July 01, 2012 6:00 am•
Why visitors from nearly 50 countries have toured area farm
Alma Gaul
John Maxwell stands in the great room of his rural Donahue home, keeping an eye peeled on the long lane outside
the windows.
Finally, he spots what he is looking for: A white tour bus has turned off the road and is moving toward his house. As it pulls to a stop, the door opens and out steps the first of 43 men and women from France, all coming to this Scott County farm to see how professional agriculture is practiced in America.
By this time, Maxwell is at the bus door, offering
a hearty handshake, a smile and perhaps a pat on the back to everyone who steps
out. Fritz, his Great Pyrenees “pound dog,” wags his tail and works the crowd,
too.
This tour in late May is one of 49 Maxwell will have hosted through
the first six months of the year; in 2011, he hosted 70 tours
drawing 2,500
people. Through the years, they’ve come from nearly 50 countries, including all
of the European nations, Iceland, China, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Argentina and
Malaysia.
As far as the number of visitors, the countries they represent
and the breadth of farming operations they see, there’s nothing to compare with
Maxwell’s tours in either Iowa or Illinois, said Dan Gleason, the group and
international sales manager with the Quad-Cities Convention & Visitors
Bureau.
How did Maxwell, 50, carve out this niche?
The business
got its start in 1997 when, at age 35, he received the National Outstanding
Young Farmer Award, presented by a group that included Deere & Co., Pioneer,
the Jaycees and university Extension services. About the same time, customer
groups being brought in by Deere to tour its Quad-City area operations were
asking to also see a farm. Not only had Maxwell been recognized as a good
farmer, but he was a John Deere farmer, so the connection was made, said Linda
Almanza, the supervisor of international tour development and strategy for Deere
& Co.
Through the years, Maxwell has become his own operator,
hosting guests of Deere, Pioneer and Monsanto as well as independent groups,
such as the French tour arranged through Green Voyages, which is based in
Carhaix, France.
“He is highly requested and highly respected,” Margo
McInnis, the vice president of visitor services for the Convention &
Visitors Bureau, said of Maxwell’s operation. “The drivers from Chicago know how
to get to Donahue, Iowa. It’s amazing.”
Maxwell has much to offer
visitors.
At a time when some farms are strictly corn and soybeans with
no livestock, Maxwell farms 4,000 acres of grain, but he also has dairy cattle —
the seventh-largest-producing Jersey herd in the country — plus 400 laying hens,
thousands of feeder pigs, about 50 Angus beef cattle and miscellaneous goats and
cats.
Several other Quad-City area farms offer tours of cattle or dairy
operations or highlight farm history, but Maxwell’s “farm runs the whole gamut,”
Gleason said.
Another plus is that his house can accommodate up to 120
people, and it’s nicely air-conditioned. He had his kitchen restaurant-certified
and hired a cook so he can provide meals as a tour option.
Food
staples are pork chops, Swiss steak or meat loaf, with cheesy potatoes, and
sweet corn and tomatoes in season.
“That says Iowa, that says Midwest,”
Maxwell says.
International tourists “absolutely love the home-cooked
meal,” Gleason said. Even some alcohol is available upon request.
More about Maxwell
The old saying that timing is everything
in life definitely applies to John Maxwell’s farming career. During the farm
crisis of the 1980s, when land values plummeted, he was in a position to buy.
That is how he got his strong start.
“It was dumb luck,” he says.
When he received the National Outstanding Young Farmer Award in
1997, one of the reasons was how far he had come in a short period of time. He
graduated from the University of Iowa in 1984 and, with money saved from working
for the university and beginning a dairy operation, he bought his first farm in
1987.
Another piece of luck is that when he designed and built his home
in 1993, he created a large great room that — as it turned out — “is perfect for
tours.”
But luck doesn’t account for everything.
Two other
qualifications for the National Outstanding Young Farmer Award were that the
winner practice soil and water conservation and contribute to their
community.
Maxwell serves on the North Scott School Board, is a member of
the North Scott Rotary (he’ll be its president next year) and volunteers as a
dairy judge at the Mississippi Valley Fair. He also gives a lot of tours to
children for free.
His college degree is in psychology because he
aspired to be a medical doctor at one point. During his junior year, he realized
that he wanted to farm, but his father said he needed a degree first, so he
finished up in that academic area.
“I like the study of human behavior,”
he said of his choice of majors.
Maxwell is divorced, with two daughters.
Kara graduated this spring as valedictorian of her North Scott High School class
and will study dairy science and agriculture business at Iowa State University
this fall. Amy graduated from Iowa State this spring and is returning to the
farm to run the new robotic milking operation.
A closer look at the Maxwell farm
John Maxwell calls his farm Cinnamon Ridge.
“Cinnamon” is for the color of his Jersey cows and “ridge” is for the elevation
his farm sits on. The elevation was once the south bank of the Mississippi
River, before a glacier changed its path.
There is lots going on
here.
Grain: Maxwell raises corn, soybeans and wheat on 4,000 acres and
plants on a 100 percent rotation basis; that is, he never plants a field in the
same crop two years in a row. Different plants draw different nutrients from the
soil, so depletion is lessened by rotating the crops. To reduce erosion, he uses
no-till cultivation and plants cover crops, filter strips and grass
waterways.
Jersey cows: He milks about 250 cows now; that will increase
to 270 or 300 with the new robotic operation that he hopes to have in operation
by November. In addition to selling milk, Maxwell is thinking of making white
cheddar cheese and curds for local sale.
Hogs: Maxwell doesn’t actually
raise or sell hogs himself. Rather, he built and leases to fellow farmer Tom
Dittmer, the owner of Grandview Farms west of Eldridge, two confinement barns
that can finish a total of 9,600 hogs annually. In addition to collecting rent
from the buildings, Maxwell makes use of the hogs’ manure, which he empties from
an underground pit once a year and applies
to his fields. This supplies all
of the phosphorus, potassium and micro-nutrients his fields need as well as half
the nitrogen. The remainder of the nitrogen is applied as anhydrous ammonia.
Angus cattle: About 50 head of Angus cattle are kept largely to be
surrogate mothers for the embryos of top Jersey cows. A top producer with
superior genetics can be worth $20,000 to $30,000; $10,000 is normal, Maxwell
said.
Chickens: The 400-bird flock started mainly as a way
to provide fresh eggs for his visitors. He sells the excess.
Goats:
About 25 of these gentle creatures are kept around for “pasture cleanup” because
they eat weeds, including prickly thistles and multi-flora rose.
Employees: 14; that number will drop to eight when the robotic milk barn comes online.
Maxwell has educated himself so he can speak in hectares as well as acres, and he is widely traveled, having visited farms in more than a dozen countries, including China, as well as in Africa and South America.
He is a fourth-generation farmer who can explain the transformations that have occurred in American agriculture since the days of horses and since he began farming in the 1980s.
“I’ve gone from (planting) four rows (of beans at a time) to 32,” he says. “The computer technology is grand, it is amazing. Who knows where it’s going?”
His personality includes the “gift for gab,” an essential trait for putting people at ease, McInnis says.
What’s on the tour?
The French tour lasts about three hours, and begins — as they all do — with an orientation session in the home’s great room, set up with rows of chairs.
A flat-screen TV is mounted on the floor-to-ceiling fireplace where Maxwell delivers a PowerPoint overview of his operation, pausing every few sentences for translation by tour director Patrick Gourcuff. He talks about his livestock and reveals that he is building a 200- by 200-foot milk barn plus a manure reservoir to be completed in November that will be totally robotic. It will cost $2.5 million.
Ears perk up again when he explains that all of the seeds he plants are genetically modified organisms, or GMO, to give them various desirable traits such as insect or herbicide resistance. This prompts several questions because GMO are controversial and not so widely accepted in Europe. Most of the farmers, however, have no problem with it, Gourcuff said later.
With the talk over, the guests begin to file out, lingering to look over the house with its carved wood moldings, numerous large windows and the Disklavier in the second-floor loft that plays background music while meals are served.
“Very nice,” one man says in English.
Outside, the guests begin clicking their cameras to capture images of Maxwell on his 8420 John Deere tractor with a 40-foot planter that he can lift off the ground and collapse like a giant robot. The tractor is equipped with GPS and can steer itself. The planter is 40 feet wide and can plant 16 rows of corn or 32 rows of soybeans at a time.
The visitors then stroll across the farmstead, past the original 1870s farmhouse that is used now for storage to pens of Jersey calves. Behind one of the silos, a calf lies dead on its side.
“There’s no sanitizing here,” Maxwell says, explaining that he doesn’t try to hide the fact that sometimes accidents happen and
animals die. The calf collapsed when an injection of penicillin hit a vein and went to its heart.
Several women stoop to make friends with three kittens wandering the grounds.
Also drawing interest: A storage building that houses the semi-tractor Maxwell uses to transport his grain and a combine with an auger cart that allows the grain to flow into the semi-trailer while the combine keeps rolling.
Then it’s on to Donahue, a community of 350 dominated by the soaring River Valley Co-op elevator. Some internationals are interested in how the co-op system works.
The final stop is at a hog confinement barn that Maxwell built and leases to Tom Dittmer of Grandview Farms, west of Eldridge. As the tourists walk up the steps to the barn, one of the women holds her nose. It smells, even though the hogs are behind a glass-enclosed viewing area.
Inside, 20 to 26 hogs lie or stand in pens that are 10 by 20 feet where they can drink from spouts and eat from self-feeders.
Waste falls through slits in the floor, so the floor is clean.
“It’s the ideal environment,” Maxwell says.
“Very interesting, very efficient,” one of the tourists says as he settles back into his seat.
During some weeks in the summer, Maxwell has four or five tours, and sometimes he has none during the winter. He charges
$20 per person ($25 more with a meal), with a $200 minimum.
As the bus rolls back to the farm, Maxwell walks the aisle, shaking everyone’s hand and thanking them for coming. That is part of his tour, too.
Maxwell had no idea when he began farming that tourism would become such a big part of his business. As he said in his address to
graduating seniors at North Scott High School this spring, “In life, you never know what is going to happen.”
Why visitors from nearly 50 countries have toured area farm
Alma Gaul
John Maxwell stands in the great room of his rural Donahue home, keeping an eye peeled on the long lane outside
the windows.
Finally, he spots what he is looking for: A white tour bus has turned off the road and is moving toward his house. As it pulls to a stop, the door opens and out steps the first of 43 men and women from France, all coming to this Scott County farm to see how professional agriculture is practiced in America.
By this time, Maxwell is at the bus door, offering
a hearty handshake, a smile and perhaps a pat on the back to everyone who steps
out. Fritz, his Great Pyrenees “pound dog,” wags his tail and works the crowd,
too.
This tour in late May is one of 49 Maxwell will have hosted through
the first six months of the year; in 2011, he hosted 70 tours
drawing 2,500
people. Through the years, they’ve come from nearly 50 countries, including all
of the European nations, Iceland, China, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Argentina and
Malaysia.
As far as the number of visitors, the countries they represent
and the breadth of farming operations they see, there’s nothing to compare with
Maxwell’s tours in either Iowa or Illinois, said Dan Gleason, the group and
international sales manager with the Quad-Cities Convention & Visitors
Bureau.
How did Maxwell, 50, carve out this niche?
The business
got its start in 1997 when, at age 35, he received the National Outstanding
Young Farmer Award, presented by a group that included Deere & Co., Pioneer,
the Jaycees and university Extension services. About the same time, customer
groups being brought in by Deere to tour its Quad-City area operations were
asking to also see a farm. Not only had Maxwell been recognized as a good
farmer, but he was a John Deere farmer, so the connection was made, said Linda
Almanza, the supervisor of international tour development and strategy for Deere
& Co.
Through the years, Maxwell has become his own operator,
hosting guests of Deere, Pioneer and Monsanto as well as independent groups,
such as the French tour arranged through Green Voyages, which is based in
Carhaix, France.
“He is highly requested and highly respected,” Margo
McInnis, the vice president of visitor services for the Convention &
Visitors Bureau, said of Maxwell’s operation. “The drivers from Chicago know how
to get to Donahue, Iowa. It’s amazing.”
Maxwell has much to offer
visitors.
At a time when some farms are strictly corn and soybeans with
no livestock, Maxwell farms 4,000 acres of grain, but he also has dairy cattle —
the seventh-largest-producing Jersey herd in the country — plus 400 laying hens,
thousands of feeder pigs, about 50 Angus beef cattle and miscellaneous goats and
cats.
Several other Quad-City area farms offer tours of cattle or dairy
operations or highlight farm history, but Maxwell’s “farm runs the whole gamut,”
Gleason said.
Another plus is that his house can accommodate up to 120
people, and it’s nicely air-conditioned. He had his kitchen restaurant-certified
and hired a cook so he can provide meals as a tour option.
Food
staples are pork chops, Swiss steak or meat loaf, with cheesy potatoes, and
sweet corn and tomatoes in season.
“That says Iowa, that says Midwest,”
Maxwell says.
International tourists “absolutely love the home-cooked
meal,” Gleason said. Even some alcohol is available upon request.
More about Maxwell
The old saying that timing is everything
in life definitely applies to John Maxwell’s farming career. During the farm
crisis of the 1980s, when land values plummeted, he was in a position to buy.
That is how he got his strong start.
“It was dumb luck,” he says.
When he received the National Outstanding Young Farmer Award in
1997, one of the reasons was how far he had come in a short period of time. He
graduated from the University of Iowa in 1984 and, with money saved from working
for the university and beginning a dairy operation, he bought his first farm in
1987.
Another piece of luck is that when he designed and built his home
in 1993, he created a large great room that — as it turned out — “is perfect for
tours.”
But luck doesn’t account for everything.
Two other
qualifications for the National Outstanding Young Farmer Award were that the
winner practice soil and water conservation and contribute to their
community.
Maxwell serves on the North Scott School Board, is a member of
the North Scott Rotary (he’ll be its president next year) and volunteers as a
dairy judge at the Mississippi Valley Fair. He also gives a lot of tours to
children for free.
His college degree is in psychology because he
aspired to be a medical doctor at one point. During his junior year, he realized
that he wanted to farm, but his father said he needed a degree first, so he
finished up in that academic area.
“I like the study of human behavior,”
he said of his choice of majors.
Maxwell is divorced, with two daughters.
Kara graduated this spring as valedictorian of her North Scott High School class
and will study dairy science and agriculture business at Iowa State University
this fall. Amy graduated from Iowa State this spring and is returning to the
farm to run the new robotic milking operation.
A closer look at the Maxwell farm
John Maxwell calls his farm Cinnamon Ridge.
“Cinnamon” is for the color of his Jersey cows and “ridge” is for the elevation
his farm sits on. The elevation was once the south bank of the Mississippi
River, before a glacier changed its path.
There is lots going on
here.
Grain: Maxwell raises corn, soybeans and wheat on 4,000 acres and
plants on a 100 percent rotation basis; that is, he never plants a field in the
same crop two years in a row. Different plants draw different nutrients from the
soil, so depletion is lessened by rotating the crops. To reduce erosion, he uses
no-till cultivation and plants cover crops, filter strips and grass
waterways.
Jersey cows: He milks about 250 cows now; that will increase
to 270 or 300 with the new robotic operation that he hopes to have in operation
by November. In addition to selling milk, Maxwell is thinking of making white
cheddar cheese and curds for local sale.
Hogs: Maxwell doesn’t actually
raise or sell hogs himself. Rather, he built and leases to fellow farmer Tom
Dittmer, the owner of Grandview Farms west of Eldridge, two confinement barns
that can finish a total of 9,600 hogs annually. In addition to collecting rent
from the buildings, Maxwell makes use of the hogs’ manure, which he empties from
an underground pit once a year and applies
to his fields. This supplies all
of the phosphorus, potassium and micro-nutrients his fields need as well as half
the nitrogen. The remainder of the nitrogen is applied as anhydrous ammonia.
Angus cattle: About 50 head of Angus cattle are kept largely to be
surrogate mothers for the embryos of top Jersey cows. A top producer with
superior genetics can be worth $20,000 to $30,000; $10,000 is normal, Maxwell
said.
Chickens: The 400-bird flock started mainly as a way
to provide fresh eggs for his visitors. He sells the excess.
Goats:
About 25 of these gentle creatures are kept around for “pasture cleanup” because
they eat weeds, including prickly thistles and multi-flora rose.
Employees: 14; that number will drop to eight when the robotic milk barn comes online.
Maxwell has educated himself so he can speak in hectares as well as acres, and he is widely traveled, having visited farms in more than a dozen countries, including China, as well as in Africa and South America.
He is a fourth-generation farmer who can explain the transformations that have occurred in American agriculture since the days of horses and since he began farming in the 1980s.
“I’ve gone from (planting) four rows (of beans at a time) to 32,” he says. “The computer technology is grand, it is amazing. Who knows where it’s going?”
His personality includes the “gift for gab,” an essential trait for putting people at ease, McInnis says.
What’s on the tour?
The French tour lasts about three hours, and begins — as they all do — with an orientation session in the home’s great room, set up with rows of chairs.
A flat-screen TV is mounted on the floor-to-ceiling fireplace where Maxwell delivers a PowerPoint overview of his operation, pausing every few sentences for translation by tour director Patrick Gourcuff. He talks about his livestock and reveals that he is building a 200- by 200-foot milk barn plus a manure reservoir to be completed in November that will be totally robotic. It will cost $2.5 million.
Ears perk up again when he explains that all of the seeds he plants are genetically modified organisms, or GMO, to give them various desirable traits such as insect or herbicide resistance. This prompts several questions because GMO are controversial and not so widely accepted in Europe. Most of the farmers, however, have no problem with it, Gourcuff said later.
With the talk over, the guests begin to file out, lingering to look over the house with its carved wood moldings, numerous large windows and the Disklavier in the second-floor loft that plays background music while meals are served.
“Very nice,” one man says in English.
Outside, the guests begin clicking their cameras to capture images of Maxwell on his 8420 John Deere tractor with a 40-foot planter that he can lift off the ground and collapse like a giant robot. The tractor is equipped with GPS and can steer itself. The planter is 40 feet wide and can plant 16 rows of corn or 32 rows of soybeans at a time.
The visitors then stroll across the farmstead, past the original 1870s farmhouse that is used now for storage to pens of Jersey calves. Behind one of the silos, a calf lies dead on its side.
“There’s no sanitizing here,” Maxwell says, explaining that he doesn’t try to hide the fact that sometimes accidents happen and
animals die. The calf collapsed when an injection of penicillin hit a vein and went to its heart.
Several women stoop to make friends with three kittens wandering the grounds.
Also drawing interest: A storage building that houses the semi-tractor Maxwell uses to transport his grain and a combine with an auger cart that allows the grain to flow into the semi-trailer while the combine keeps rolling.
Then it’s on to Donahue, a community of 350 dominated by the soaring River Valley Co-op elevator. Some internationals are interested in how the co-op system works.
The final stop is at a hog confinement barn that Maxwell built and leases to Tom Dittmer of Grandview Farms, west of Eldridge. As the tourists walk up the steps to the barn, one of the women holds her nose. It smells, even though the hogs are behind a glass-enclosed viewing area.
Inside, 20 to 26 hogs lie or stand in pens that are 10 by 20 feet where they can drink from spouts and eat from self-feeders.
Waste falls through slits in the floor, so the floor is clean.
“It’s the ideal environment,” Maxwell says.
“Very interesting, very efficient,” one of the tourists says as he settles back into his seat.
During some weeks in the summer, Maxwell has four or five tours, and sometimes he has none during the winter. He charges
$20 per person ($25 more with a meal), with a $200 minimum.
As the bus rolls back to the farm, Maxwell walks the aisle, shaking everyone’s hand and thanking them for coming. That is part of his tour, too.
Maxwell had no idea when he began farming that tourism would become such a big part of his business. As he said in his address to
graduating seniors at North Scott High School this spring, “In life, you never know what is going to happen.”