Harvest of Thanks

Unexpected Blessings: How Regenerative Cattle Production Shaped One Family's Faith Journey

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 04:32:31 GMT

Dawn and Grant Breitkreutz’s journey into regenerative agriculture started nearly 25 years ago on their cattle and farming operation, Stoney Creek Farm, located near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. Their use of regenerative practices has lowered their costs and improved their profitability, but its also shaped their faith journey.

Regenerative Journey at Stoney Creek Started With Cattle
Grant Breitkreutz says their first leap of faith into regenerative farming started with their cow herd. “We were going for more grass, more grazing days, and we really didn’t even think about it being regenerative at that time.”

They transitioned to rotational grazing, plus utilization of crop residue and cover crops. So, their herd is grazing at least nine, but weather dependent, up to 11 months a year, which Grant says has lowered their feed costs. “If the cows can be out here doing it on their own and we can provide them cover crops and stalks and crop residues and let them feed themselves. It’s money in the bank.”

Thankful for Record Cattle Prices in 2025
While 2025 has offered cattle prices they never thought they’d see in their lifetime, Grant says these practices allowed them to be profitable when cattle prices were low. “The cattle operation on our farm has pulled us through the lows. To be honest the cattle operation is subsidizing the crop production right now,” he remarks.

So, they have a lot to be thankful for, especially as they can now use some of their profits to build for the future including some long overdue infrastructure upgrades, including new fences and additional water facilities. “Yeah, they pulled us through the bad times, but there was never enough profit there to spend money on machinery. I mean, you did what you had to do. You bought feed wagons, you bought loaders, you did that kind of thing. Now we can actually take the profits from these cattle and really do some stuff that we should have been doing all along.”

Cattle Help Improve Soil Health
The cattle are also helping them improve the soil health on their farm says Grant. “We firmly believe that a cow can speed up the rebuilding of biology and a soil by about two years.” And the cattle are part of their regenerative cropping system.

Dawn describes the breadth of their regenerative operation, which follows the basic soil health principles. “We are a hundred percent no till operation so that we promote the biology and the soil. Adding diversity back into it in seed and in cows and livestock and all that sort of thing is bringing that health back.,” she says.

Cutting Costs
As a result they’ve been able to cut fertilizer and pesticide cost, which is a tall order as Stoney Creek farm is located in central Minnesota and the heart of row crop country. Grant says, “I’d say we’re saving about $140 to $160 an acre on, say, for example, a corn crop. We’ve figured out how to spoon feed the crop.”

Getting Back to Mother Nature
Dawn says another goal was to raise cattle and crops the way Mother Nature intended. “So, our soil health is vital to our livestock, to the crops that we grow, to the food that we grow, and to the humans that we’re growing.”

And she says that has led to their own branded products. “We’re selling chickens and eggs and beef and pork.
All of our stock that we finish or feed on our farm are raised on grains that are only produced here on our land.”

Regenerative Farming Shaped Faith Journey
However, their regenerative farming journey also provided an unexpected blessing as it made the Breitkreutz’s more aware of their spiritual connection to Mother Nature and the land.

Dawn says she never realized how much the Bible has to do with farming. “But you can’t be out here and pay attention to all the details and all the complications and chaos that’s in perfect harmony and not believe in a higher power that put this all together.”

On the office wall of Stoney Creek Farm are several bible verses and Dawn’s favorite is listed at the top. “I think I have three boards now that have Bible verses on them that, you know, they seem to appear at just the right time. And I’ll stop what I’m doing and I’ll find a place on the board to add to it.”

So on Thanksgiving and every day she says they feel blessed to be able to farm the way nature intended. “I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be able to take care of God’s creation.” And to bring their kids back into the operation to keep that legacy alive.

How an Iowa Corn Field Saved the Los Angeles Lakers

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 19:16:06 GMT

It was the night of Jan. 17, 1960. The Minneapolis Lakers NBA basketball team had lost to the St. Louis Hawks on Sunday evening in St. Louis. The team boarded their DC3 at 8:30 that night for their flight back to Minneapolis.

As John Steffes explains, the plane lost electrical power soon after takeoff. They had no instruments, no radar and virtually no vision as they flew into a snowstorm somewhere over Iowa. The pilots decided to try and descend low enough to see the ground and perhaps find a landing spot. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were over the town of Carroll, Iowa.

“One guy who lived by the water tower, he took his kids to the basement,” says John Steffes, who lives in Carroll, Iowa. “It just shook the house. It’s a loud plane. So when you buzz the town at least nine times, you’re waking people up.”

A Loud Roar

Carroll resident, Jack Donovan was in bed, now in the early hours of Jan. 18,1960.

“The plane woke me,” Donovan recalls. “You could hear it go this way and then came that way, and finally, it really got loud. And I got up and my neighbor across the street was waving his arms at me. He said, ‘duck!’”

The pilots knew the roar of the engines were waking people. They could see porch lights coming on, but didn’t know where they were, and flying blind, the pilots couldn’t see if there was some place to land.

“The plane came around the water tower and as it turned left, he saw something out in front of the water tower,” says Donovan. “And he could look out and see this dark spot out here.”

A Corn Field Landing Pad

It was a corn field.

A wet fall had prevented the area from being harvested, and the pilots decided it would become their runway.

The DC3 was the right type of plane to make such a landing.

Norman Hutcheson, also a Carroll resident, remembers coming to this spot to see what had taken place.

“It was just a cornfield,” Hutcheson says. “And here here’s this airplane, and it made a track down through the corn and was setting up against the fence down there, and it just looked like he landed in an airport, except it wasn’t an airport.”

A Sight to See

Townspeople rushed to the scene to see the fate of the plane and passengers.

“At that time, I don’t think Carroll had any ambulances, so to speak,” Hutcheson says. “So there were two or three funeral hearses they used as ambulances. And when the fellows got out of the airplane, I guess they wondered what they were sitting there for.”

But the hearses would no have business that night, save to take an NBA basketball team into a town that was now wide awake after a DC3 had buzzed the water tower several times. Townspeople opened the hotel and the switchboard, providing a way to call home and a bed for the night.

1 of Only 8 NBA Teams

The team took a bus back to Minneapolis the next day. The plane was repaired, and a bulldozer cleared a path in the cornfield for it to take off three days later. The team continued to use the plane, but if the pilots had not pulled off the landing — all would have perished, and NBA basketball would be very different today.

“There were only eight teams in the NBA back then,” Steffes says. “And so the Lakers were this close to being wiped out that night.”

And the Minneapolis Lakers, who were to move to Los Angels the next year, would have ceased to exist, eliminating an iconic team in today’s NBA.

An Iconic Outdoor Court

On the 50th anniversary of the lifesaving landing here, the town and the LA Lakers joined together to build a outdoor basketball court at the site were it all happened.

An outdoor court in the colors of the L.A. Lakers marks the spot where the plane landed in 1960.

(Russ Hnatusko )

“This is almost the precise spot where it landed,” Steffes says, “so I think it was destiny to build a little court here in honor of that event. And it’s a good reminder of, like Doc said earlier, we have the good neighbor spirit, the Good Samaritan spirit. We’d like to think that continues today.”

The court is marked with the LA Lakers colors of purple and gold and has a light blue border, a nod to the colors of the old Minneapolis Lakers. You can come here today, to play basketball yourself at the site where a town welcomed a NBA team when they made their emergency landing in a snowy cornfield.

A Symbol of Civilization: How the Iconic Windmill Helped Farmers Settle the West

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:48:26 GMT

More than 100 years ago they represented life itself on a farm. Dotting the landscape of the plains, the windmill carried water from deep underground to the surface.

Today, it’s serenity in rhythm as fan blades spin in the wind. The sounds of yesterday’s progress echo across the acreage at the Mid-America Windmill Museum in Kendallville, Ind. Each of the roughly 50 windmills dotting the grounds, tells a story from generations past.

“The design hasn’t changed much,” says Mike Fitzgibbon, the museum’s president of the board of directors. “You have your fan blade, and you have the gearbox that transforms the wind into mechanical power or force and that pumps the water.”

Before windmills, families had to hand pump water for both people and livestock.

(Solomon D. Butcher via Library of Congress)

This part of the country in northeast Indiana was once a hotbed for mill manufacturers.

“At the turn of the century, in this tri-state area [Indiana, Ohio and Michigan], there were more than 100 different windmill manufacturers,” adds Todd Skinner, a board member with the Mid-America Windmill Museum.

Pam Younce, who runs publicity, says the location was the key to the industry.

“This was the hub of windmill companies because of the wood that was available; the poplar, the oak and the hickory,” Younce says.

Poultry with windmill from the Nebraska Prairie Settlement era of 1886 to early 1900s.

(Solomon D. Butcher via Library of Congress)

While the region was well suited for manufacturing the parts and pieces, it was points west that provided the backdrop for the windmill’s rise as an agricultural icon.

First patented in 1854, Daniel Halladay created a windmill that could automatically turn to face changing wind directions and mechanically self-regulate its speed.

“There’s a lot of people who understand the mechanics of things if you work on the farm,” Fitzgibbon says. “He probably had to be involved with agriculture of some sort back in those days.”

In the early days, all of the windmill construction was done by hand.

“The towers were built from the ground up,” Skinner explains. “They would start putting the tower together on the ground and work their way up to the top. Then they would use a gin pole and a winch to winch the windmill up and set it in place.”

As the west expanded and surface water in America’s vast arid regions became harder to find, the windmill stood in the gap. It became a stoic symbol of civilization, silhouetted against the West’s painted sky.

“When you’re out on a 160,000-acre ranch they were very useful and the only way to get water to the cattle,” Younce says.

Windmills were central to farm life for early settlers.

(Vogel’s Studio, Didsbury, Alberta)

“It was their lifeblood,” Skinner adds. “If you didn’t have water, you couldn’t have your farm or take care of your livestock or your family.”

Windmills also helped drive settlers to new regions as water stations dotted the railroad every 20 to 50 miles in service of thirsty steam-powered locomotives.

Fabric-covered sails gave way to wooden blades, which turned into metal fans and towers by the late 1800s. Eventually self-oiling gearboxes helped reduce maintenance and improved longevity.

By the 1930s, $32 would get you an 8' windmill and 30' tower. Today, Skinner says that same setup costs closer to $10,000.

The windmill is a piece of history, and the Mid-American Windmill Museum is pouring back into the community thanks to tours and history lessons for local kids.

“Most kids don’t grow up on farms anymore so it’s real enlightening to see these kids understand how this all works and where the water actually comes from,” Skinner says.

While they give a lot of tours to kids, it’s not uncommon to find a nostalgic adult sitting among the mills, transported to days gone by.

“A lot of people who grew up with windmills back in the day recognize all the sounds,” explains Skinner, who handles most of the maintenance at the museum. “All of these sounds mean that something needs attention and I need to get to work.”

“A lot of people enjoy the noises,” Fitzgibbon echoes. “You don’t hear noises like that in the cities anymore. You hear honking horns and sirens, but you can come out here and enjoy the serenity of what it might have been like in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

Back to another time, before the hustle and bustle of modern America.

“Visitors say when the windmills are making noise they are talking or they’re singing to them,” Younce adds.

A song from the past, as these legends stand tall against time’s horizon and serve as a reminder that simple ingenuity can conquer even the harshest foe.

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