Hansons carry on long family tradition

DANFORTH, Ill. — Beef production spans five, if not six, generations in the Hanson and Kuipers family in Iroquois County where they operate a forage-based program utilizing a paddock grazing system along with growing corn, soybeans and wheat.

Doug and Lisa Hanson, along with their daughters, Maddie and Isabella, own and operate Hanson Land and Cattle. Maddie owns and operates Hanson Family Meats.

“We know our daughters are at least fifth generation on both sides of the family. I’m not so sure that one of us could even be sixth generation, but I just haven’t gotten the documentation,” Doug Hanson said.

The Hansons farm about 600 acres and have 80 acres of pasture on the home farm just south of Danforth.

Maddie Hanson has nine acres on her cattle farm where Hanson Family Meats is based. She has an online retail store, selling quarters, halves and individual cuts.

“We do anywhere from 80 to 160 acres of wheat along with our corn/soybean rotations. We will pull cover crops from some of those acres and bring them to this farm for winter feed,” Doug Hanson said.

“The family also owns 160 acres across the road. So, for the most part we’ve cut corn silage off that which I still want to promote as a great opportunity for livestock producers in Illinois. Illinois knows how to raise corn, it’s insurable and at the end day it’s usually the cheapest feed, even at $7 corn, but right now with $3.50 per bushel corn, corn silage is a no-brainer.”

They currently have about 60 cows in their 16 paddock grazing system. The paddocks range primarily from four to eight acres.

The foundation of the forage-focused operation is an extensive annual and perennial forage sequence of cool-season grasses and cover crops along with beef genetics that thrive in a forage-based program.

About 80% of the cattle are purebred angus. The genetics are from Rudow Family Cattle, operated by Bill and Nancy Rudow, of Pana.

“All of the genetics go back to them and these animals were brought onto this farm to be able to do grass finish beef. When we decided to go down that road, corn was getting expensive. So, I thought for the long-term corn would continue to be expensive and I also knew for the consumer that beef was getting expensive, and we knew as a family we wanted to grow on selling meat,” Hanson said. “What we’re doing today has been in the making for 20 years.”

Forage Diversity

Hanson’s move into utilizing cover crops and forage mixes into his operation coincided with increases in input costs for corn and soybeans.

“Corn and soybean prices had gone up, but the cost of all the inputs also went up, and milk, meat and beef prices had not gone up. I was baling hay here and selling it into the horse market, and when I had to apply fertilizer, my fertilizer cost was more than what the hay was worth,” he said.

“I decided to look at alternatives and that’s how I came across using winter rye. We were already doing systems, but then all of the sudden the whole cover crop thing got real popular.

“I was fortunate because one of pastures has never been used for crop production. I’ve been here 22 years and I’m a seed guy and have never seeded that two-acre pasture. All the others will get seeded anywhere from one to four times a year if it’s not in permanent grass.

“About half the acres are permanent grass, the other half are rotated. Some people call them cover crops, we just call winter feed or summer feed, but it’s cover crops. It’s radishes, turnips, millet, sorghum-sudangrass, forage sorghum, crimson clover, it’s all these things that we’re putting together to create diverse mixes to stimulate the soil.

“I have soil tests for the last dozen years that we have increased organic matter. We don’t take any crops off here except for a forage. This system is all forage for grazing and then harvest the ones that are extra.”

Career Paths

Hanson grew up on a farm three miles west of Clifton Central High School. His family was primarily tenant farmers and owned some farmland, as well. His grandfather fed-out cattle with a feedlot.

“My sisters and I, through 4-H and FFA, had beef cattle, and that’s how we got started with breeding stock. We showed from age 8 to 18. My mom and dad were grain farmers and my dad worked for his dad on the feedlot side,” he said.

Hanson, his sister and cousin purchased some show cattle at Danforth from Danny Kuipers, his future wife’s father.

Kuipers was also an ag educator for 30 years. He was honored as the state’s top vocational ag teacher in 1993.

After his retirement, Kuipers served as University of Illinois Ford-Iroquois Extension Unit leader.

“I bought cattle from Lisa’s dad from high school and all the way through college and ended up buying some breeding stock from him,” Hanson said.

He and Lisa both followed career paths toward teaching while continuing their interest in livestock production.

Hanson attended Kankakee Community College in the ag transfer program with Illinois State University, graduating from ISU with an ag education degree in 1993. Lisa graduated from Eureka College with an elementary education degree.

After earning their degrees, they moved to Waterloo, where he taught high school agriculture and Lisa taught third grade for eight years.

“Monroe County was four hours from home. They had an ag program that was always known to be strong. So, I wanted to be a part of that, and Lisa wanted to teach and by going there we were both able to teach because back in those days in elementary education there was usually about 80 applicants for every job. Now it’s the exact opposite,” he said. “We loved it down there.

“During that time frame on the ag side of things, I found some pastures down there and bought a few head of cattle, and that’s when my wife and I went into a partnership with her mom and dad on cattle and brought some cattle down to southern Illinois.”

While teaching at Waterloo, they both received master’s degrees.

Back Home

“We both loved our careers, loved the people, the community. Our daughter, Maddie, was born four months early and was in the hospital from November to March. She weighed one pound, seven ounces at birth,” Hanson said.

“We moved back in 2001 so that we could have help from Lisa and her mom because Maddie was on monitors. Lisa’s dad died of a stroke that October of 2001. So, the fortunate thing was God brought us back here so we were able to help her mom through all of that. Her mom still lives here.

“In the spring of 2001, Central High School, my alma mater, had an opening for ag teacher. Both of Lisa’s grandparents had moved out and this house where we now live became available. So, Lisa and I were able to come back and live in the house next to Lisa’s mom and dad and I was able to teach three miles from my mom and dad.

“I taught for four years at Clifton Central until 2005. I was able to help my dad and uncle farm on the grain farming side. There was no livestock there. And Lisa’s dad and I continued our partnership here with cattle. At that time we had 20 cows. They had eight acres.

“What we’re doing here on 80 acres, he was doing the same thing on eight acres. He had eight acres divided up into four pastures. He was pretty proud of that.”

Seed Sales

After four years of teaching at Clifton, Hanson wanted to look toward another career path.

“One of the things that led me out of teaching was I loved the whole business side of things and I knew there were things that I was going to want to do with my family,” he said.

“As a high school ag teacher, you’re so restricted time wise. It’s not an 8-to-3 job. There were so many other things that I wanted to be part of that I couldn’t because of that commitment. I has business aspirations and I wanted to farm.”

After leaving teaching, he met with Lynn Wilken and Randy Wilken of what was then MWS Seeds to ask for a part-time job.

Their father, Marlin Wilken, started MWS Seeds in the 1960s. Randy and Hanson were two years apart at Clifton Central.

MWS Seeds had their own brand of corn, wheat and soybeans. They also sold forages.

“They very entrepreneurial people and that was something that really intrigued me,” Hanson said.

“When I came in to MWS, we had come across another organization, Byron Seeds in Indiana, that was providing a lot of good information and doing a lot of promoting. They had a nice thick book on different products that you could use. In this part of the world, it was alfalfa, orchard grass, oats and some pasture,” he said.

“So, in 2005 we created more of a forage division that couple together programs in the winter months around the state, and built a dealer system. We started doing six-hour programs and I think we were up to about eight or 10 locations during the winter.

“We were a couple years into that when cover crops began to become popular. The first time I ever sold tillage radishes, I sold one bag to a dairy person at Chebanse. The next year, we sold two semi loads of tillage radishes. At that time, I was the only person managing forage and cover crop calls. That is how fast that whole thing changed.

“That year, we sold two semi loads, we had a lot of rain events in the area. We had a lot of wet holes, and guys went in during July and August and put tillage radishes in the wet holes.

“For years, people will say they could tell where the radishes were and where they weren’t. It really was a game changer to give us some diversity away from just winter rye.”

The Wilkens and Keith Knapp then founded Ashkum-based ProHarvest Seeds in 2012. The business has grown to 130 dealers.

“Corn and soybeans are our main seed. We love selling wheat. We have a great dealer system and we do work with a lot of people on forages and cover crops,” Hanson said.

Always A Teacher

Hanson’s teaching experiences come through in his approach when talking seed with customers.

“The thing that I enjoy, too, I don’t go to a farm trying to sell cover crops to somebody. I’ll ask them what they’re doing and if it comes up, we’ll talk about it and I share what I know,” Hanson said.

“I try to help them because of the experiences I’ve had. My profession really is not the seed, it’s the solutions and situations or opportunity and programs,” he said.

“I like that I’m able to have all of these things rather than just go to an office everyday and say who am I going to call and sell corn seed to in Illinois. There’s a lot of corn and soybean seed sold in Illinois.

“When I started with Lynn and Randy 20 years ago, that is when we saw all these mergers and sales of seed companies. Like when Syngenta got sold, the family that used to service out of the Gibson City area supplied a lot of small seeds.

“A lot of the companies that bought those businesses didn’t care about the small seed business. That’s how here in Iroquois County we focused on that and we also created systems for the hay and the pastures and that led into cover crops.

“We also kind of created a niche opportunity in a part of the world most people wouldn’t have expected it to be. They’d expected it to be in western or southern Illinois, not here, but it’s because of the way the industry has changed.”