South Dakota Farmers Union Celebrates the Bisgard Farm Family

by Lura Roti for S.D. Farmers Union

 Seed cleaning has been a part of the Bisgard family farm operation since Herbert Bisgard constructed a cribbed elevator in the middle of the farmyard more than 60 years ago.

 “We cleaned everything. Anything that was brought to us – flax, millet, oats, rye – in those days it was mostly small grains,” recalls his son, Peter Bisgard, 63, a third-generation Day County farmer who raises wheat, corn, soybeans and some registered seed with his sons and wife, Leah. The Bisgards also have a daughter, Stacy Anderson.

 Remember, this was before the days of traited seed when most farmers harvested their own seed to plant the following year.

 Today, Peter and his sons, Bob, 37, and Randy, 32, continue to clean seed for neighbors to supplement the farm’s income. But, like most things on their family’s farm, the seed cleaning business looks different than it did when Peter was a kid.

 “Of course things have changed. Back then, most grain was brought in on 4-wheel trailers or pickup trucks. Today we only see semis,” Peter explains.

 Technology and the weather have impacted the overall farming operation as well. In the 1990s, water began to take over farmground.

 “We have a picture of Randy on a tractor and drill in a field where people now fish,” Peter says of Bitter Lake, a non-meandered body of water, which was farm and pastureland in the 1970s but today has recorded depths of 18-feet.

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