Despite Doug’s unusual ideas about vacations, he and Sue are still going strong after 47 years. They farm just north of Ireton with their son, Doug, and his wife, Rachael. They feed cattle; grow corn, soybeans and alfalfa; plus do some custom-farming and Dustin does a little custom baling. In addition, father and son are affiliated with Beyer Auction & Realty of Sioux Center. Dustin is in real estate, selling farmland, residential and commercial property. Doug is an auctioneer, a career he accidentally started almost 40 years ago. He was helping to take bids at a sale when the auctioneer’s throat tightened up and he lost his voice. “I told him to take a break – I said I was used to auctioning off pigs in our barn back when I was in kindergarten. So I can do this.” He successfully finished the sale and was being asked to auction other sales by the time he got to his pickup. When visiting with the Houlton family, it doesn’t take long for the conversation to turn to the life lessons and wisdom of Doug’s parents, Charles and Helen. Even when work on and off the farm filled the days almost around the clock, Doug knew his tractor had better be parked by midnight on Saturday. “If you were out in the field, you knew you had to come home, because Sunday was a day off,” Doug said. “There was always coffee and fresh rolls here after church. But, if you had been working on Sunday or you didn’t go to church, there weren’t any fresh rolls for you. Mom had a quiet way of telling you what was right and what was wrong.” One time in the 1980s, Doug decided to clean out the tool shed while his dad was laid up. “I threw a lot of the stuff onto the iron pile. When Dad could get up and around, I took him for a ride in the truck. I drove by the by the tool shed and he said, ‘Just a minute, back up.’ He asked ‘Where’d all that stuff come from?’ I told him I cleaned out the tool shed.” His dad insisted on going through the pile before the man came to collect the old iron. “He got just about all of it hung back up again because, you know, a piece of iron that long with a hole in either end, you never know when you’re going to need that. That was the people who went through the Depression. You don’t know where your next meal is coming from, so you don’t throw anything away.” Doug started cleaning the shed again this year, but keeps hearing his dad say: “Don’t throw that away.” Dustin also noted his grandfather’s philosophical side. “Grandpa Charles used to tell me: ‘It’s not the money that makes you happy, it’s the love. You can live on love.’ That comes from living through the Depression. He would say ‘Grandma and I never had much money, but we always had love.’” Grandma Helen died first and later Grandpa Charles died a day before Helen’s birthday. “He said it was time and this way he could be with Grandma on her birthday,” Dustin remembered. While Doug and Dustin may toss out a little more scrap iron than Charles did, they’ve kept some important pieces of old iron – Grandpa’s 1949 John Deere A, 1951 Farmall C, and 1953 Farmall Super H. All three are still in working order. Charles
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Doug and Sue Houlton farm and feed cattle just north of Ireton.
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November 2021 | www.agemedia.pub | The Farming Families Magazine
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