Small Farms, Cows, and Generational Wealth

May 23, 2025

The past 10 days have been all about cattle at Coyote Run Farm. Last week we weaned the calves. Monday, we hauled them to the sale barn. Yesterday we took two cows that needed to be culled to the locker to become ground beef.

Taking cattle off the farm isn’t our favorite thing. We spend a lot of time with them. Many of them like being scratched. All of them are generations deep in coming from the family cattle herd. All our cows come from my parents’ herd. That herd was grounded in my grandparents’ herd from 80 years ago.

When cattle leave our farm, they aren’t headed to be cows and bulls. They are headed to be steak and ground beef. This video from 2020 ahead of the Iowa Caucuses makes the point. The New Yorker writer Eric Lach asked about a bull calf in our barn, “What’s his name?” I replied, “Steak?”

Having cattle leave the farm is, however, a vital part of our farming operation. The 7 month old steers and heifers made the journey to the sale barn on Monday. My dad came to help. He’s 81. When my brother Todd and sister-in-law Kathy sold their Iowa farming interest in 2021 and moved back to Nebraska to be with their kids and grandkids, I took over helping my parents move into retirement. I joke with people that I’m trying to help my dad become a mostly retired farmer.

Being involved in helping my parents transition to retiring on just the land they own has been a blessing. We’re working with Justin the neighbor to cash rent the crop acres. After last year’s diagnosis of a heart with significantly reduced capacity, Dad is now working with Jerrid another neighbor to manage his diminishing cow herd and the land that my grandpa adamantly believed should always be in pasture. Dad, Todd, and I all agree with Grandpa, so there will always be cattle on that farm as long as the Russell family owns it. My love for cattle is generations deep.

When my husband Pat and I bought our farm in 2005, my dad tried to talk us out of it. We’d been traveling 60 miles from Des Moines to help him on weekends. This was before Todd and Kathy had moved back to farm with my parents. Having our own farm 100 miles away, felt to my dad like we were abandoning the Russell Ranch.

Within a week of closing on our farm, Dad’s concerns had mostly evaporated as I was calling him multiple times a day. I had questions about everything, and he often had answers. He also had tools, equipment, and a willingness to help us with whatever we needed.

Our cows were still at the farm where I grew up. My brother and I each took a breeding heifer to the county fair in 1980. We brought them home, and we were in the cow business. Brownie, a premature calf born from a heifer in the feed lot that should have never had a calf, became our bottle calf and eventually our shared cow. So, by about 1982 we each had 1.5 calves at weaning time and grew our cattle operations at the Russell Ranch from there.

Pat also inherited a twin heifer in 2002. We were at the farm on a weekend. A cow had twin heifers. Dad asked Pat, who worked at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, “Does the zoo have a bottle calf yet for this summer?” Pat made a phone call. They didn’t. On Monday, Dad delivered Daisy to the zoo to be the calf for the petting barn.

After Labor Day, we brought Daisy back to the farm. This was before Pat and I were married, but my parents had already taken him in as a member of the family.

“Pat, that’s your calf,” said my dad. “That twin was a freebie. The zoo raised her. Her twin was also a heifer. So as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got yourself a breeding heifer at the Russell Ranch.”

Those who haven’t read it yet, can learn about freemartins and why you can keep twin heifers to breed but not a heifer that has a bull for a twin. You’ll also learn something about the radical, anti-science attacks on transgender youth by Republicans, because one of the things Pat and I both love about cattle is they can teach you a lot.

One year, Todd and I had kept one of Brownie’s heifer calves so we had four cows between us instead of three. For me and Pat, Daisy made three of our own. And by the time we bought the farm, we were already selling shares of our calves butchered at the Anita Locker to customers in Des Moines. We were also keeping a heifer or two every year to continue to grow our herd.

We kept those cows at my parents’ farm until we started bringing some of them to Coyote Run Farm in 2008. We calved at our farm in the fall. The cows still at my parents’ farm calved in the spring. That gave us grass finished beef to butcher and sell both in the spring and the fall since it takes about 2 years to finish beef on grass.

Granted we weren’t at Dad’s farm every weekend anymore, but in some ways, we were even more connected. Todd and Kathy started farming with my parents in the fall of 2009. By the time we were selling packages of grass finished beef at the Des Moines Downtown Farmers market, Todd and Kathy were supplying our customers who wanted corn fed beef with that option.

Last Monday, Dad brought his truck and trailer the 100 miles from his farm to ours. He hauled the calves back to the Massena Livestock Auction where he’s sold his calves since starting to sell some feeder calves about 10 years ago. Until then, he’d fed all his calves and sold them for slaughter, most often directly to IBP in Denison, Iowa, which later got purchased by Tyson. After Todd and Kathy came back to the farm, they also worked with Dad to sell almost half the beef through the Anita Locker.

We pulled the dipstick to check the oil. We also spent some time making sure the floor boards were solid in the trailer. It had been a while since he’d hauled cattle in it. Jerrid has been hauling Dad’s cattle in his trailer as he takes over managing the pasture and adding his cows to the farm as Dad culls and doesn’t replace the older cows.

Yesterday, we took #2 and #22 to the Mingo Locker. For the uninitiated, the numbers refer to their ear tags. Some of our cows have nicknames, but most are known by their tag number. That will also determine the number of the tag that goes in the ear of her calf the day they are born.

Mamma cows can be in production for many years, but typically they are culled once they have a problem or when they reach a certain age, generally the front side of 12 years. That’s when problems, if they haven’t already surfaced, get close on the horizon. The value of the cull cow is often the profit margin for the cow-calf operation. Farmers and ranchers raise and sell feeder calves which in good years covers all of the costs of the operation and maybe provides some profit. But the culled cows, generally around 10 to 15 percent of the herd per year, are the profit in most years.

In 2019, #2 had her first and second calf, twins. The first calf was breech. We called the vet after we got her in the corral. After pulling the already dead calf coming backwards, the vet delivered the other twin. It was alive but couldn’t stand. We nursed it for several days. #2 went from being very amped up when we brought her in, to being very quiet and cooperative when we worked for several days to try and save the calf. She even stood still while I held the calf up and tried to get it to suck.

When we lost the second twin, the typical thing would have been to sell the heifer. We decided to give her another chance. Her attitude to help us out as we tried to save her calf endeared us. She had a healthy bull calf the next year. After that, we pulled another breech calf and saved it. Year four it was twins again and we pulled two dead calves. We gave her another chance. In 2023 a bull calf. Last year a heifer.

In six years, she had four calves. The last two though were sold for record prices. Having her around to calve in 2023 and 2024 paid off. But when the vet worked cattle in April, she confirmed what we already knew from all the attention the bull calves were giving her about every three weeks. She was open. She wouldn’t be having a calf in the fall. It was time for her to have her one bad day at Coyote Run Farm.

#22 had been a great cow. She was the last cow that was born at the Russell Ranch. All the rest have been born at Coyote Run Farm. In 2021 she had a bad hind leg. She could make it around changing pastures to graze, but we decided it was probably a bigger problem that would only go in one direction. We took her to the vet to see if she was pregnant. If not, the answer was obvious. But she was with calf. So, we brought her home and let her have her calf. She got a little better and separating her and her calf from the bull in December would have been a hassle. So, we rolled the dice. She had healthy calves in 2022 and 2023.

Last summer she really started going downhill. We took her from the rotating cows and put her at the barn with the replacement heifers. Still on grass, but not as much moving around for shade and water. She got better, had her calf, and was with the cows when we brought in the bull. But it was clear that winter wasn’t going to be easy on her. We set up a corral and hayed her and gave her a little grain all winter long. The bull couldn’t breed her and further injure her leg. The calf got trained to go out with the cows in the morning and come back in at night to suck.

#22 was a special cow, not just because she would stand while her days old calf would suck and let me milk out her one banana tit, which is a technical term, at least on the Russell Ranch, for a really big nipple that a calf won’t suck. Then I’d scoot the calf around to suck on it after it wasn’t so big.

She was also a famous cow. She gave birth for the NBC Sunday TODAY film crew when Harry Smith came to the farm in 2019. The crew asked if there was a chance they’d capture the birth of a calf. I said it’s possible, but so is getting struck by lightning. I’d checked the cows that morning and didn’t see any signs. But as we were leaving the pasture after they’d shot all the video they were planning to shoot with the cows, the sound guy said to me with my back to the cows, “If a cow was going to have a calf, what would it be doing?”

I said, “It would be smelling the ground, turning around, maybe acting like it wanted to lay down.”

He said, “You mean like what that cow is doing?” I turned around and said, “Yep.” Forty-five minutes later lightning had struck. #22 had her calf in front of the NBC camera crew. You can see the footage in this video at this TODAY Show Sunday Spotlight with Harry Smith from November 2019.

Yesterday, it was time for her one bad day. We’ll be eating her after we go to Mingo to pick up the ground beef. Lots of other people will be eating her and #2 as well.

It’s sometimes extra-work to be a small family farm. And when your farm is more than a business, you don’t always make decisions purely about the bottom line. But those values also pay off in the long run.

As we’ve shifted away from growing and selling food for Central Iowa customers, we continue to lean into our cattle operation. We’re still working with my dad. He called me on Tuesday to report how our calves had sold. Our calves brought more than any group of Russell calves have ever brought in three generations. These are good times for cow-calf farmers and ranchers.

But that is about the only bright spot in American agriculture right now. We’re headed into challenging times.

This week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released the Farmers First: Small Family Farms Policy Agenda. In my review of the 10 point plan, I don’t see much help for or focus on smaller, more diversified family farms. I’m going to need to spend additional time diving into the plan, but when I think about the 1000 acre farm I grew up on and our 110 acre farm today and the actions proposed by the Secretary, I see more support for a narrow set of commodity farms, rather than robust support for smaller, more diversified farms.

The cattle industry is big business. But it’s also small farms and ranches. According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, 55 percent of people owning beef cows had fewer than 20 head. The average herd size was 47 cows. Part of the reason that cow-calf operations are profitable right now is that so many Americans own small herds. It’s hard to capture the market when so many people are hanging on to their cattle. We need more of these farms, not fewer. We need more cows, not fewer. We need more people in rural America, not fewer.

Everyday I’m grateful to be part of the great story of American agriculture. If we aren’t doing everything we can to expand this opportunity for more Americans and many who want to be Americans, then we aren’t going to be able to grow rural America so that we can grow more of what America and the world needs.

Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm

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