After dad's death, daughters save family farm
Miranda and Kaycee Altermatt were just 20 and 22 when their grandfather asked them a question that would alter the course of their lives.
Days earlier their father had been killed in a boating accident, leaving a 1,300-acre family farm in crisis.
“Do you want to farm?” Mark Altermatt asked his granddaughters.
“We’re going to help,” they answered.
“That ain't what I'm asking you,” Mark pressed. “I know you'll help us take the crop out, but I want to know if you want to farm.”
This fall, Kaycee and Miranda completed their fifth harvest, further proving to their neighbors and relatives the sisters are in farming for the long haul.
“I wasn't sure if they were up to it, but I am now,” says Scott Haas, their uncle who drives out from the Twin Cities to lend a hand during harvest.
Perry Altermatt didn’t shelter his daughters from the rigors of farming, but neither Kaycee nor Miranda had planted corn or driven a combine at the time their father passed.
Now 5’2” Kaycee maneuvers a massive John Deere harvester through 12 rows of corn at a time. She looks to her left as her younger sister Miranda pulls up in a tractor pulling a grain cart to offload the shelled corn.
“Terrifying,” is the word Kaycee uses to describe her first time driving the combine.
Yet Miranda, also looking back, sums up the feelings of both siblings. “If we didn't take it over then who would?"
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