Kent & Barry Holden
Farming for Generations
Holden Farms’ historical past will also be traced again to 1876 when John and Emma Holden moved their circle of relatives to a small farm on Wall Side road at the east aspect of Northfield, Minnesota.
John and Emma ultimately became the farm over to son William and his spouse Mathilda who persevered farming on the Wall Side road Farm all the way through the early 1900s. William and Mathilda’s sons Carroll and Howard later turned into concerned with the farm, with Howard ultimately changing into sole proprietor.
In the course of the early Nineteen Forties, Howard persevered his circle of relatives’s farming custom in quite a lot of farming actions, together with crop and dairy farming and turkey manufacturing. In 1939 at a Northfield dance, Howard met trainer Evelyn Allen, the daughter of famend turkey breeders John and Amanda Allen from Radium, Minnesota. Howard and Evelyn have been married in 1942.
Our heritage as a farm circle of relatives is essential to us. We attempt to honor that heritage each day in the best way we paintings and are living.” – Barry Holden
Evelyn Holden
Through the mid Nineteen Forties, Evelyn and Howard had begun to pay attention their efforts on turkey farming. Over the process the following a number of years the couple had 4 sons, each and every of whom would ultimately turn out to be concerned within the circle of relatives’s farming actions. Following Howard’s loss of life in 1973, the 4 sons – John, Kent, Barry and Craig – expanded the turkey operation to incorporate hog manufacturing, feed milling and fertilizer manufacturing.
Holden Farms grew all the way through the Eighties because the 4 brothers pioneered probably the most area’s first contract spouse preparations for hog manufacturing. In 1991, John and Craig offered their parts of the corporate to Kent and Barry, who assumed sole possession duties of the hog farming operation plus a portion of the turkey manufacturing mission.
Beneath Kent and Barry’s management – and with the farm’s focal point now completely on hog and turkey manufacturing – Holden Farms flourished all through the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. These days, Holden Farms operates 3 turkey farms, is part proprietor in a turkey processing plant, owns 40,000 sows and has just about 200 contract companions within the area.
Howard and Evelyn Holden
However whilst our expansion has been important, our circle of relatives’s solution to accountable circle of relatives farming is equal to it used to be on the Wall Side road Farm in 1876: paintings onerous, stay fair, and worth the folks, animals and land.
