dan’s journey to the farm was a bit more indirect.

“My history is I have no business farming or trying to be a farmer,” he said.

Dan grew up as a city boy from Milwaukee with no ag background. Originally, he went to college at Minnesota State University in Mankato, then followed that up with seminary school at Bethel Seminary in the Twin Cities. In 2009, while on a mission trip to Australia with the Campus Crusade (CRU), he met Susanna Hohm.

“I thought she was cute, she thought I was annoying,” Dan said.

TWO YEARS LATER, THEY WERE MARRIED.

Although he grew up nondenominational, Dan was eventually called to be a solo pastor for a congregation of Mennonite Brethren in Mountain Lake, Minnesota. Over the eight years at this calling, he started to understand the farmer’s perspective and gain more respect for the impact farmers have on their communities.

“I used to poo-poo small town ag, but God’s done a real number on my heart,” Dan said. “Mountain Lake is an ag town of 2000 people, and a lot of the congregation were farmers and a part of the ag community.”

While many operations are concerned about their legacy and impose a sense of obligation onto their children about stepping in to carrying the farm forward, Lud had never pressured anyone into any specific path. Eventually, though, circumstances led Dan and Susanna to reevaluate what they wanted to do with their lives. Susanna’s brother, Jesse, had also moved off the farm and was working his own career, meaning neither of Lud’s children were involved in his operation, and Lud was approaching retirement age.

“After what happened in 2020 and with Covid, we assessed what we wanted to do,” Dan said. “I wanted a break from ministry and to be closer to family. If you go back five years ago, Lud was 65 and neither kid was on the farm, so we had a conversation about the future. God grabbed all our hearts and said, let’s get more integrated.”

MEANWHILE, LUD AND HIS WIFE, JULIE, WERE FIGURING OUT THEIR RETIREMENT PLANS…

“Three years ago, Julie and I were talking with an estate planner about what we could do to start winding down the operation a bit,” Lud said. “A bit out of the blue, Dan and Susanna wanted to come back, and Jesse wanted to get more involved in the farm, so our future turned around again, and it’s been very positive.”

“We stopped him from retiring,” Dan said. “Lud has always said there’s been no pressure to come back to the farm, but it’s endearing for us to tell him that we WANT to be a part of that.”

When Dan first came to work with his father-in-law and brother-in-law, he was very green about many aspects of agriculture, but he retained a strong willingness to dig in and learn.

“I could tell you what corn and beans were, but that was about it,” he said. “I knew I didn’t know anything, but for me – when you have a couple college degrees, learning is something you can do well. So, I asked Lud how to learn and he pointed me to the Ag PhD workshops, so I went and started asking questions and learning and growing.”

In addition to attending Ag PhD workshops, Dan jumpstarted his ag education by watching Ag PhD online, listening to podcasts of the Ag PhD Radio Show, and taking online courses from SDSU. The biggest focus for him was learning about fertility and soils, which calls back to his cornerstone philosophy of stewardship.

“When it comes to fertility, the question is how to put what we need to put into the land and do it in such a way that aligns with how a creative designer God has made it,” he said. “A lot of the Neal Kinsey stuff, a lot of balancing soil really piques my interest because God made the soil to function a certain way, so let’s get it to where it needs to be.”

Stewardship has always been important for Lud, as well. His farm has a long-standing relationship with Hefty Seed Company and his local agronomist, Jason Leyendecker, going back decades, and he greatly values the guidance provided that allows him to better take care of the land.

“We have worked together so much, and we haven’t had any failures,” Lud said. “You learn to trust people and work with them. When I call, he’ll answer or call right back. We have a two-way relationship that’s very important to me because I believe in loyalty, not in running around everywhere to get every last dollar.”

A significant reason the relationship between Hefty Seed and the Hohm farm has been so successful is Hefty’s philosophy of stewardship and education – giving back to support the ag community – closely matches Dan’s and Lud’s beliefs.

“Working with Hefty’s enhances what we’re trying to do,” Lud said. “One of the things I appreciate most about the Hefty company is their willingness to teach. It takes a lot of effort to educate people, and you might not even have a job if they weren’t that way. To me, that’s huge. I don’t know of any other company – John Deere or other seed companies – that has reached out to educate us. I don’t even know of a single one.”

“I’m an older millennial that’s probably skeptical of what people are trying to sell me,” Dan said. “And yet, when I go to all those workshops, Darren and Brian and all those guys do a great job of not putting on their salesman hats; they wear their educator hats very well. It’s not a sales pitch. That endears me because they could try to make a sale and they don’t.”

“One anecdote with Jason – we were talking about corn planting population, and he recommended we cut our seeding rates to match our fertility. I was like, ‘You’re a seed salesman, and you’re telling me to buy less!?’ For them, it’s not about making money, it’s about making sure the customer does the best he can.”

Dan is just beginning his second season working on the farm, but his big focus has been learning more about better fertility management. He’s worked to bring the responsibility for soil sampling and analysis in-house, and he wants to get more granular with his data.

THAT’S WHY HE’S STARTED USING VRAFY AS A TOOL TO BEGIN GRID SAMPLING.

Combined with the knowledge he’s gained from Neal Kinsey and Ag PhD workshops, he’s dialing in fertility plans not only for N, P, and K, but also going beyond to take a closer look at calcium levels, base saturation percentages, and micronutrient balances.

“As I’ve told both Lud and Jesse, new acres are expensive,” he said. “Rather than trying to go out and buy more, we should try to do more with what we have and make as positive of an environment as we can for that crop to grow. To be clear, I think that all goes back to my belief that a creator designed our soils – when you can get the soils to be how the Creator wanted them to be, they will produce for you. But if we try to get yields and only take from the ground, we’re not being good stewards of what God has made.”

For Lud, Jesse, and Dan, good stewardship is not just a means to an end of making yields and money, but rather something that generates a pathway to helping others. Farming enables them to give back – not only financially, but through dedicating time to support the community in service to church, school, and other local organizations, as well as local, state, and national boards. That’s part of why they value how Brian and Darren have worked to give back in their own way – not only with information, but community support.

“I really appreciate the Hefty guys,” Lud said. “All the scholarships that they give to students and how they help people learn, they wouldn’t have to do that. They could pocket a bit more, but I really appreciate them giving back. That’s important to me.”

“There’s a bigger picture than being a big farmer,” Dan said. “It’s not about us, it’s about who we can help. I would say that in two years, going from no ag background to being at the heart of it, I’ve been pretty fortunate to come into the situation I have and be able to learn. All the things that are under the Hefty umbrella, like Ag PhD and such, have been very helpful in making me be the best producer I can be.”