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In his rookie year as a farmer, his father-in-law thought the winter was mild enough and that Louis had a good enough handle on the cattle feeding for the elder couple to take an extended trip to visit family in California. Carol’s parents left for the west coast on Jan. 23, 1962. Between then and April, South Dakota had 100 inches of snow. “It was quite a challenge,” Louis said. “Fortunately, we had about as good equipment as anybody at that time. We had a 400 International with a hydraulic loader and a feed wagon. But we had to scoop our way for a half mile to get through the snow to get the feed … then crawl up in the silo and throw the feed down. Then we used the tractor to scoop our way back because the path was blown shut while we were throwing that feed down.”

Looking back on that first winter, he’s always thought somebody was trying to tell him something. “But it’s always bothered me I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.”

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Mary and Todd Vander Laan with their granddaughter, Nora. Louis joked that he’s hampered by “cattle feeder’s disease” and consequently built a relatively large cattle feedyard over the years. But when Dakota Plains Dairy wanted to purchase their feedyard site, it proved to be an opportunity. Todd said, “I love the cattle. But when it would blizzard, you knew you had thousands of head of cattle. In the years when it would never quit raining or snowing, there was never-ending mud and that about wiped me out. I just didn’t want to be as big as we were and have to hire so many people. I didn’t want to feed at that scale.”

So today’s Vander Laan feedlot is about one-third the size of the previous one. In addition to the feedlot and cow-calf operation, Todd’s son, Levi, has brought sheep into the mix. Levi uses artificial insemination on his ewes, and focuses on selling club lambs and show lambs. He’s a graduate of South Dakota State University. His wife, Payleen, is a stylist with her own shop in Sioux Falls called “The One.” As this issue of Farming Families was going to press, they are expecting their first child to be born. Todd said, “Levi likes the sheep more than I do. I just like the fact they’re all in a heated barn and there’s no mud and no slop.” But, of course, nothing is that easy. A year ago, Levi’s sheep barn burned down and they lost about 75 percent of the flock. “What a time to build with lumber so expensive,” Todd said. The shed was only two years old when it burned.

Louis agreed with Todd that battles with the mud are harder than battling dust. “The first 25 years, dry weather was the issue we faced most often. Then we had 20 years of wet weather that was an issue. I’d still almost take the dry over the wet. You can at least do something when it’s dry. You might not get as much crop, but, man, we fought mud for a lot of years.” Todd said, “In this country, too much moisture has hurt us more often than not enough over the years.” Todd started out during the dry years of the late 1980s after graduating from