There is no red barn on Yost Farm. “That shed was red when I grew up,” Mike Yost Sr. (B.A. ’73) offers as a sort of legacy-farm-cred consolation prize.

These days the shed in question is now clad in tidy white siding and looks closer to a modern pole barn than an American gothic outbuilding on the century-plus-old farm that Mike Yost Sr. grew up on.

I’m sitting with Mike Sr. and his two sons, Michael (B.S. ’02, M.B.A. ’16) and David (B.S. ’05), around a conference table in the Yost Farm office near Murdock, Minnesota. The elder Yost continues to nod toward the window that frames up a handful of orderly farm buildings.

“But we still consider ourselves a farming family,” Mike Sr. says in jest, making light of the idea that a farm isn’t a farm without a red barn.

His son David, who graduated with a degree in agriculture and food business management, adds, “Farmers are portrayed as just toiling under the hot sun all day long. But on a modern farm you have to be HR, you have to be grain marketing, and you have to be the finance person.”

In 1876, immigrants John and Catherine Yost uprooted from St. Paul—John had worked for the railroad for two years when they first arrived from Germany—and journeyed west to Murdock to take advantage of the Homestead Act’s promise of up to 160 acres of cheap land for a family willing to settle on and farm it. Once there, John staked out the acreage on which we’re having our conversation 150 years later.

That early version of the farm grew oats and hay, mainly for horses, with wheat and, likely, flax as the cash crops. Corn was added in the 1930s, soybeans in the 1940s. Today’s crops still include corn and soybeans as well as alfalfa, edible beans (think kidney and pinto beans), and sugar beets.

Family legacy of sacrifice

“This didn’t happen by magic,” says Mike Sr. “It was a lot of hard work. People gave up other things so that this farm could move forward and prosper in the next generation.”

For John Jr., who took over in 1900, that meant tripling the acreage and surviving the Great Depression. For John Jr.’s son Bill, who took over in 1940, that meant putting everything he had into the farm to ensure that the business would grow. He also tripled the size of it.

“Our good fortune is the willingness of previous generations to sacrifice lifestyle to benefit the farm. My grandfather lived well below his means his entire life, so he could invest in farmland. He had a good life, but our lives are substantially better because he bought the quarter section instead of the lake house,” says David.

“My father was a product of the Depression and they barely survived without having to sell land,” Mike Sr. adds. “We rode through the 1970s and 1980s insulated from a lot of financial hardships other people endured.”

Mike Sr. is talking about the farm crisis of the early 1980s, in which the double whammy of astronomical interest rates and cratering land prices fueled foreclosures and some 250,000 family farms disappeared.

During that time, Mike Sr. was among the fortunate few farmers who was a buyer instead of a seller. The result is that the Yosts entered the 1990s in a position to once again grow the farm.

“We went beyond one employee for the first time in 1995,” says Mike Sr. “From then until today there’s been a substantial leap. There are only two things that remain the same in production agriculture: It’s weather dependent and capital intensive. Everything else has changed.”

One change is that the Yosts themselves are no longer in the field come harvest time but managing those who are. The company lists more than 20 employees on its website.

The family is emphasizing partnerships, which is a focus for David, who splits his time between the farm and its partner Riverview Dairy in nearby Morris. In conjunction with Riverview, Yost Farm runs a custom manure-pumping business and a truck fleet that hauls feed ingredients. Michael, meanwhile, focuses on the business and marketing side of things.

“On a farm you divvy up roles and you just hope, genetically, that you’ve got the skill set to handle it,” says David. “And if you don’t, you muddle through it.”

Education for 21st century farming

All three Yosts credit their times at the University with giving them tools to navigate the complex pressures of modern farming. Mike Sr. saw the U as “the best value of education in the state,” and Michael dove in with similar gusto, both for his undergrad degree in applied economics and his MBA. For David, the U helped him gain perspective on what he needed to understand about a global marketplace.

“My high school graduated 42 kids. My freshman dorm had more 18-year-olds than my hometown did in total,” says David. “Murdock’s about 300 people, and I think Territorial Hall had about 600 freshmen. That exposure to all the different backgrounds and people was helpful. Not only networking, but expanding your horizons and truly understanding what the world was made up of.”

Still, none of them left for college knowing for sure when or even if they’d return to the farm. “I was the only son, so I had a little pressure to come back,” Mike Sr. says of his journey away from and back to farming. “But I also was encouraged to do something else. I was in no big rush to come back because once you’re back, you’re back forever.”

Michael was a little less certain when he left for the U. “It took me a long time to figure that out,” he says. “But after I went through [my MBA] I kind of thought, ‘What’s going to make me excited to get up in the morning?’ And being part of a family business was something that was hard to pass up.”

David’s return seemed a bit more inevitable. As a kid, he loved MEA weekends because he got to spend them atop a tractor. He recalls hurrying home from school, and not for the reasons most kids do. “I would beg Dad to let me sit in on conversations with the John Deere dealer,” he says. But even still, when it came time to head to the U, he did so with an open mind and no pressure from Mike Sr. to return.

A new generation of stewards

When the Yost boys did decide to dedicate their lives to the family business, there was just the little matter of that generational handoff remaining. Even though Mike Sr.’s 30-plus year run as farm patriarch technically ended in 2013, when he officially passed ownership to Michael and David, he still comes in regularly.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t come here,” Mike Sr. says. “I’d like to think occasionally I’m adding some value to the situation, but I’m really trying to walk that tightrope to not get in the way.” Mike Sr.’s thoughtful delivery gets even more dialed in as he leans forward and looks back and forth to his sons. “They’re making good decisions and it’s time for me to be done,” he continues. “I’ve seen too many people stay too long. I wanted to present Michael and David with an opportunity to come home, make a living, and expand on the base we built. And I think to a certain extent, I accomplished that.”

Despite having a farm to run these days, Michael and David both live in the Twin Cities and commute up to Murdock. Michael comes up for the entire week and spends weekends at his condo in Minneapolis’s North Loop. “It doesn’t fit the narrative of farming, but it does highlight the way this thing is evolving,” says David, who lives in Chanhassen with his family.

“You don’t necessarily have to be living on the farm for it to be real.” David typically comes to the farm on Monday morning after the kids get on the bus, stays through Tuesday, spends Wednesday in Chanhassen, and then comes back to the farm Thursday mornings through Friday.

“People ask what a family farm is, and it’s almost impossible to define,” says Mike Sr. “I always say, ‘It’s a red barn and a dog named Shep.’”

Even though the Yosts don’t have either.

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