Kapinus Enjoys Farming and Giving Back Through Public Service

By Sarah Watson , Livestock Editor
Wednesday, May 2, 2007 8:30 PM CDT

Most would think running over 1,000 acres of land and 300 head of cattle would be enough work. Not for the Kapinus family.

Donna and Larry Kapinus began farming in 1960. In 1969 they bought their current farm located just outside of their hometown of Prairie du Chien.

“We’ve been farming since we’ve been married,” Larry explains, “since 1960.”

The farm is located along what had previously been an old Indian trial from hundreds of years ago, says Larry.

Larry and Donna currently farm a combination of 1,100 rented and owned acres of corn, soybeans, winter wheat and alfalfa.

“You have to put hay in around here,” he says about Prairie du Chien’s hilly terrain. “Otherwise all the hills will be washing down.”

Donna never grew up on a farm, but helped an area farmer with tobacco.

“I said I never wanted to marry a farmer,” she says, “and I did.”

On that farm the couple raised four children Laurie, Larry Jr., Lowell and Lonnie. The couple currently has 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Beef cattle were always a part of the farm, but Larry Jr. grew interested in Gelbvieh beef breed over 12 years ago and it has stuck.

“It’s kind of a hobby for him,” Larry says of his son who has a full-time job off the farm.

The father-son duo focuses on the Gelbvieh and Angus breeds creating balancer bulls for sale.

“The way it’s going now a lot of them want what’s called a balancer bull,” Larry says. “It’s half pure bred Gelbvieh and half purebred angus.”

The Kapinuses like the balancer for the great mothering and milking abilities of the Gelbvieh breed and the marbling attributes of the Angus breed.

They like the temperament of the Gelbvieh breed.

“The disposition is just unbelievable,” Larry says about the cattle. “They’re just so gentle. It makes them a lot easier to handle. They don’t stand in the feedlot and just look and you. They get down to the business of eating.”

The 300 head of cattle are fed hay, haylage and corn stalks.

“They mostly use up all the roughage,” Larry says. “They’re kind of scavengers.”

The Kapinuses have been very successful with their Gelbvieh cattle.

Last year Kapinus Farms was awarded three Dam of Merit and Dam of Distinction awards by the American Gelbvieh Association.

The title “Dam of Merit” recognizes cows that meet strict selection criteria including early puberty and conception, regular calving intervals, and above-average weaning weights on at least three calves.

Of the 52,210 active cows in the Gelbvieh breed, only 5.2 percent qualify for Dam of Merit.

Dams of Merit and Dams of Distinction age at calving must not exceed 25 months, and possess a minimum average weaning weight ratio of 101 for all calves.

They also had the high selling composite bull at the 50th Annual WBIA test bull sale.

Awards are not new to this farming couple. Beginning in 1984 they began competing in corn yield contests. They have over 25 trophies from the National Corn Grower’s Association.

“It’s a lot of work doing it,” says Larry of competing in the contests. “It’s a young person thing.”

The corn had to be weighed in the fall, and Larry couldn’t keep up year after year.

“It’s a hard time of year,” says Larry also a Great Lakes Hybrids seed dealer. “It’s for the younger people to keep them active and involved.”

Larry has been a seed dealer since the early 80’s; the same time he began entering the yield contests.

“I’ve won a lot of corn yields with this corn,” he explains. “It’s a nice small company.”

Great Lakes Hybrids began in Fairgrove, Mich., in the early 20’s and currently has its headquarters in Ovid, Mich.

Larry began as a seed dealer for the extra income and thought the seed was high quality.

“Their seed was good,” he explains. “They’ve been real good to us. They’re just a small company.”

Being involved in public service is something Larry is very passionate about.

“My hobby is serving people and the community on government things,” he says. Larry is the vice president of the county board and the town chairperson of the Town of Prairie du Chien and on the fire department. “I like to see government work efficiently.”

“It seems like if you don’t keep after it, it gets to be a bloated bureaucracy of who cares,” Larry says who has been on the Prairie du Chien town board since 1991 and the Crawford County board since 1996.

Larry has been a member of the volunteer fire department since 1967.

“Pretty much now I’m the head fish fryer and I’m a truck driver and a clean up man,” Larry says explaining his duties on the fire department. “There isn’t too much fighting fires anymore.”

All though the town and county boards and fire department fill up time, he enjoys the time the public service takes.

“It doesn’t seem like they take that much time,” he says. “But you just get used to doing them.”

Larry couldn’t be involved if it wasn’t for his wife.

“She keeps the books for me and my hours,” he says. “She keeps the farm books and the records.”

If farming and serving on boards wasn’t enough the Kapinus’ own a sand and gravel company, French Town Sand and Gravel. It is run by the family and one of their sons serves as the truck driver.

The couple also opened a RV park up the road from their farm on Frenchtown Lake, which has over 50 lots, along with a retirement home that has over 50 units.

People have come from all over to take residence in the Kapinuses’ RV park, including people from Chicago and as far away as Florida.

“I spend a lot of time up there,” says Donna who has been busy seeding grass and mowing lawn this spring.

In her spare time she enjoys aiding the fire department through the Firemen’s Auxiliary.

“We have a raffle every year,” she says. “We buy something for the fire department with the proceeds.” The group has helped build new kitchens for the two department locations and equipment for the trucks themselves.

The couple has always been entrepreneurs. Right out of high school, Larry was a steer wrestler in rodeos.

“That’s what I did,” he says of his 10 years in the rodeo. “I started when I was just out of high school.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t a great income making opportunity.

“Even if you won first place you didn’t make much money,” he says. “It was just a sports hobby, there wasn’t much money in it.”

Soon Larry and Donna began their own rodeo company, Youth Rodeo, Inc.

“We put on rodeos all over in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin,” he says of the 11 years as owner of Youth Rodeo, Inc. Larry and two other partners would bring the stock and set up the rodeos.

“That was work,” he said. “You would set up one rodeo on a Friday night and have three days once you were there, and tear it all down the rest of the week, and you would set it all up again.”

The rodeo was a way for Larry to spend time with his children and keep them out of trouble.

“It was just something to keep them out of mischief,” he says. “And a lot of other kids out of mischief too. That’s why we did it, for the kids.”

As new endeavors and opportunities come along farming has always been Kapinus’ favorite, and he says he feels his children will eventually continue his farming passion, but is sad his grandchildren aren’t interested.

“They’ve seen a lot of hard things and it’s probably scared them off,” he says of living on the farm. “There’s a lot easier ways to make a living. I wouldn’t want them to do it if they didn’t want to.”

Larry enjoys farming because he’s his own boss and is responsible for his own destiny, but remembers the hard times.

“We were close to losing this,” he says of his farm. “In the early 80’s when interest rates went through the ceiling - that was the toughest challenge we ever went through.”

Even through the challenging times, the Kapinuses wouldn’t trade in their farming lifestyle.

“You can do things right and you can do things wrong,” he says. “Your destiny is in your hands totally.”

“Farming is my life,” Larry says. “I chose to farm. I can’t complain.”

“We’ve worked so hard to get what we have now,” Donna says. “Especially when you start out with nothing.”

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