A little bit of Rock County has found a home in Iowa.
I recently toured a brand new 4,800-head finishing barn near where my daughter lives in rural Schaller, Iowa. She is the reason a part of the county she grew up in now has a home in another state.
Courtney works for a company that builds those large hog confinements.
Midwest Dry Cast, located south of Luverne, makes the concrete floor slats that allow manure to fall into the pits located under the barns. Midwest Dry Cast makes those slats from gravel mined in Rock County.
The barn Courtney helped construct from the ground up was the first time her company used the Rock County product.
Walking into the new barn and on the brand new slats brought back memories of the first time I walked into a hog confinement facility.
Thirty years ago I was the farm reporter for the Daily Globe just as Pipestone System was getting off the ground. Confinement barns were becoming an alternative to finishing pigs outside in pens. Biosecurity was emphasized to ensure healthy stock in the enclosed facilities.
As a stipulation to entering that sow barn decades ago, I needed to wear plastic coveralls and shoe covers. I also needed to shower before and after entering the barn to ensure I wasn’t carrying any harmful germs into the barn from another facility.
The barn I toured in December was twice the size and was more technologically advanced than that facility 30 years ago.
I almost think my 30-year-old daughter was influenced in utero to work in the swine industry.
An animal lover, she gravitated toward pigs as a 4-H’er and later as a college student at South Dakota State. An internship with Pipestone System set her on a path where she experienced various front-line positions that bring pork to people’s dinner tables.
During the barn open house I listened to visitors talk about design features and everything hog barns.
Most of all, I listened as my daughter used the knowledge she first began accumulating on our little acreage in Rock County to inform those who attended the open house.
In touring the new barn, I was just happy that I didn’t have to undergo a shower in order to look inside. No young pigs were in the barn at the time of the open house.
When the time does come, little piglets will grow to market weight on a flooring made right here in Rock County. You can almost feel that local connection in our food supply.