Small-scale Food Initiatives in Southwest Minnesota:
Oral History Project 2012-13
Institute for Advanced Study
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Interviewees: Terese and Daniel Hall
Halls across the Prairie
Butterfield, Minnesota, October 4, 2012
Interviewer: Peter Shea
Transcriber: Marnie Macgregor
Interview and transcription archived at:
https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/taxonomy/term/845
MHS Grant Number: 1110-08587
This project has been made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund
through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.
Administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.
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Terese Hall: How we got started where we’re at. My dream growing up: was Grandma and
Grandpa being on the farm, was to marry a farmer, live in a big white house, where there was a
big red barn. Okay. I married the farmer, my husband Daniel, in 1977. We moved to this farm,
into a mobile home, and two and a half years later, three years later, built the new house, the big
white house that eventually we lost in the tornado in 2006. And the red barn: we looked at
moving a barn to our homestead. We looked at building a barn as never being an option as
dollars. [hand motion] Had a barn just a quarter of a mile away that we looked at moving home
to here. Had another neighbor move that home, and he did lose that in the tornado. Barns just
succumb to the big space and the air and all that. Had the farmer, married the farmer, lived in the
big white house until 2006 when we lost it in the tornado. Got into livestock—when I married,
Daniel, he raised hogs. Went from raising hogs to raising more hogs, to raising baby calves as
bottle babies growing up, and starting the direct marketing of meat. And that was that probably
in the late ’80s that we started that, that would’ve been, we started with Jersey cross baby calves,
and Jersey cattle growing up on grass turns out to be excellent meat. So we did some of that. Got
into raising chickens, as we raised chickens when I grew up at Grandma’s house, and everybody
got together and butchered chickens. Just being a stay-at-home mom with a husband that was a
farmer and raising four sons; we were blessed with four sons. I could be a stay-at-home mom and
come up with some other ways to be employed at home and still be at home. And so we worked
as a family. Grew up pitching manure together, feeding cattle together, got into milk goats when
the boys got involved in 4-H. Got into raising sheep about three or fours years before they got
into 4-H. I am still involved in 4-H after 25 years. Daniel graduated out, the boys have all
graduated out of 4-H, but we’re involved with a threshing bee where we make home-made icecream, and that ties us back to 4-H. So, the livestock and being at home and being able to be
employed and work side by side was just what we did as a family.
Peter Shea: So, how was the livestock business for you? I mean, was it a good business? Or was
it precarious? Or how did it work for you?
Terese: I think Daniel could answer that question about the livestock.
Daniel Hall: The livestock business was conventional. Conventional did not work. The
university said, “Ok, you’ve got to get bigger.” So we got bigger, and when we got bigger, we
got more work. And by that time, the mid ’80s hit, and, we don’t have any records left anymore,
they are all gone, but I can remember it in my mind. We were paying eighteen and three quarters
percent interest, corn was $3.75, and cows were worth about 35 cents a pound, so every head that
went up the chute, we lost about $300 a head, and we vowed we were never going to do that
again. So we went through an auction in the eighties, you know got rid of all our debt that we
could. Continued farming till ’93—I believe was our last year. We finally liquidated everything
and started over. By that time, we’d done some experimenting with grass-fed products, and my
wife had had a heart attack in the mean time, which kind of piqued our interest in some of the
natural grass-fed products. So, basically since then we’d been doing 100 percent grass-fed, and
we’re also in the fence business, which—you gotta practice what you preach, so—that’s what
we’ve been doing there.
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Peter: So, you had a period before the ’80s when stuff was going pretty well, and then the
bottom dropped out: the interest rates were too high, the prices were too low, feed prices were
too high, and you sold all your animals...
Terese: ...we sold out everything. We had a—we liquidated every piece of machinery, all of it,
all of the livestock, everything, and started over.
Peter: Okay.
Terese: Started over. So as I met you, Peter, and you said what I had going for me and the
personality that I have—we’ve been through lots of things together as a family. Okay. So the
auction sale that we had as we were selling off all the tractors and everything that we farmed,
because we rented land, the boys were ready to be a part of that. Okay, cause they were big
enough now to be a part of that, and it was the ’80s and the crisis hit and we just: it was either
getting really big, which we chose not to be really big—and be able to just have our family work
together. And so starting over, our oldest son was ready to go off to college at 17. And it was—
we didn’t—we suggested to the boys that they go off to college somewhere, whether it be a tech
school or a four-year college; that was their choosing. Jeremy chose to go to Ridgewater College,
took industrial welding. Graduated from high school at age 17, graduated from college at age 19,
and was asked six months later to be a part of the welding team at the college he’d graduated.
Jeremy was on his way home to start a welding business, because the two years in college he
very much enjoyed. And by the time he was into his second year of college, his younger brother
was following in his footsteps. So, as he became a teacher, and, you know, under the teachers
that was there, his brother was a student. And so Andrew, the second son, comes home to start
the welding business, and Jeremy joins him all summer, cause he’s off for the three months of
summer. And Jeremy joins the home every weekend, being married and he lives here, beside us.
His wife works for Cottonwood County as an emergency management director, is also a law
enforcement officer. So Daddy is gone four days a week and returns tonight, Thursday, is his day
home and then he’s home for the summer. So he actually lives in Watonwan County more days
than he’s away teaching.
Peter: So, wow, that’s two of the sons and what happened. You had four....This family story is
fascinating.
Terese: The four little kids grew up in 4-H together, and were somewhat involved in sports.
Their heart and soul was never into sports; their heart and soul became in taking things apart,
seeing how they worked, and putting them back together. Occasionally that worked, occasionally
it didn’t, but it was a learning process. The fencing business started in the late ’80s after the
farming didn’t work. And so building fence, the boys were the crew, Daddy was the pounding
part; they were the wire installers. Being in someone’s grove and the snowmobile that sat out
there—When the fence project was done, it was like: “What do we need for that snowmobile out
there, do you want to sell it?” So they got into building antique snowmobiles and that was the
mechanical part and so they had a collection of those; that was kinda like their mechanic thing.
Winter was their time off from building fence, so that was their fun time, and back when they
were little, they will tell you, that we got lots of snow. And when they got bigger and got into the
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bigger snowmobiles, it stopped snowing, and so then they got into the repairing of snowmobiles.
And so Andrew does a little of that, does some redesigning when things get broken.
So number three was Tony, and after two sons went north to go to college for welding,
everybody said, “All the Hall boys will be welders.” Tony went a hundred miles in the other
direction, to Austin, to Riverland College for automotive machining, and he does headwork. He
does crankshaft grinding, he does brake drums, he rebuilds motors, the older the better, and has
come to work now where he has the International dealer and the Allis Chalmers dealer and John
Deere bring from the places location within 25 miles of here out where he does machining work
for those companies. So Tony stays very busy, was the first one who left the fencing business. As
all four boys started out in the fencing business, Tony’s business grew to the point where Tony
couldn’t be gone unless he needed a day just away from the world. And so then Tony has Hall
and Carlson Precision Machining. Tony is in the business. Our youngest son Michael went to
machine tool at Hutchinson, Ridgewater College in Hutchinson, graduated from that program.
Peter: Taught there, too.
Terese: Taught there, too, okay.
Terese: And then, after going to school there, about a month after he graduated, said, “Mom and
Dad, I think I will go back to another two-year school.” It’s like, okay. So as each of your boys
do their own thing, Michael then went off for two years to Alexandria to hydraulics and motion
manufacturing. Thoroughly enjoyed the two years that he was there, was with a team of kids who
were all kids, 7 out of the 14 kids in his class I do believe, were all kids who had gone to one
college, graduated, and then gone on. So they were all older and it was a very unique two years
more away from home. Met all of the teachers two or three times, traveling back and forth and
met the teachers the night of graduation. And was asked, just very interestingly, if we would
consider letting our son come back and be a teacher. And our answer at the same time, Daniel
and I myself said, “We have one college teacher; Michael wants to come home.” Well that was
the end of May of 2006 that Michael graduated from his second college. Come home and had
some of his machining, some of his mills, two of them for sure, and we were deciding whether
we should build onto the end of our 40 by 80 shop on the north end or the south end. The south
end was my favorite tree; we had a feed shed that we could’ve converted to a building. And
summer we just kind of made do. Michael put the machine where it fit, and we built a lot of
fence in that summer. And on August first, we didn’t have to decide where we were going to put
Michael and the shed because, on August first of 2006, at what time?
Daniel: 7:23.
Terese: At 7: 23 pm, we lost our entire homestead to a tornado in a minute and a half. With the
three boys, Andrew, Tony, and Michael at home, in the basement, because when they were little,
we practiced, when there was a storm. I grew up with a father who was a weatherman, have been
very tied to the weather to the point, yes, where sometimes it was like, okay, “Okay the wind has
come up and it’s getting dark; Mom thinks everything needs to be put away.” But the
conversation the three boys had on their way down the steps that day was, “Should we go under
the pool table or should we go under the steps?” ’Cause when they were little you could put four
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little boys under the pool table real easy. These are now adult sons; they chose to go under the
steps, as the house was coming off from above them. And everybody was safe. And we did learn
about, what was it about six months later Daniel, that they said—I have a scrapbook that I put
together of the tornado, and we had it out and we were looking at it, and one of the boys said,
“That’s what it looked like in the house.” Because when we left the house after the tornado, that
night, we came to the shop to see what had happened and never did go back to the house to see
where anything was, because the most important part of their life was the shop and what had
happened to all their tools. It didn’t totally destroy any pieces of equipment in the shop—just
made a mess out of everything. And it was raining. We were at FarmFest with our business,
which is Southwest Minnesota K-Fence, which we started. In 2000, the first ethanol plant was
built in Minnesota, which was called, remember Dan?
Daniel: Ethanol 2000.
Terese: Yep, Ethanol 2000.
Terese: And Ethanol 2000 was at Bingham Lake. They had an ad on the radio that they were
looking for a contractor to build a fence around the site. And I said to Daniel—when he [Daniel]
came home from work, cause he worked for a corporate hog farmer for two years after we went
through our auction, I said, “I think I’ll call the ethanol plant and see if they need a fence.” And
that was on a Wednesday morning, I called and he said, “You need to come over and pick up the
papers and have them back to us by Thursday.” And he called Friday morning to say we had the
bid to build the fence. So that was kinda like the lightbulb moment, in that here is the first big
fence we have. We get to build it just seven miles from home, and they had fun building it, and
there’s been some rebuild a couple times on that site because of accidents with semis and trains.
So that was kinda the beginning, and it was just a fence job here, a fence job there. And now its
2012, and it’s been a wonderful opportunity to meet farmers that are grass-based, that are
beginning to think about grass to do rotational grazing and build livestock fence. So we have
friends, we really do have friends all over the state of Minnesota—from fence—and in parts of
Iowa. So when the tornado hit, a lot of those friends were here to help, which is an amazing story
of how you can take a whole homestead from thirty years and mess it up and in five days, or was
it four days, four days, the amount of tonnage of stuff that was picked up by hand, by machine,
by volunteers was really, really amazing. Daniel said on Thursday night, he said, “If we’d had to
pick that all up with just us, it would’ve taken two years.”
Peter: So you’ve had these two disasters, the sale and then the tornado, both of which were, you
know, you started over.
Terese: Right.
Peter: And I am trying to get the story in order so, go back to the first disaster...
Terese: ...okay, starting over the farming?
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Peter: ...sale, so you didn’t really have much in the way of resources. You went back, went and
worked for somebody else for a couple of years. Where’d you get the capital, how’d you get the
capital to start the fencing business?
Terese: Well, we did have a prototype fencer, we, you know, when you go through a starting
over, we did have a 8N Ford tractor and a prototype post-pounder that was built in Canada. That
was still part of what we owned. You can do a lot of things without money when you do it with
togetherness, and you can survive. And in the two years that Daniel worked for a corporate hog
farmer, which was a blessing when he called and said, “I need help. Dan can you come to
work?” It’s in that two and a half years that I had my heart attack. Okay, that coming from, that
coming from stress, I really do believe. A great part of it. I didn’t grow up as a farm girl where,
you know, things you would just have to take things with the full, because they change you know
hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. So, and it was very hard to watch Dad go to work with the boys,
you know. There were times we needed Dad at home but that work, that two and a half years that
he worked for the hog farmer was a blessing, a challenge. But in that time I have to tell you that
my husband is truly a farmer who sits outside of the box of what is normal in farming. From the
time I met him, that he does lots of reading, is involved with going to conferences, different
things that have really empowered him to try this, try this, try this.
So the rotational grazing thing: we live on a 40-acre farm. It’s on the corner of two tar roads in
Watonwan County where you can watch what happens on this farm from two different sides.
And people have watched for 35 years on what’s happened here. Trying this, we started out
planting going across the 40 acres, the 9 acres is a building site but the rest is land, taking prime
farmland in Minnesota out of production of corn and soybeans and putting it into grass. The
neighbors all watched that. We were learning just while they were watching, many neighbors, it
was like, “Okay, what are they doing at the Halls next?” You know, and so we—Daniel is the
leader in that part. Has he shared that knowledge with his boys? And are they? Yes. The
entrepreneurial side of the boys is—I give a lot of that credit to Dad. To the opportunities that he
gave them, you know, how it works is taking it apart, is taking it apart to see how it works. If it
goes back together, that’s good, but if it doesn’t, you know. And so that’s probably….
Peter: So let’s see, did you have any animals at all at the point of the sale? Or after the sale? You
still had some hogs...
Terese: Still had some hogs. Yep, and eventually phased out—yep. Still had some hogs, still had
some income from livestock.
Peter: I see. So what you were doing then was gradually building up the livestock end of things?
Terese: ...and then went out of livestock, out of hogs, and out of big cattle. At the time we lost
all the money on the big cattle, so Daniel said, “I’m never having cattle again.” Hindsight is
really 20/20, we really should have gone right back out and bought the next group of cattle
because cattle turned right around; it became very profitable in the short time. But we were not
involved at that time in it. Slowly graduated into… [looking at Daniel] did we start with ten head
of sheep? Ten head of sheep or twelve head of sheep and started rotational grazing and learning
how to rotational graze with sheep and goats. At the time that we went through the farm sale, the
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boys owned the goats. The goats had always been theirs. They owned the goats and we used to
buy the milk back from them to feed to baby calves. So that was kind of a, that was a blessing.
And the fencing business just took off, and it was very empowering to know that you were doing
something that somebody needed, and that it came after the ’80s where farmers were supposed to
do everything that they needed to do. And you know, as that changed, the fencing business has
grown from that. So, yeah, from disaster number one, which would have been going through the
auction sale, having a heart attack when you’re 37 years old, those are all things—what doesn’t
kill you makes you stronger. So I guess that’s what made us stronger, to go through… When the
tornado hit, somebody said to us, Daniel and I one day, “You know, how come you haven't just
fallen apart.” “This isn't the worst things we’ve been through. We have our sons.” You know,
and no one was hurt in that tornado. All of the things that you have, they are just possessions.
They’re just, you know, it’s just stuff. Would I like some of it to come back? Yes, I would. But
it’s not coming back, so you just move forward.
Peter: So your sale, what was the year on that? It was 1980? ’85?
Terese: ’85.
Daniel: We went through two auctions.
Terese: Yeah, we went through two auctions.
Daniel: ’85, we just liquidated out cattle equipment, ’93 was...
Terese: ...Yep, ’93 we liquidated everything.
Peter: So, if you put the final auction on in ’93, then you had—what—you had about 13 years to
build back up before the tornado knocked you down again.
Terese: Okay, that is exactly right, because August first was the anniversary of my tornado, so
August first was the anniversary of my heart attack, I’m sorry, my heart attack. And 13 years
later, the tornado. So August first is quite significant. But when you work together, I think it is
easier to go through a disaster than, you know, being a farm wife and going to the field when it
was time for dinner, going to the field when it was a birthday party and having a blanket and
having a picnic. You know, we did all those things with the kids, ’cause I was blessed with being
a stay-at-home. So he didn’t have to come home at the end of the day and say, “What have you
been doing all day?” because we knew. And so being that team, I think, helped go through those
things, you know? We made it work together, we lost it all together, we started over together....
Peter: ...you lost it all again...
Terese: ....we lost it all together and we started over.
Daniel: But the good thing about the tornado part is you’re insured for that; you’re not insured
for financial disaster but you are insured for, you know, an act of God.
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Terese: We had good insurance, and what can I tell you good insurance is? If you have really,
really good insurance you’re broke. Because that is what really, really good insurance does; it
just costs a fortune. But being able to take the money we had from after the tornado from
insurance and being blessed with four sons, we sat down as a family and said, “Guys, do you
want your businesses to be on the farm here? There’s buildings in town, that we could pick up
your machines, get them all restored, and you could be back in business?” No, we as a family sat
down, and they chose to be back here.
Peter: So I mean, you gave me a tour, so I know what building we’re sitting in here, which is
truly jaw-dropping. This will be at least the experience of the year for me. But can you describe
this thing you built after the tornado? How long is this building?
Daniel: It’s 60 by 204.
Peter: Okay, so you’ve got a building that’s 60 by 204, and within it, you’ve got how many
distinct businesses?
Terese: Okay, within that 60 by 204, the first 24 feet on the south end, upstairs and downstairs,
will be our new home. We’re still living in our temporary two-room house which we should—we
have chose to do this to put the homestead back together and all the boys' businesses. Okay, then,
the next across from the double fire-proof wall which is our house, will be our house, is
Andrew’s welding shop and design work. Andrew works full-time and Jeremy comes home on
weekends and is a part of it, and part of summer. That is 60 by 80, because inside of Andrew’s
welding shop is the entire concrete slab from the old, their entire old shop. It was only five years
old at the time the tornado went through, so that they built the shop around the old concrete,
because that was good. Then as you open the door on the left, that is Michael’s work and
Michael has—Andrew has the welding shop and our farm name is Halls Across the Prairie, so
Andrew’s part of the welding shop. Michael’s is Hall Hydraulic and Machining. Michael’s our
youngest son; he has a section; above his section is storage. And then the last 80 by 60 is Tony’s
Hall Performance and Machining. We are sitting in the office, which also houses my freezers for
direct marketing beef. But this is the boys’ office; I do not do their paperwork. They are their
own entities. The youngest son is married; he now has a secretary. The two bachelors are, they
take care of their part, so, yeah. The shop is very large; it was built starting in the fall of 2006,
after the tornado, by a company from Waite Park called Ameribuilt. They put up the shell of the
building, and then they were done. The boys have put the sand in the floor, the hot water pipes in
the floor, the re-rod in the floor, and poured the concrete, and put the insulation in the walls, put
the sheet rock up, put the seal up in the inner part of the main building with the help of an
electrician that they had used in our first shop. Got to be a team of putting up five miles of wiring
in here, cause its wired for 220 and for 110, because… and designing where the machines would
go, and where the outlets would be, and the lifts that are in here that move pieces of heavy, of
equipment around—knowing that if they are gonna do that for their life they needed some help—
so those were all designed by the boys. Dan and I were not a part of designing in the inside of the
building, only having the end of the shop be what will be the house.
Peter: And so how much of the family actually lives with you?
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Terese: Two bachelor sons, two in the middle; the third son has been married since the tornado.
We started out in our two-room temporary house with three sons and Mom and Dad, and it’s
what we chose to do. We got married in 1977, moved into a mobile home that we purchased
from a cousin of Daniel's. Lived there for three years. Built a new house and moved into it in the
fall of 1980, moved out of the house, when it disappeared in the tornado in 2006. Into a mobile
home that was borrowed to us by a deputy sheriff from Watonwan County, and another friend
that we had, so we lived in two mobile homes, or two campers, excuse me, after the tornado.
After the tornado, boys lived from the night of the tornado, they did not ever sleep away from the
home. The Deputy Sheriff brought his camper over then at midnight and they moved into there.
We lived—we went to the neighbors for five days before the camper that we moved into, but
then we lived—they moved into the basement of where the house was in December. We moved
into there in February. When we move into our new house, we will have moved five times and
never left the 40 acres.
Peter: But it is a pretty extraordinary decision, I think, to put off the building of the replacement
house until you get the businesses established.
Terese: Well, I had a new house when I was— [looking at Daniel] How old was I? In 1980? Or
when we built the house?
Daniel: We learned long ago that a house don’t …..
Terese: Yeah, I can truly tell—yeah, that the house is an entity that you need to raise children in.
We had raised them. We now could function as people without, you know, wherever you lived
it’s not—it’s what you choose to make work. It’s what you choose to make work. And we knew
the boys’ businesses had to get back together, because that was gonna, you know. We each go
through the tornado process in a different way, in recovery. And so, watching what the boys
were going through, I guess, was really hard on Dan and I, knowing that that’s what they had to
start over. I mean we had already started over after farming and made that work
Daniel: Our fence business didn’t skip a beat. We didn’t get anything destroyed in that.
Terese: We were at FarmFest with our fence business, and every year we’ve done FarmFest for
how many years? We take a trailer on wheels, and I load product and fencers and equipment and
every year Daniel says to me, “Why are we taking this stuff to FarmFest?” And my answer is, “If
I don’t have it at FarmFest, I can’t sell it.” Okay, well when we left FarmFest that night we
stopped over at some friends to pick up some product off a farm, and we were one hour from
home when we got the phone call from Michael that said, “The place is gone. There’s nothing
left, and no one got hurt.”
Peter: [laughs] What a message!
Terese: And everything we needed to build fence was at FarmFest. Except one thing and that
was the pickup and the trailer that hauled our fence machine that we built. The post pounding
machine that the boys and Dad built and designed from a Case tractor. That was at FarmFest,
hauled there with a one-ton truck and trailer. We had to hire somebody to bring the pounder
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home because that, we brought that home that night, went back the next day with the Suburban.
And so that was destroyed in the tornado. But three days later everything we needed to build
fence, we had, so that part—we didn't lose what we needed to make money. The boys didn't lose
everything, but everything was a mess.
Peter: So what you did was to establish your capacity to make money as quickly as possible...
Terese: Right.
Peter: And then worry about things like what kind of...
Terese: ...what kind of house you’re gonna live in, right. And knowing that maybe we would
move to another and farm and live in a house and the boys would, but I think that we’ve come to
the conclusion that we’re gonna live here. We’re gonna stay here.
Peter: I think you’ve been...I mean, looking out the window, at the moment, I’m thinking that
you probably win the contest in the county enclosing the most land in some kind of roof or other.
I mean you’ve got these, I guess, these...
Terese: ...they’re called hoop houses.
Peter: Hoop houses...you’ve got...you’re enclosing powerful amounts of dirt here.
Terese: Well, two of those were just those last two that you see out there, what, there’s five out
there now. The last two were just built here in the last month. We house all of our livestock
inside for winter and on pastures in three different counties for summer—that rotational graze—
so normally we put the hay in the hoop house for summer, and, come winter, we move all of the
hay out and stack it outside and move the cattle in. Now we’ll have the opportunity to store the
hay, not move it, and just store the cattle, so that’s been a good thing. And we lost many, many
head of cattle in the storm, and we didn't lose any of our flock of sheep. A year ago in December
now we parted with your sheep, because we didn’t have enough buildings to house everybody
for winter, and so the sheep went down the road.
We now, just have the beef cow herd, and I raise chickens. So starting over on the grass-fed beef
business when you have cattle, we had to put lots of them down, and we chose to sell the ones
after they healed, and not try and direct-market cows that we did not know what had happened to
them in the tornado. Because they came up to the farmstead at night and were bedded down; they
were like big babies, and that was just the wrong place to be. The sheep were on the back side of
the 40 acres, and they lived; the sheep were not hurt. So that was tough, that was tough.
Livestock and what, 400 of baby chickens, and ducks, and geese and laying hens, you know that
was a hard part to clean up after a tornado. But you turn around and, you know….
Peter: Were you using these hoop constructions before?
Terese: We had one of those—just finished installing one of those in July of the year of the
tornado. Had filled it up with winter hay and 15 days later had lost that building. So that was the
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beginning of hoop houses and seeing what they would do, and really liking… The hoop houses
we have are from a company in Canada called Silver Stream, and we are a dealer for them, and
so our sons and Dad have constructed these and put them up. So it’s pretty much: if it’s here, it’s
been done with sweat equity from the Hall boys and Dad. Which is fun to watch.
Peter: I remember when I first saw these on the cattlemen’s tour of central Minnesota, actually
northern Minnesota, up by Mille Lacs. I was so amazed. I mean there’s draft through and they’re
technically wonderful, and a few hay bales remodel them into anything.
Terese: They’re wonderful storage; they let some light through, so that you’re not in the dark.
They don’t sweat and drip like a steel building, so Daniel would tell you that it’s been a good
investment.
Peter: And you actually sell these, and build them for people?
Terese: Well, we’ve built a few. We built a horse arena, a horse riding arena which is a very big
one and most of the other ones that we’ve sold, whoever we’ve sold them to has put them up
themselves. It goes together with raising livestock in a holistic healthy way. It works.
Peter: Well, it sounds like you’ve got about as diversified enterprise here as there is on the
planet. I mean, you’ve got so many things going.
Terese: We have two wonderful daughter-in-laws. It’s been fun to watch the girls’ side of the
Halls. Raising fours sons, we now have two granddaughters, two daughter-in-laws, new baby on
the way in February. So its been fun to see the girls’ side of it, and develop new relationships
with daughter-in-laws. Jeremy’s wife is a law-enforcement officer and has now taken on two
years ago the emergency management director in Cottonwood County. Michael’s wife is an RN.
She works at the clinic in Mountain Lake three days week, which is perfect because Addison
comes to work with Daddy for three days, and then she’s with Mommy the rest. So it’s working;
it’s a busy place.
Daniel: Some days are better than others.
Terese: And some days it’s too busy. But we seem to make it work, or we try.
Peter: Let me check something out here. I mean, I know I’ve done, you, well not enough
interviews, but I’ve done enough to get a story. And the kind of story you get over and over
again from people with establishments is, “What we really want is to have the kids come back
and work with us.” And I mean sometimes they can make it work, but sometimes they can’t. And
every possible kind of permutation, and you know strategy, to make it work for the kids to come
back. I’m curious—tell me a little about how it has worked for you to get the whole Hall family
literally under one roof.
Terese: Okay, here’s what I can tell you. And they grew and this came from their father,
strongly from their father, “It’s not how much money you make; you have to like what you do.
You have like what you do.” So, as they were graduating from high school and having teachers
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tell them, “You need to go to a four-year college, and you need to make lots of money,” and, yes,
if that’s your philosophy, then that’s probably okay, but you need to like what you do. Daddy has
always said that to them, “You need to like what you do. Okay? And if you like what you do, it
doesn’t become a job; it just becomes a part of you.” I have to believe that that is a part of what
brought the boys all back together here. Although I’ve learned something after the tornado about
energy fields, and how we as people have energy fields and how we move energy between
people. It used to be Friday night because when my boys went to college there was very few
weekends when they didn’t come home for clean clothes and more of Mom’s food. So Friday
night they would come home, and they would meet out in the shop in this little huddle with Dad,
and it used to just bug me to think, “Gee, they didn’t come in to see Mom first.” But I now
understand that after learning something about energy fields, after the tornado, how much energy
those boys have that they move between each other; it is very powerful. And that was their little
Friday night get-together when they come home to college, was to reenergize each other in what
they have been doing and who’s been doing what. They still do that, as Jeremy is the one who
comes home from college as the teacher on Friday night. They all have to get together and
“How’s this, or what’s this.” They still do that and I learned that from someone else after the
tornado. How much energy field they really have and how powerful it really is between them. So
however God planned that there, I don’t know. They were given opportunities. I can’t truly say
we are the ones who made that happen; God had a big plan in that.
Peter: So how does it go a generation back? Are you pretty close to where you grew up?
Terese: I grew up in Springfield.
Peter: Oh, so that’s a pretty big move.
Terese: 41 miles. I left home to marry a farmer. I’m from a family of six siblings. My younger
sister and I are the two that actually left home and found a spouse out of town; otherwise all of
my other four siblings married high school sweethearts. While my sister and I both married
Daniels, we both married farmers, and so we probably the two connected, as I left home, she’s
nine years younger than I am—that we have a lot in common, you know. She did go off for a few
years and work away from home but she’s back now so. It’s a unique setting. Daniel is from a
family of four siblings. He’s got two brothers that farm and a sister who is married to a pastor
that lives in the cities. So, family is just, it’s unique. And do they all get along every day? No.
There are issues—some days these two brothers work together on a project; some days these
two. But they do need each other, just not all the time.
Peter: Where do you think you get your resilience from? I mean, it isn’t usual. Either one of the
things that happened, any one of the three big ones…
Terese: That have happened?
Peter: …would’ve wrecked a bunch of people I know. Where do you think you get that from?
Terese: Well, part of it probably comes from work ethic that we both have in our background is
that we’re the oldest end of the generations in our families. We both know how to work better
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than we know how to take off. So, and being able to work side-by-side. You were tired together,
so you rested together. I think part of it is that. Part of it is liking what you do. You know, Daniel
said once that, “You know, pitching manure doesn't have to be a chore, if you know that in the
end, there is a reward, or if you all do it together, and cause we used to raise hogs in mobile
homes and we raised baby calves in mobile homes, and they were all pitched out by hand.” And
you know, so you did it together and you had supper together, and you know. Friday nights, I can
go back to Friday nights, when the boys were growing up, we used to watch Dukes of Hazard
and I made homemade pizza. And then as they got a little older it was like, “I wonder if that’s
how they are gonna drive.” But, no they, we have two sons who lost the only vehicle they ever
owned in the tornado. So it wasn’t—nobody had to have brand new, it was have, I mean, “Like
what you have, and take care of what you have,” and I don’t know, we have been truly blessed, I
will truly tell you that.
Peter: Another word that’s absolutely surfacing in your story is independence. I mean profound
independence, bull-headed independence.
Daniel: Ask her what nationality she is?
Terese: Well, I am 100 percent German, okay? I am 100 percent German.
Peter: This is what the German stuff does to you, huh?
Terese: Okay, I think so. I think so.
Daniel: You can tell a German, but you can’t tell them much.
Terese: I’ve heard that many times. I think that if you go back to the engineering and some of
what the boys have, that does come from the German heritage—and we’re now having flies in
my movie [swatting]...
Peter: Well, it’s fine, fine.
Terese: They are part of Minnesota when it’s cold.
Peter: They are part of Minnesota.
Peter: So, it’s still an extraordinary story. There’s no way it isn’t really extraordinary. I want to
go back to a thing that you said back at the beginning, which is about wanting to marry a farmer.
Where did that come from? I mean there are lots of people in the world that would rather die
than marry a farmer. I mean, where does that come from?
Terese: That comes from living on an acreage where my parents lived. My dad worked at the
telephone company in Springfield, met my mother because she was a telephone operator.
Grandma and Grandpa lived five miles from us on a dairy farm, and we visited Grandma’s house
often, where I got to go. I just loved being in the barn: feed baby calves, got to help clean
chickens. And my dad grew up in North Dakota; they were on the farm, too. But we didn’t get to
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go to Grandma and Grandpa’s in North Dakota very often, because, of course, it was 500 miles
away, and with six kids in one car, it probably wasn’t just the greatest thing to travel often and
do that. But I guess growing up and going to Grandma’s house: helping with cows, getting to
make homemade ice cream, grew up making homemade ice cream at Grandma’s house on
Sunday night. Those are fond childhood memories that, that I have. And I don’t know, Mom said
that was from little on, “I was going to marry a farmer and live in a big white house.” And I've
been in love with barns. I shed tears every time another one goes down. There aren’t very many
left where we live. We’ve been here 35 years now. There’s 17 homesteads that are gone in a
five-mile circle around where we live, in 35 years. So being blessed with boys that came home to
be on a farm. God had a plan, and we’re just part of it.
Peter: I expect you’ll get a barn before too long, somehow or another.
Terese: I’m thinking the shape of a doghouse-sized barn.
Peter: A doghouse-sized barn? You know what I saw today? A barn studio.
Terese: A barn studio?
Peter: Yeah, it looked like a barn, but it was an artist’s studio. It was just miniature.
Terese: Just miniature? Okay.
Peter: Just down the road, about four miles.
Terese: So that might be a...
Daniel: ...we’ll get one of those.
Terese: But you know everybody has to have a wish list so it doesn't necessarily mean, you
know, I got the farmer and I got the big white house and the big white house blew away, and we
can pretend that this is the big red barn as our building is burgundy and green, and it has three
cupolas on top that represent three lives that God gave us back because—they weren’t very
happy when Mom decided that we have to have cupolas on top of the shop, and I just said that
they just represent the three boys that survived the tornado. And our oldest son was home ten
minutes before the tornado with his stepson, and his wife was a police officer in Mountain Lake
and she called and said “Jeremy,” —it was the night out up where they celebrate and have a
picnic in town and police department is part of it, and she called and said, “Jeremy, you should
come into town right now because there is not a big line right now for supper.” So in the pick-up
goes Jeremy and Dillon, six and a half miles to town, meets Kim in the police car on the way out
of town, and she calls him on the phone and said, “There is some bad weather. I am just going
out to weather spot. I’ll be right back into town.” He drove blocks around the park, and parked,
and as he was parking, she came back into town, and he got the call from his brothers that said,
“Jeremy, you’ve got to come home.” He called his wife and said, “Kim I’ve got to go back
home; I’ll be right back into town.” He didn’t tell her—she was pregnant at the time with our
first granddaughter who came October 28th—and he come home to us. So, I think God had a
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plan in that also, because I don’t think he could have taken five boys and got them all in one
place at one time and been safe. And if you’d like to know what was underneath the basement
steps where the boys were—a lot of stuff, three boys, and a lot of guardian angels, because I
don’t think you could’ve put five boys under my steps. I really don’t. I really don’t, so you know.
Peter: So I want to revisit one other thing you said. You’re talking about your life as a stay-athome person who really wasn’t staying home, because you were out helping in the fields and
helping with the business. But one thing that you said kind of in passing was that you found
ways to contribute, and I know that from my own mother’s experience, the kind of things that
people do, but people on the other side of the television screen might not. What kind of stuff did
you do to, you know, kind of make a contribution to the family, you know, besides of course
raising kids, which is huge, and all the work that you do?
Terese: Being here to make meals, being here when the kids get off the school bus, went into
direct marketing meat. After our third son was born, I told Daniel when he come in from chores
one time, one morning, I said, “I think it’s time for me to do some chores and you to be in in the
morning, and I’ll go out and do chores.” And so at that time we were farrowing hogs. I didn’t
grow up on a farm even around hogs at all, so I got to switch roles and be the farrowing house
nanny, where I would do farrowing house chores in the morning, and then I would come back in,
and then he’d... So that was my one out, away from having three little people, you know, under
foot all the time. I did volunteer work at church, did some volunteer work at school once the kids
got involved with…and I don’t know, just made it work. But when you don’t have to…when you
cook from scratch. You can save a lot of dollars just cooking from scratch. So being at home and
being able to have that time to do that was part of it; it isn’t as costly. And I was blessed with
children, and I figured, if I was blessed with children, I could be their mom and take care of
them. And that why I am very happy to know that my grandkids are a part of: when Ted gets off
the bus here for forty minutes before Mom comes home from work, then Daddy comes home
Thursday night, so on Friday she’s with Daddy. Addison is too little to know where she’s at yet,
except for she comes to work with Daddy for three days a week, and then she’s with Mommy. So
I have children who have somewhat of the same, maybe it’s stubbornness, maybe it’s
philosophy, I don’t know what it is.
Peter: So was there a learning curve with this direct marketing meat stuff?
Terese: It still is.
Peter: How was that? I mean, it’s a lot different, you know, I mean, my parents raised animals
too, but you know at a certain point somebody came along, and they went into a truck...
Terese: ...and that was it...
Peter: ...and we got a check from Armour. So how was that?
Terese: Daniel will tell you that I’m much better at it than he is, because I’m a people person,
and so it’s a one-person-at-a-time project. You know: some of my steam has left since the
tornado, so the direct marketing has not come back. It was going well before the tornado, and
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then losing the livestock, and then losing the steam to put into doing it. It’s just now starting to
go, to come back as strong as it was. It’s a challenge. It’s one person at a time. I can talk to
people and they say, “If you butcher that beef and hauled it up to the city, you could make a lot
more money,” and my answer to that is, “I have friends here that need good food too.” I just have
to find them, and it’s just one person at a time. And the older generation were some of my first
costumers; several of them have passed away. So then it’s teaching another whole group of
people. I have two sons with friends that have married gals that are now into eating wholesome
foods, so that’s, you know, come full circle—in that I now have some younger generation of
people who have found me, through the boys’ businesses. It’s just a work in progress, and it’s a
continual work.
Peter: So is it just, like, talking to people at church?
Terese: It’s some of that.
Peter: ...or...
Therse: ...Doing some advertising.
Peter: I see.
Terese: Cooking barbeque for a meal at church and having somebody say, “Boy, that was really
good barbeque,” or you know, I’ve gone to meetings where I’ve passed out a pound of
hamburger to everybody and got costumers to come back through that. There’s a CSA, which is
Community Supported Agriculture, in Mountain Lake now, a friend of mine, and she has opted
to advertise that I have meat, and so that’s helped some people come into starting out with two
packages of hamburger and two steaks or one roast, or “I’ll try soup bones because my grandma
has a soup recipe and so.” And sharing recipes is part of it too. And you have to have time to
cook real food. That becomes important, then it’s going to be an easier sell.
Peter: Now, I was frankly pretty impressed by your web presence. You’ve got quite a site there
compared to...how did that come? How’s the internet figuring into the stuff that you do?
Terese: Well I’m a part of Minnesota Grown, so I advertise at Minnesota Grown. Are all my
other businesses on there? I don’t know: is K-Fence there? What I am on the website is for the
tornado, and somebody told me once, “You get on a website for a tornado; it'll never go away.’
So erasing those pictures from the website would be okay. But I’m not into the computer world,
like I do not eat and sleep…. I have an e-mail address that is from June; that’s when my e-mail
address showed up. Been a part of Minnesota Grown for 10, 12 years, you know, but they update
the website, and they do the information on that part. Yes, direct marketing through websites is a
thing—I am still a people person who likes to meet people and talk to people because I do not
have organic product on this farm. I have chemical free, antibiotic free, grass-fed beef and grassfed chickens where I use non-GMO corn for the feed rations for the chickens. The beef have no
grain from little on in their entire life. So I haven’t gone through Organic Certification. At this
point, don’t know if it’s totally necessary, because I am really selling my trust. My trust that once
a costumer comes here, I am willing to share how I feed them, where I feed them, what we do—
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and so with the businesses, if the boys keep everything going here, there’s more and more
costumers that come here for that. I am hoping that once we actually live in the building that
everybody works together in here that the direct marketing will it’ll be: “Do you need 10 pounds
of hamburger in your freezer, or do you need steaks for the grill,” or, you know, and go that
route. All of my meat goes through a USDA-inspected locker. So it doesn’t have anything added
to it; it’s the same product that came off the farm, just cut up and packaged so I can, in the state
of Minnesota, have customers come get it.
Peter: So the Internet is part of your business, but it’s not a big part.
Terese: No, people find me on the Internet through Minnesota Grown with my meat, and I do
have costumers that call about that. And so some of that, and some of it is word of mouth. Once
you find one costumer, they bring another one back. But it’s a slow process.
Peter: But you’ve got synergy between all these businesses.
Terese: Of all of it to be here, and all those people coming. Right. So in the end it should come
out, it should work.
Peter: It should work.
Terese: It should work.
Peter: Now I had the good fortune to meet you at the Windom episode of the Food Policy
Council. So, how did you get involved in that, and what are your thoughts about that?
Terese: Well, we’ve been involved with Rural Advantage, which is where the Food Policy was
born out of, with Linda Mishke for several years, many years. And that Linda doing a
presentation, she called and had Dan and I do a presentation about Halls Across the Prairie, and
direct marketing meat. And so I think, that show, I ended up on the Food Policy Council. It’s
been a wonderful opportunity to meet some people that I would’ve never met in any other
fashion or way, and it’s coming up that we’re gonna do a locally produced dinner down in
Fairmont in October now here, with some grown-in-Minnesota real food, and get together with
200 people, and I look forward to being a part of that. I have a goal being a part of the Food
Policy thing that we need to put some good real food back into our schools, into our lunches.
And Minnesota’s got a big start in it, but it becomes a challenge in time, you know, in what the
cooks can order, in what they have time to put together. So that’s going to be a challenge but I
think, I think if we want healthy kids, that’s what we’re gonna… that’s one of my goals.
Peter: So have you had any success locally with that?
Terese: With the food thing?
Peter: With getting good food into the schools?
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Terese: Vegetables versus meat. It’s harder with meat, because there’s a bigger, there’s—and I
am working with one of the schools to see what we can do about it and they’re excited to try it.
And we’re not going to serve steak at school; we’re gonna, you know, make porcupine meat
balls or we’re gonna go... I think it has great potential, and there are some schools, but it’s harder
to put meat into school system than it is vegetables. And there again, that’s a safety thing, and
it’s a safety thing with meat coming off of a truck to a school, too, you know. I am a licensed
cook in the state of Minnesota. I’ve taken the courses and I’ve used it, and I’m glad for the
knowledge that I’ve gained from it. So, that’s another learning tool.
Peter: Well, we have just about a minute and I’m curious: where’s the future going? You’ve got
any, I mean, you’ve got your house to move into, at the edge of the machine shops here. You’ve
got your boys established. I expect now you’ll just retire right? I mean Florida, you know maybe
a little golf, some fishing, that kind of thing.
Terese: You know we’ve got some dear friends that are fishermen, but I’ve learned that there are
two kinds of fishing. One is going fishing, the other is actually fishing. We were blessed here
about five weeks ago with a phone call from some friends who said, “We have something we’d
like to stop by and share with you,” and I said, “Okay, I’ll be home,” and they dropped off a
walleye, that were fished that day, cleaned and delivered to me on ice. And it was just like, wow.
I said, “Did you want to trade hamburger for the fish?” He said, “No, then you’ll never get
anymore.” That’s what he shared with me. They were just happy to go fishing, and we were
happy to have fish.
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