Rick Titus in His 48th Year of and Installing More

would share help with. If we were going to bale hay on Thursday afternoon, they'd send over whoever they could. It wasn’t just a big project, but a real social time to interact with the neighbors.”

Streit also remembers the lessons his father provided.

“It was the 4th of July, and I was home from college,” said Streit, “and I stayed out pretty late that night. Dad never said anything to me about it, but the next morning, for some reason, we had a load of hay in the yard that needed to be unloaded before breakfast. He told me to get up in the barn, and he had those bales back-to-back-to-back. I was having a real tough time keeping up. Message received.”

All the members of Leonard and Luella Streit's family understood the importance of farm work.

“Compared to the work my dad would do, I wasn't working that hard,” said Streit. “My mom was very involved, milking the cows and hauling corn to town. When dad quit milking, he got more involved in pigs, and I think he had 500 feeder pigs and would fill them out to 240 pounds,” said Streit. “Dad was still buying young heifers, breeding them, and selling them. We had 346 acres plus he rented an 80 from a neighbor for 426 acres.”

When Streit’s mother passed, he told his siblings he wanted to buy one of the parcels and keep it in the family for another generation.

“The farm meant enough to them that this parcel remains part of the family,” said Streit. “My oldest brother said, ‘What would Dad do?’ and then it became obvious that we would keep it in the family.

“Stuart is the sentimental one of our family. He took soil from the farm and gave it in tubes to his siblings as gifts. It’s moments like this that give us hope that the farm will live on in the Streit name.”