Don Draayer on Farming in Hollandale, Minnesota

Our Program on November 24th was a presentation by our own member, Dr Don Draayer. It was sort of a personal profile, but had the extra touch we've grown to expect from Don. Juxtaposed over a history of farming in Southern Minnesota, Don described his growing up in Hollandale, MN. The town of Hollandale was rescued from a marsh, and sold to farmers in 20 acre tracts. All of the settlers were Dutch from an area in Iowa and they started farming the marsh. In the 1920s and 1930s, farming was not mechanized, and it was backbreaking work. Produce was sold by each farmer. Starting about 1936, the farms had been consolidated into 80 to 160 acres, and much of the work had been transferred to migrant workers. The farmers had organized to the point where the buyers of their produce had to deal with a farmers coop. During this period, Don was a young kid and attending school and church in town. In the next phase (from 1951 to 1970) the farms consolidated into 200 to 400 acres in size, and mechanization of the farms took the place of the migratory workers, and the start of chemical farming occurred. Many of the farms started to specialize in crops, and Don was a teenager and college student at Bethel College. The next - and present phase - shows super-sized farms (800 plus acres), vegetable wholesalers buying truckloads of product, and most of the town residents are now commuters, and the stores in town are now closed and the town is almost a ghost village. With this background, Don traced his growth from little kid to farm worker to college student to teacher to superintendent to National Superintendent of the Year to today. (Story by Tad Shaw)