Keeping The Home Place - Centennial Farms
2021 Fallby Christine Brown,
who is an Interpretive Historian with the Montana Historical Society.
“Nothing fancy ever happened,” explained Lorraine Hellie on her Montana Historical Society (MHS) Centennial Farm and Ranch application. The story of her divorced great-grandmother, Nora Hellie, describes how Nora left North Dakota in 1916 with her 10 children, a brother, and her parents to find better opportunities in eastern Montana. The extended family initially lived in a sod house and worked through more than two decades of drought and economic depression to improve their land and pass it to the next generation. The ranch, now thousands of acres, is still operated by Nora’s great- and great-great-grandchildren.
“Through the years, this operation has been run with little fanfare,” Hellie maintains. Those stories of unromantic work, along with many accounts of success, failure, and constant perseverance, constitute the growing collection of stories gathered over 11 years of listing farms and ranches in the MHS’s Centennial Farm and Ranch registry. Registered families must prove 100 years or more of family ownership through deed records and historical information detailing ownership from the founder to the present owner.
For Lorraine Hellie’s efforts in telling her family story, she received a framed certificate signed by the governor and a large metal roadside sign. The program is honorary, but it goes beyond just patting people on the back. It documents land use, labor, transportation, community, and ethnic heritage—all significant aspects of Montana’s agricultural history. Additionally, each story illustrates many lessons learned in the long journey to keep the farm or ranch in the family.
The Armstrong family’s story documents experienced Iowa farmers who gave up everything to establish a Montana farm. While building their operation, they also helped develop the town of Geraldine. Their dual connection to land and community helped each generation thrive. Women’s stories abound too. Etta Bangs’s story of homesteading as a single woman shows how her determination resulted in her descendants continued stewardship today. After she married, her husband Will often thought of selling the farm during the depressed 1920s, but Etta’s unwavering reply was, “There’s always another year.” For other farmers and ranchers, local, state, or federal assistance made a significant impact.
For example, MSU Extension’s early twentieth century poultry husbandry bulletins helped many farmers get through trying times. Raising turkeys saved Magnus and Ida Gerdrum’s Fergus County ranch and chicken farming kept the Wiegand Farm in Toole County afloat when drought and grasshoppers ravaged their land. For others, loans and subsidies, experimental crops or livestock, soil conservation, leasing, and taking outside work helped their family operation grow, change, and succeed to the next generation.
Keeping a farm or ranch in the same family for 100 years or more is a rare accomplishment. According to Kevin Spafford, financial planner and advisor to the Farm Journal magazine Legacy Project, 70 percent of farms fail to pass from the first to the second generation, 90 percent fail to pass from the second to the third generation, and 96 percent fail to pass from the third to the fourth generation. He cites debt, death, disability, and divorce as principal reasons.
Spafford’s bleak statistics call for thoughtful estate planning. Centennial farm owner Bruce Nelson of Triangle N Farms knows this firsthand. Legal fees to settle his grandparent’s estate nearly cost his parents the farm. He explained, “If Grandma and Grandpa didn’t leave a lot of money to pay bills after they passed away, I might not have been applying to become a centennial farm.” In contrast, Nelson’s father worked with lawyers and MSU Extension family economist Marsha Goetting to ensure a smooth transition to the next generation. “We settled Dad’s estate, without going into probate, for less than $15,000,” said Nelson.
More stories collected through the MHS Centennial Farm and Ranch registry are available in a new book, Montana’s Centennial Farms and Ranches: Celebrating 100 Years of Family Stewardship. It tells forty-plus “nothing fancy” stories and offers insight into keeping the home place in the family. For more information about applying to the Centennial program, visit https://bit.ly/mtcentennialfarms.
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BECOMING A CENTENNIAL FARM OR RANCH
The Montana Historical Society’s Centennial Farm and Ranch program recognizes our state’s agricultural traditions by celebrating the perseverance and stewardship of Montana families on their farms and ranches for one hundred years or more.
Benefits
- Official framed certificate signed by the governor of Montana
- 24-inch by 36-inch metal roadside sign with the property name and founding year (pictured)
- Property history printed online and in our periodic farm and ranch yearbook
Requirements
- Proof of continuous ownership by members of the same family for a minimum of 100 years (through deed records).
- Proof that the property is a working farm or ranch with a minimum of 160 acres or, if fewer than 160 acres, must have gross yearly farm/ranch income of at least $1,000.
- One current owner must be a Montana resident.
- $100 fee
Questions? To request the application by e-mail or U.S. mail or to ask questions, contact Christine Brown at (406)444-1687 or email at Christine.brown@mt.gov.