How did you get into farming?
Well, first off, I was raised on a farm, helping my dad farm the animals and land. After high school I went to college to avoid the Vietnam war. I had a low draft number and if you went to college you were exempt. After two years of college I was sick of being broke, see we had to pay our own ways through college. So, I went to Colorado to work in road construction for two years. Then my Uncle and cousin (who I was very close to) died in a fire. My Aunt wanted me to take over the farm, this was in 1973. I jumped at the opportunity! I had 16 milk cows, all named after ex-girlfriends. It didn’t take long for me to see that I wasn’t a dairy farmer. Therefore, I focused on the land and ran it for 5 years, it was about 1000 acres. Farm rent was very cheap then and crops were at a good price, so I was able to get a loan and buy a combine. This was a big deal because my dad had never had a combine of his own, he was extremely conservative and wouldn’t spend the money to get one. We had to run the land with small equipment. But even with the combine, my Dad wouldn’t change! I had to spend a whole day setting up an elevator so my dad could pick ear corn and put it in the bin to dry. We’d pick less than 20 acres of corn a day (running 1000 acres total) and spend days in the fall doing what a combine can do in one afternoon. I will never forget it! Then my Aunt’s youngest son Ronnie took over the land and I bought the farm right next door to my parent’s farm and I ran the land with Dad.
How did you get into hog farming?
In 1978 the hog prices were high, so I decided to focus on pigs. Also, we lost the land and were only running 400-500 acres which wasn’t enough land for both my Dad and me to run. I converted the old cow barn, that had sat empty probably 30 years, on my farm into a hog farrowing barn, built a little barn for grower and added a lean-to for hot nursery. In 1982 interest rates climbed to 18-19%, with the hogs and equipment I was in a lot of debt. On top of that, we were having a lot of kids and had no health insurance for three of them! Nasty, nasty times! We fought off foreclosure.
Then our neighbor Dale Husfeldt came over and talked to Jenny and me about his idea to take the drugs out of the meat. We decided to go for it with him and did some testing, finding out that we could change the fat profile of a pig and make the pork healthy! We thought we were going to be rich! We had four equal partners in the business; my brother Rodney Tollefson, Dale Husfeldt, Mike Fenske and Jenny and me. But how do we sell the pork? We didn’t have a clue! We tried to sell the pork kind of like Pampered Chef does, in people’s homes. That didn’t work at all, I think we sold like two pigs the first six months! That put us in one heck of a hole again. The only thing that helped us out of it was the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market!
Start and end of the Nation-Wide business, Tollefson Farms Inc.
Then we bought a USDA plant in a nearby town called Glencoe. Little by little, the partners dropped out, we weren’t making any money. After a while, even Jenny left and took a job elsewhere; which was good for our marriage. Then some investors started coming in because they loved the pork and a publicly traded holding company came in called Impression Delivery Corporation (IDC). They promised to support us, but I had to ramp up production! At the time that we signed contracts with them our stock was valued at $2 million dollars, but it wasn’t tradable for 3 years. We felt rich!
Jenny did all the labeling. She went to Washington and found a lady who was in the basement and was only hired for equal opportunity purposes. This lady didn’t have anything to do, so Jenny was talking to her about the labels we wanted created saying “Hogs raised without the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics or sulfa drugs.” [Picture of Tollefson Farms original label on the right – Ed.] She said, “I think we can do that.” and she passed it through! Nobody really knew! At the time the packing plants didn’t want that stuff to go through, they didn’t want anything to do with it. They told us, “Well, what does that say about other pork?” We weren’t business savvy back then and responded “Well, I don’t care. The consumer has the right to know.” So, we got that done under the radar. This was huge because the subtherapeutic drugs in the meat were causing people to build up an immunity to antibiotics. Eventually, the whole industry figured this out.
In 1987, AURI (Agricultural Utilization Research Institute) gave us a grant for $50,000 to do testing on the meat. We found out we are very high in Lecithin! [Lecithin is a fat that is essential in the cells of the body. It is used for treating memory disorders. – Ed.] Also, we found out we were high in Omega 3 fatty acids, poly unsaturated fats, and mono unsaturated fats. [Below is some of the research done at this time – Ed.]
The wholesale business it a cut-throat business. It’s price driven and you lose control of the product. We had grocers telling us, “I have to put your pork in, but I’m going to tell all my customers that your pork isn’t any better than any other pork.” We had to fight the system, fight with meat manager who didn’t want to differentiate! 30 years ago, people took offense to our pork and what we were doing. We weren’t saying their pork was bad, we were just saying ours is better. Now you can’t go into a grocery store without seeing “no drugs”, “All natural”, “farm raised” and the so on.
IDC told us to produce 1000 hogs/week right away. Well, that takes time. In order to get our pork, the sow must be fed the diet, then make the piglets and wait for them to grow. In a year we got there but there was no place to sell the pork. They never found a market! They had no marketing plan! But they kept telling me “You just raise the pigs, we’ll figure out the rest.” That brings back bad memories! Eventually they found distributors but didn’t sell the pork at a premium, so the meat wasn’t making any money. IDC was floating the business on the money they were making from investors, but the meat wasn’t profitable. To get some of the meat sold I basically lived in a Sam’s store. Jenny’s Uncle Jack got us into Sam’s (at the time called Wholesale Club). We demoed those stores constantly to be able to move enough product to stay in them. I got my nephews Pete and Timmy Steffen to help me demo the meat. I was in the stores so much that I got to know the staff the worked for Sam’s and one time one of the cashiers told me that a lady said “That man back there is crazy! He actually thinks he owns the company; he thinks he made the pork!”.
After a year and a half IDC went broke and we lost everything basically, except the meat and the research. We still had an amazing product but how to get it sold was the question we had yet to correctly answer.
Minneapolis Farmers Market:
I approached Larry [the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market manager – Ed.] and asked if he would take us back. We were technically still selling there here and there but it wasn’t me and we didn’t have a spot for the last two years. Larry said, “Absolutely, they are asking about you all the time.” So, Jerry created a spot for us, it’s the spot we still have to this day on the Northwest corner [Intersection of East Lyndale Ave N and Cesar Chavez Ave – Ed.] and he gave us sandwiches (initially I didn’t want sandwiches, boy that would have been stupid!). We rebranded as Tollefson Family Pork and began selling at the Minneapolis Market. Over time we built up a following and finally found a way to sell our pork. You see, when you sell direct to the customer you have control over your product. You control the margins, the shelf life, quality of the product and you build relationships with your customers. Our customers are everything. They know we are different, tell others, and this keeps us going. You can’t pay for better advertising!
The Minneapolis Market gave us a living and allowed us to pay off debt. It saved the business in many ways.
What are the corporate farmers doing wrong?
Today’s agriculture has changed the farming family dynamics. It’s changed everything. It used to be 200 acre farms, 320 acres at the most and every farm place had a family that you socialized with at birthdays, potlucks, etc. Now that chemicals came in and bigger equipment and you can run 5000 acres these farm places have disappeared. Now, it’s impossible for young farmers to get into farming. Soon the little pig producer will be gone. The little dairy farmers have been losing out for years now and they are all disappearing. Its big farms now, everything big! Lots of farmers just farm for corporations now.
Why organic crops?
Our land is small and ideal for organic farming. We are trying to create a business for the future generation.
Did you expect any of your children to go into farming?
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I was so busy trying to survive. I just saw that the farmer’s market was good for the kids. They weren’t in front of screens, they were developing social skills, confidence, work ethic and using mental math. I remember Luke [Second born child – Ed.] used to greet customers like, “What?” or “Next.” [Smiles – Ed.] He’s come a long way since then in his customer service skills.
I think I hoped [that the kids would go into farming - Ed.].
What is your favorite farming memory from when your kids were growing up?
Jenny and I had five kids, all within a year and half of each other. Sometimes Jenny would get sick of the kids in the house and send them out to the barn with me. One day, my third boy, Ricky was driving his mother up the wall, so she sent him out with me. It was dead of winter and he had his snow suit on. I was pressure washing and told Ricky, “just go over there and let me finish this up quick.” Well, after a little while, I turned around and looked for him and he was gone! I panicked a little bit and went looking for him. He had crawled up into a farrowing crate and fell asleep next to a sow! [Picture of Ricky sleeping in the farrowing crate below – Ed.] I also remember when the kids were all feeding the pigs off the roof of the lean-to. They would throw down feed from the roof for the pigs to eat below. [Picture of kids below – Ed.]
Ricky asleep in farrowing crate.
Kids throwing feed down to pigs off the lean-to.
The kids followed me all around the farm. One time, when my brother Roddy was taking care of the pigs, Ricky took all the keys out of every motorized vehicle we had (tractors, skid loader, trucks, etc.) and threw them! [Danny laughs – Ed.] Rod said the lawn mower keys were the hardest to find.
It was fun raising kids on the farm. The kids went everywhere. I would come into the house and ask Jenny “where are the kids?” She’d respond, “I don’t know.” But they always came back for dinner.
Danny with sons Lucas and Ricky in the tractor.
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