We (Kevin and Ranae Dietzel) got married in 2006 and, with a lot of help from a lot of people, worked our way towards this farm until we were approved to sell cheese in September of 2016. Many of the details can be found below.
Kevin was born in Indianapolis, moved to Minneapolis when he was two, then moved to a dairy farm in central Minnesota at age seven where his family lived in a community of people living and working with mentally disabled adults. This is where he found his love for the land and for farming. He participated in 4-H, where he showed sheep and vegetables. When he was thirteen, his family moved back to the city, where he finished high school. After graduation, he went to Germany, where he did an apprenticeship in Biodynamic farming, spending one year each on three different farms. All three farms were dairy farms, ranging from eight to forty-five milking cows. All were diversified farms with dairy cows, beef cows, hogs, grain and vegetable production. Two of these farms also had on-farm dairy processing, which he helped with every day. At the culmination of his time in Germany, Kevin passed the tests necessary to become a “staatlich anerkannter Landwirt” or state certified agriculturalist. He then returned to Minnesota, where he completed a B.A. with a major in biology and met the woman who would become his wife. He worked on different farms every summer during college. While in Ithaca, New York, he worked at Cornell University as a soils research technician in a research and extension program focusing on nutrient management issues facing New York dairy farmers. After moving to Iowa, he worked for a year as a research associate with the Iowa Learning Farms, a multidisciplinary program that seeks to educate farmers and the public about conserving Iowa’s soil and water resources. He then moved to a position at Practical Farmers of Iowa as a grazing coordinator, where he worked with grazing farmers around the state of Iowa to coordinate programming, field days, pasture walks, and on-farm research projects. After managing a 4200-head wean-to-finish hog farm for Iowa Select Farms, staying home with our two children three days a week, and planning, building, and raising capital for the farm for two years, he started working at Lost Lake Farm full-time in 2016.
Ranae grew up on a hog farm near Radcliffe, Iowa. She met Kevin during college at the University of Minnesota - Morris. She spent one summer working as a veterinary assistant at a large farm in Ukraine, where she worked with dairy cattle, swine, and ostriches. She received her M.S. degree in soil science from Cornell University in 2009, where she studied nitrous oxide emissions as affected by snow cover and freeze-thaw cycles. She earned her Ph.D. in Sustainable Agriculture and Crop Production & Physiology at Iowa State University in 2014, where she studied carbon and root dynamics in prairies and corn-soybean systems. She worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Integrated Cropping Systems Lab in the Department of Agronomy at ISU for five years. Ranae now works as an Agronomy Data Scientist for Syngenta in Slater, Iowa.
Kevin was born in Indianapolis, moved to Minneapolis when he was two, then moved to a dairy farm in central Minnesota at age seven where his family lived in a community of people living and working with mentally disabled adults. This is where he found his love for the land and for farming. He participated in 4-H, where he showed sheep and vegetables. When he was thirteen, his family moved back to the city, where he finished high school. After graduation, he went to Germany, where he did an apprenticeship in Biodynamic farming, spending one year each on three different farms. All three farms were dairy farms, ranging from eight to forty-five milking cows. All were diversified farms with dairy cows, beef cows, hogs, grain and vegetable production. Two of these farms also had on-farm dairy processing, which he helped with every day. At the culmination of his time in Germany, Kevin passed the tests necessary to become a “staatlich anerkannter Landwirt” or state certified agriculturalist. He then returned to Minnesota, where he completed a B.A. with a major in biology and met the woman who would become his wife. He worked on different farms every summer during college. While in Ithaca, New York, he worked at Cornell University as a soils research technician in a research and extension program focusing on nutrient management issues facing New York dairy farmers. After moving to Iowa, he worked for a year as a research associate with the Iowa Learning Farms, a multidisciplinary program that seeks to educate farmers and the public about conserving Iowa’s soil and water resources. He then moved to a position at Practical Farmers of Iowa as a grazing coordinator, where he worked with grazing farmers around the state of Iowa to coordinate programming, field days, pasture walks, and on-farm research projects. After managing a 4200-head wean-to-finish hog farm for Iowa Select Farms, staying home with our two children three days a week, and planning, building, and raising capital for the farm for two years, he started working at Lost Lake Farm full-time in 2016.
Ranae grew up on a hog farm near Radcliffe, Iowa. She met Kevin during college at the University of Minnesota - Morris. She spent one summer working as a veterinary assistant at a large farm in Ukraine, where she worked with dairy cattle, swine, and ostriches. She received her M.S. degree in soil science from Cornell University in 2009, where she studied nitrous oxide emissions as affected by snow cover and freeze-thaw cycles. She earned her Ph.D. in Sustainable Agriculture and Crop Production & Physiology at Iowa State University in 2014, where she studied carbon and root dynamics in prairies and corn-soybean systems. She worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Integrated Cropping Systems Lab in the Department of Agronomy at ISU for five years. Ranae now works as an Agronomy Data Scientist for Syngenta in Slater, Iowa.