BROOTEN, Minn. — Brothers Kenny, Arnie and Jeremy Martin enjoy working together on their 150-cow dairy near Brooten.
They also relish the opportunity to work with their brothers, Wesley and Wendell, and cousins, Jason and Dwight Zimmerman, when they custom chop for area farmers.
That scenario came together June 26 when the group went to work for neighboring dairy farmer, Steve Middendorf, to help him put up second-crop hay on his 210-cow dairy 11 miles away.
“I have a chance to interact with my brothers,” Kenny said. “We enjoy it. We have our own separate farms but work together with fieldwork. The families have been doing custom work for 10 years.”
Kenny and Arnie own the chopper and cutter and their cousins own the merger. Both dairies own a forage box.
The sun wasn’t quite out at 5:15 a.m. when Kenny walked south across the yard to the barn to check on the cows and start the day. He then brought the cows to the holding area and Arnie and Jeremy showed up to milk. Ernest, their dad, arrived around the same time and he and Kenny fed calves and scraped the barn. Shortly after 7 a.m., morning chores were complete.
After breakfast, Arnie went to the field to side dress fertilizer on the corn. Jason started merging rows together at 8:30 a.m. while the rest finished chores around the farm and got their haying equipment ready.
Shortly before noon, they were perched in their seats hoping for a productive harvest day. Kenny was manning the chopper, Jeremy and Dwight were each pulling wagons, Wesley was driving the push tractor and Wendell was mowing fields at John Zimmerman’s.
“I enjoy running the chopper,” Kenny said. “Getting feed made the way you like is a good feeling.”
For the next five hours the group worked to chop five different fields totaling 140 acres for the Middendorfs. By 4:30 p.m. the custom work was done, and they had harvested around 360 tons of haylage.
“We enjoy chopping together,” Kenny said. “There is enough of us brothers and cousins.”
Wendell had spent the day cutting the second crop for the Zimmermans.
Once they finished harvesting, Kenny and Arnie turned their attention to their afternoon chores and milking.
Kenny and his wife, Joy, started milking in their double-14 parallel parlor while Jeremy brought the cows to the holding area and scraped the stalls.
“I always did like the cows,” Joy said.
Once the stalls were clean, Jeremy relieved Joy from milking and she started feeding calves with a milk shuttle.
The Martins — Ernest, Kenny, Jeremy, Arnie and Joy — usually rotate parlor duties.
“We do a lot of shuffling around. Nobody gets tired of anything then,” Kenny said. “You know what’s going on.”
Arnie, with the help of his daughter, Jasmin, spent several hours mixing feed for the different groups of cattle on the farm. The Martins mix and feed once a day.
Arnie’s wife, Kendra, was at home caring for their 6-week-old twins.
There have been changes on the Martin’s farm in 2024.
In January, Arnie and Kenny took over the farm from Ernest and Jolene.
“I always enjoyed farming,” Ernest said. “It’s good seeing crops grow and the cows milking. The boys are keeping everything going.”
Kenny said the transition does not mean a lot of change, although he and Arnie do the bookwork now.
Joy and Kenny moved to the farm in April. However, Ernest said he and Jolene are still going to the farm twice a day.
“We are just slowing down a little bit,” he said. “I enjoy this.”
Since taking over, Arnie and Kenny have cut the milking herd down 100 animals.
“We went more into steers to cut down with the chore workload,” Arnie said.
The Martins house their cows in a freestall barn and the stalls are bedded with chopped straw. The recently fresh cows are on a bedded pack.
Their cows are currently milking around 85 pounds of milk a day and their breeding is focused on components.
“We enjoy milking cows,” Kenny said. “I like driving the machinery too. I like that we can work together on the farm as a family.”
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