South Dakota Farmers Union Celebrates the Symens Farm Family

May 23, 2016 – By #South Dakota Farmer Union

South Dakota Farmers Union has served South Dakota farm and ranch families for more than a century. Throughout the year, we share their stories in order to highlight the families who make up our state’s number one industry and help feed the world.

 By Lura Roti, for South Dakota Farmers Union

 This month, we’re highlighting the Symens family who raise crops, purebred Limousin cattle and a feedlot near Amherst.

 “It’s a garden spot … if we get rain,” says Paul Symens, 72, when describing the land his grandpa, Harm Symens, purchased in 1910 near Amherst.

 For more than a century, the Symens family has cared for and farmed the land, which today supports a diverse farming operation that includes cropground, purebred Limousin cattle and a feedlot managed by Paul, his two brothers, Irwin, 80, and John, 69, Irwin’s son, Brad, 46, and Paul’s son, Warren, 38.

 Since the beginning, rain – the lack of or over-abundance of – has played a significant role in the management decisions made by the Symens family.

 For Harm and his son, Wilbert, the Dust Bowl days made soil conservation and erosion control a focus of their field management.

 Irwin recalls a 1936 story of his dad planting corn in May which didn’t sprout until September when it received its FIRST rain … only to be killed by frost at 6-inches. “That same year dad mowed 160 acres of ground and all that grew was thistles. He stacked the thistles, mixed them with molasses and that’s what he fed the cattle. That was the year I was born,” says Irwin, who is the second oldest of nine children raised on the farm by Wilbert and his wife, Inga.

 Implementing novel conservation techniques, like tree belts and strip tilling, earned the family some fame when in 1936 Harm was featured in Cappers Farmer magazine under the headline, “Uncommon Effort Won Over Drought.”

 Today, the Symens continue the legacy of conservation, managing their fields with minimal-till techniques to increase water infiltration and leaving half of all corn stubble in the field to build organic matter. The stubble removed from fields is used as bedding for cattle. It is then reapplied once it’s been utilized as bedding. “At this point it’s partially decomposed and has added nutrients of the manure,” Warren explains.

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Last Modified: 05/23/2016 10:46:44 am MDT