With land readily available to rent for a couple dollars an acre, Ken Wadsworth set to farming on his own early in life. When he wasn’t in his seventh-grade classroom, he was working this rented ground. He had been farming much of his father’s 80 acres near Forester for some time, but his first crop of his own was a 17-acre harvest of wheat. He readily admits it “wasn’t much good,” but it did not deter him from establishing a strong footing in agriculture — not only on his own farm, but also within the farm industry and his community.

Ken and his wife, Ida, have committed their lives to farming and have built an operation with family that now spans more than 5,000 acres, and their sons now have nine John Deere dealerships. The couple is known and respected by many and has been selected as 2017 Master Farmers after being nominated by Jim Zook, executive director of the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, and supported by several others with letters.

Starting young
Ken grew up on an 80-acre farm with 20 dairy cows and started farming in grade school. His father was a plasterer by trade, which left the farm mostly to Ken, especially the fieldwork. During his junior year in high school, he took note of a young lady named Ida Tanton in his class. Ida was two years younger; she transferred from another school and jumped a couple of grades ahead. Ken saw it as a bonus that she was active, knowledgeable and happy to work on her father’s farm. They became high school sweethearts and married the fall after their 1952 high school graduation. He was 19; she was 16. They took his 4-H cattle and moved Deckerville on rented ground and started farming on shares. Today, he’s 83, she’s 81, and they have shared a varied, eventful and enjoyable life together, Ida says.

“We’ve had a beautiful marriage. I can’t think of anything I would change if I had to do it over again; everything worked out just fine.”

Together they raised, “six good farmers — two boys and four girls” Ken says. “The boys are farming: Tom running the farm with my grandson, Jeff [Tom’s nephew], and my other son, Dan, is running the dealerships. The girls all married area farmers, and Tom’s wife, Sally, and my Jeff’s wife, Rachelle, do the books.”

The couple also has 18 grandchildren (one deceased) and 23 grandchildren with four more on the way. Nine out of their 17 grandchildren are farming.

On the farm
Wadsworth Farms, in and around Sandusky, rotates evenly between corn, sugarbeets and dry beans, and uses the newest technologies, including variable-rate fertilizer and planting technologies. The farm also uses products to stabilize nutrients, including GPS applications. Water Pro Management is used for surface drainage, and the farm is experimenting with various cover crop options to work the minimal-tillage operation, which was verified in 2015 through the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program.

Ken and Ida started farming on rental ground and planted their first crop of sugarbeets in 1953 and have been growing them ever since. The farm is all cash crops now, but at one time was home to dairy cattle that began with a 4-H calf.

Ken’s mind is sharp on details and full of stories. He recalls buying his first piece of ground, an 80-acre farm, for $7,000. Then, shortly after being married, they started farming a 200-acre farm from a widow through a 50-50 share agreement. Ken’s one cow was now 16. “The cows were my own and separate from the share agreement,” Ken says.

He says back then it had been a very dry year, resulting in a poor crop of hay and eventually the well dried up. After nine months of carting water to the cows, the hay ran out in the spring. “I sold the cows,” he says.

The widow landlord approached him about buying the 200 acres for $25,500. “The neighbors thought I was nuts to want to buy it. They thought it was too much money. But the money I got from the cows covered the down payment, and there was very little interest on the loan. We paid it off in about three years; the luckiest break I ever got was when the well went dry and I had to sell the cows.”

He later asked the widow why she decided to sell the farm. “She told me because we sold the cows, she thought we were moving away and wanted us to stay,” Ken says.

To the contrary, Ken and Ida’s roots were firmly planted. They began acquiring more land and farming more ground. “I’ve never sold a farm. … I traded one once,” he says.

At the urging of his father, Ken put money in the bank. The first equipment he owned included a 1945 hand-start John Deere B that he bought for $500, a $45 plow and $20 set of harrows

“Starting out, you don’t need everything new,” Ida chimes in. “In fact, some of the stuff Ken would bring home looked more like junk. But he fixed it up. We couldn’t afford a new one. … We never got in debt very far.”

Instead, Ken relied on ingenuity and was always focused on efficiency.

From the ground up
In the early 1960s, Ken engineered one of the area’s first articulating four-wheel-drive tractor. He also built a 12-row planter by putting two six-rows together. “It could be pulled by one tractor instead of two,” Ken explains. With son Tom they engineered a six-row beet harvester that was used to produce the model 692 Artsway Beet Harvester the following year.

The early years were lean. “We never had much money, but we never felt poor,” says Ida, who cultivated, drove trucks, harvested and did other farm chores — with the exception of welding and planting. “Getting started, the machinery and tiling companies took most of our profits, but they were good investments. When we’d acquire land, before the first crop, Ken would tile it, saying, ‘We’re going to pay for it anyways,’”

There were no secrets between the two, and they hashed things out together, Ida says. “He had visions on how things could or should be done. He saw things clearly, and we would mull over ideas together.”

Up until 1955, Ken worked with his father and did plastering of houses in the off season to generate extra income for the farm. After that, he contracted plastering work on his own.

Ken relied a lot on Michigan State University Extension for research and guidance, but he was also heavily involved in the leadership of many ag organizations that helped keep him connected.

“Ken and Ida have dedicated their life to expanding the opportunities on their operation, as well as the operations of the neighbors,” says nominator Jim Zook, executive director of the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan. “Ken served on the steering committee for the Michigan Sugar Co., providing the growers an opportunity to be integrated in the sugar industry. He was also instrumental in getting the first ethanol plant in Michigan.”

Today, their children and many of their grandchildren are following their path in farming. Tom and Dan are partners in the business, each buying their own land and adding to the farm that shares resources and labor. They also have four full-time employees and a couple of seasonal helpers on the farm.

Ken and Ida stepped back from the operation several years ago, but enjoy filling in whenever help is needed. Ken keeps busy excavating and bulldozing big drainage ditches clean, and running surface ditches after fields are worked, which Ida says gets to be a full-time job.

It’s fulfilling, she says, to see the family take over the farm. “Our land is set up so they have it to manage and use, as well as for future generations who want to farm,” she says.

Master Farmer Profile

Name: Ken and Ida Wadsworth
Farm: Wadsworth Farms, 5,000-plus acres of corn, sugarbeets and dry, edible beans
Nominator: Jim Zook, executive director of the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan
Leadership: Both have held various positions in the community. Ken was a past president of the Deckerville School Board and is a member of Holy Family/St. Joseph’s Church. Ida is a past president of McKenzie Hospital.
Ag leadership: Ken — former chairman of the Michigan Corn Growers Association, past board member of Corn Marking Program of Michigan (instrumental in securing the first ethanol plant in Michigan and grower investment), past president of the Caro Federal Land Bank Association, former vice president of the Agraland board of directors, and past president of Deckerville School Board, and past president of Sanilac County Farm Bureau; former member of Croswell Sugar Beet Board, interim board of directors for Michigan Sugar Co. and steering committee for grower buyout, the Sanilac County Bean Board and Ruth Farmers Elevator; and participant in the State Farm Management Tour in 1982 and 1986, and Kellogg Farm Leadership Program in 1967-1970
Ida — director for the Sanilac County Soil Conservation District Board and Soil Test Cooperative, Cooperative Extension Advisory Board and McKenzie Memorial Hospital Board
Awards: Tom — 1989 Beet Grower Outstanding Citizenship Award; Ida —  recipient of a Monsanto “American’s Farmers Grow Communities” $2,500 award for McKenzie Health System