Minn. farm honored for being owned by same family
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By Patrick B. Anderson
Winona Daily News
Winona, Minn. (AP) -- Marlene Albrecht, 72, has watched her farm change over the years. When she was a girl there was less machinery and the family bathroom was outside, in a shed next to the house.
"When I was young I had to milk cows by hand in the morning," Albrecht said, sitting at a kitchen table in the same home she grew up in. The same home where she raised three kids with her husband, Alton.
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The couple's farm is one of 217 honored by the Minnesota State Fair this year for being Century Farms: owned and operated by the same family for at least 100 years.
Albrecht went to the county recorder to get a more detailed record of the land and then registered with the Minnesota State Fair and Minnesota Farm Bureau.
She and Alton will receive a plaque at the Winona County Fair in July with four other families.
German immigrants Edward and George Holzworth bought 160 acres in the Garvin Heights area in 1898 and used the land to grow corn, oats and hay. The brothers worked the land for almost 40 years without electricity, eventually selling it to George's son-in-law, Claude Thomas - Albrecht's father - in 1939.
Like her mother, Albrecht grew up on the farm, helping her parents with chores.
She met Alton after playing electric guitar in a three-piece country band for his sister's bridal shower. The two hit it off. After their wedding in 1958, Albrecht's parents asked them to take over the farm.
"We got married on a Saturday," Alton said. "On Sunday they said, 'Come take it over.'"
Alton worked a series of jobs before meeting Marlene, but never as a farmer. So Marlene took her new husband into the fields and showed him the daily ins and outs.
"I didn't know nothing about anything," Alton, 74, said. "She showed me the whole thing."
He quickly adapted.
The two discussed moving to town, but Marlene was happy at the farm.
In the next five decades they made the land their own. Alton bought milkers for the cows and used a chainsaw to turn a first-floor bedroom into a bathroom.
They removed trees in front of the house and Alton built a series of new sheds taking care to maintain and repair the older buildings.
Eventually, the Albrechts sold off land and focused on raising dairy cows as neighbors expanded and slipped into debt.
Alton sold the cows almost three years ago, but he seems unwilling to fully abandon the trade he learned from his wife.
"Farming is a good life," he said. "You're out there in the open."
Today, he helps his sons Bruce and Brian harvest three hay crops a season.
"It's been wonderful," Alton said. "You can come and go as you want to do."
Marlene contents herself with cooking, art projects and taking in the rolling acreage that her family tilled, planted, plowed and harvested since the 19th Century.
During the day she often brings coffee out to the porch to sit and listen to the birds. In the evenings she rides with Alton to a copse of trees dividing their farm from the next farm over.
"I love driving out there like we do," she said. "In the dusk to see the deer."
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Information from: Winona Daily News, http://www.winonadailynews.com
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
