Adding Abe to the team

ST. ANTHONY, Minn. — It did not take long for Abe Hartung to find his way back to the family farm. A few months after graduating from high school, he joined his parents, Randy and Amanda Hartung, back at their dairy near St. Anthony.

“What helped make the decision, and helped it progress a little faster, (was having) a family friend ask to work for us full time,” Abe said. “Dad was considering it, and he made the offer that I can either come home or this other guy would start working for us full time.”

Abe worked to follow Randy and Amanda’s rule that their kids need to get a job off the farm for one year before coming back. Abe started working at Columbia Gear in February 2022 which was his senior year. With the timing of things, Abe ended up taking his dad’s offer, buying a tractor and putting in his 2-week notice at Columbia Gear a little early. He was back on the farm by August 2022. In 2023, he attended Alexandria Technical & Community College for one semester to obtain a commercial driver’s license.

“That’s definitely been a life goal of mine, to have one of my kids, or more of our kids, take over,” Randy said.

Amanda agreed.

“(My goal is) to be able to raise our family with a good work ethic and (hope) they continue to grow up to be good people,” she said. “The goal was always to be able to pass that along to someone.”

Now Randy and Abe are almost inseparable. The father-son duo works together in the barn, the field and the shop, both embracing the opportunity to learn from one another.

“Most days Dad and I spend a lot of hours next to each other,” Abe said. “We joke that we walk the same, talk the same and act the same because we spend so many hours in a day together.”

Randy and Abe milk most of the time, which has allowed Amanda to focus on feeding calves and switching cows. During fieldwork, one of Abe’s younger siblings, Ethan or Marissa, helps with milking.

With Abe’s return to the farm, Randy and Amanda started making progressive plans for their dairy. In 2023 they built a freestall barn that connected to their existing 76-stall tiestall barn and increased cow numbers from 75 to 135.

Abe would like to eventually milk with robotic milking units. For now, the robotic technology on the farm consists of the Lely Juno feed pusher and the Lely Discovery manure collector for the freestall barn. While Randy has come around to appreciating this new technology, Abe is still pushing for more innovative ideas to utilize around the farm.

“There are plenty of things Dad shakes his head at but still lets me go for it,” Abe said.

Randy said Abe reminds him of himself.

“We both come up with crazy ideas, but at the end of the day, even when he comes up with those crazy ideas, I had some of those same ideas 25 years ago,” he said.

Abe said his parents have been open minded to his ideas.

“[My parents] have lots of patience,” Abe said. “It’s not like, ‘This is how we have done it for the last 30 years (so) this is how we are going to do it.’”

Abe also convinced his parents to try haylage for the first time in 2025. The forage is paying off the Hartungs said.

“The cows are responding really (well) to it, and our components are at an all-time high in the last year,” Abe said.

The Hartungs said they know progress takes time, and new ideas cannot all be implemented overnight. Abe and Randy said they are both aware of the value working together brings to creating success for the future.

While Abe helped a lot on the farm during high school, he said there has still been lots to learn about the day-to-day decisions and happenings that occur throughout the year.

“It’s one thing to be home all summer, but it’s another thing to be home all summer and winter,” Abe said.

Abe also drives a milk truck every other week, gaining knowledge away from their family dairy.

“I get to see a lot of different farms, talk to a lot of different farmers, and seeing the milk plants is really cool, too,” Abe said.

While welcoming their son back to the farm has been great for the future of their dairy, Randy and Amanda said they have embraced Abe’s return as more of a mentorship than a partnership.

“We are very proud, very excited, very hopeful for the future,” Amanda said. “It’s something you always dream about; to have the next generation want to take over the farm, and to know that we have a reason to continue to invest into the farm because there’s another generation coming.”

Randy agreed.

“I always wanted one of my kids to take over, because you work your whole life for the next generation,” Randy said. “Why work as hard as you do if you don’t want to pass it on?”

Mark Klaphake contributed to the article