Stories

Where does your story begin?

Everyone has a story to tell. The story of your childhood neighbor might start off very familiar and then become something completely unknown to you after years of separation. Your spouse’s story might have started off very different from your own, but now it is so intertwined with yours that you can’t remember when it was foreign to you. We were all born in the village, town, farm, or city we were for reasons that aren’t easy to articulate. Our lives have gone in the directions they have for events that have happened within and outside of our control. Whether we have been here for generations, a couple decades, or months, we all are part of the strong fabric of our community. This page is dedicated to the people we know and have met here in the rural communities of Southeastern Minnesota and West Central Wisconsin and how our stories intersect and share common threads.

Cole

I farm because I grew up doing it. I grew up on my grandpa’s hip, on my dad’s hip. While following them around and riding around with them, I learned a lot. I feel like I know more about life and get to learn more about life than the [...]

March 19th, 2021|Blog, Stories|

Mariana & Guillermo

Guillermo: “When I first came here in 1999, I had a girlfriend in Mexico. We were dating for a year. I wanted to marry her and I could only get the money for a proper wedding if I worked in the states. I left without telling her because I [...]

April 24th, 2020|Blog, Stories|

John

In 1884, my great Grandpa Johann decided he wanted to emigrate to the US from Langnau, Switzerland. They had 4 kids and they sent over the oldest son to check it out. He was 19 at the time. He went first and sent a letter back home to tell [...]

September 12th, 2019|Blog, Stories|

Rogelio

"I grew up in a small village in Mexico and was raised by my grandparents. My grandpa counted on me the most because we raised animals and he trusted me to take care of the cows. I would wake up at 5 and go check on the animals. Then, [...]

July 11th, 2019|Stories|

Bill

“My grandpa bought this piece of land around 1940 and when my dad and mom got married, they bought the farm from my grandpa. My grandpa’s parents came here from Austria in the late 1800s. Growing up, there were nine of us kids and we all chipped in on [...]

January 18th, 2019|Stories|

Helene

“When my parents were in their late 30s, my father’s parents died, and the family farm was put up for sale and there was no way for my dad to continue farming in Switzerland. There were ads in an agricultural magazine about farms for sale in Wisconsin and my [...]

December 1st, 2018|Stories|

Apolonio

"When I was 10, I started working in the fields with my dad harvesting coffee. I would do that with him every summer and when I finished the coffee harvest, I went back to school. When I was 14, I went to another part of my state to harvest [...]

October 1st, 2018|Stories|

Juan

"I spent my adolescent years working around cattle. My dad worked for a large oil company in Mexico and when he retired, he used all the money he made to buy 1500 hectares in the neighboring state of Veracruz. Back in that time, he paid what would be the equivalent [...]

March 12th, 2018|Stories|

Elma

"We came here from Switzerland in 1950 without ever seeing our farm, only pictures. There was an advertisement in the newspaper and we made a down payment. We knew we had to learn English so we studied and it was hard. We came over by boat and then took a train from New [...]

November 30th, 2017|Stories|

Adam

Adam loves living out in the country, he says it is peaceful here. He grew up in a small town in the mountains of the state of Veracruz in Mexico. When he grew up, he was accustomed to caring for pigs, rabbits, hens, and goats. "We would use a lot of the resources around us [...]

November 22nd, 2017|Stories|