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Farm Beginnings™ Profile: Jon Kaiser
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Jon Kaiser |
Jon Kaiser is less than a year away from paying off his Farm Beginnings™ livestock loan. He smiles when he says this, because it means he’s just a little bit closer to making farming more than just a fantasy.
“I’m surprised I’ve come this far,” says the 35-year-old while sitting at his kitchen table, his growing cowherd grazing a nearby pasture.
Kaiser grew up in Albert Lea, Minn., just north of the Iowa border, and got the farming bug as a teenager while pulling weeds out of soybeans on a local farm. That same farm produced hogs, and Kaiser learned early on he liked working around livestock. After graduating from high school in 1987, he studied agriculture in college and worked on various farms, including a dairy operation.
But he didn’t see any way of getting started in farming on his own with limited financial resources. He liked raising hogs but this was the early 1990s, the beginning of an era—which has yet to end— when farmers were being told the only way to produce pork was to invest in expensive confinement facilities and sign exclusive packer contracts.
One day, while working on a hog farm, Kaiser read an article about a farmer in Michigan who was producing milk using a system called managed rotational grazing. The system can be set up and operated at a fraction of the cost of conventional dairying, and the farmer was making a good profit, according to the article.
“That was what clicked for me,” Kaiser recalls. “It seemed the way to get started from the ground floor with nothing was through grazing. I also became convinced that cows belong outside; it’s the way nature intended.”
In 1998, Kaiser enrolled in the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings™ course. Through the class, Jon learned about financial planning and goal setting. At the time, the course was focused mostly on dairy grazing, and Kaiser met several other beginning farmers who were interested in starting from scratch using grass, good animal husbandry and sound business strategies. Even more importantly, he met established farmers from the area who were proving that grass farming was a viable alternative. Two of these farmers were Dan and Muriel French, veteran graziers in southeast Minnesota’s Dodge County. In 1999, Kaiser began share-milking with the Frenchs. Through this arrangement, Kaiser owns 20 percent of the 165-cow herd and gets 20 percent of the milk check. The young farmer pays for 20 percent of the grain fed to the cows, and covers the veterinary bill for his particular animals. The pasture, forage and machinery are provided, as well as housing for Kaiser, his wife Mindy, and their 4-year-old son, Nicholas.
In 2000, Kaiser was one of the first Farm Beginnings™ graduates to receive a no-interest livestock loan. The program, which was made possible by Heifer International, gives recipients five years to pay off the loan; during the first two years, no payments have to be made. Kaiser got 15 cows through the program, and bought 10 with his own money. Getting the Heifer International loan helped smooth the way for a bank loan, which made it possible to buy eight more cows. With the addition of calves his cows have produced, that brings Kaiser’s milking herd up to 37 cows.
Kaiser says the share-milking arrangement has been a good post-graduate experience for him after Farm Beginnings™. He’s gotten to manage a grazing operation, while being given the responsibility of handling his share of the finances. In addition, the French farm is a member of PastureLand Cooperative, a group of southeast Minnesota grazing operations that market grass-based cheese and butter. That means Kaiser has seen firsthand how a dairy farm can add value to its production. He also belongs to a network of graziers from the area who meet on each other’s farms regularly to discuss management strategies.
“Before Farm Beginnings™ I didn’t have anyone I could just call up or go to for questions,” says Kaiser. “Now I have a number of people I can call on.”
That network may prove invaluable as Kaiser works to push the fantasy part of farming even further aside. The share-milking arrangement has been great, says Kaiser, but he and his wife are looking for a permanent home for their cowherd. Mindy works at a hospital in Rochester, so the couple would like to stay in the area. They are willing to consider various possibilities, including buying an acreage and renting the grazing land.
“Just going out and buying a farm, that’s not an attainable goal for me right now. But I would like to take the next step of being on my own,” says Kaiser as he slips on his work clothes and heads out the door. “I’m getting anxious to take that next step.”
—Originally published in the Oct/Nov/Dec 2004 Land Stewardship Letter
Click here for more on Farm Beginnings™. You can also call 507-523-3366 in southeast Minnesota or 320-269-2105 in western Minnesota.
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©Land Stewardship Project, 2001
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