“Growing up on a farm in the 1980s, money and the lack of money were talked about a lot. So every expense was scrutinized, and every opportunity to make some extra money with livestock or crops or different things we were doing was definitely important.”

A farm kid from Baltic, Darren Hefty has long been ingrained in the financial side of the agriculture industry.

He started helping on his family’s farrow-to-finish hog operation at age 7, where he was responsible for taking care of the baby pigs.

At about 10 years old, he was accompanying his dad to auctions and making decisions on which pens of pigs they would buy.

By 13, Darren was in charge of the farm’s hired man.

And later, after graduating from South Dakota State University (SDSU) with a degree in ag business and business economics, he went to work for the family business, Hefty Seed Company, with his dad, Ron, and brother, Brian.

Darren recently joined an episode of our podcast, Common Cents on the Prairie™, for a conversation with host Adam Cox about the finances of family farms.

Adam Cox (left) and Darren Hefty (right) on the Common Cents on the Prairie podcast.

From funny memories of growing up on the family farm to the days of expanding Hefty Seed Company, Darren opened up about his lifelong passions and hard-learned lessons.

The finances of family farms

Darren says he could start contributing to the family farm “as early as was safe.”

“Safety was a really big concern for my dad and my mom, which was great,” he recalled. “They were both very cautious about what we were doing and putting us in the right situation.”

His first job at age 7 was taking care of baby pigs.

“My dad thought, ‘10- to 20-pound animals, Darren can handle,’” Darren said. “I’ve got a really soft heart for animals, and so that was a great spot for me.”

Soon, he was working from 5:00 a.m. until it was time to get on the school bus, and then for another couple of hours from the time he got home from school.

“My brother, I think, was getting a nickel a week or something,” Darren said, “and I was getting a penny, or something like that, when we were starting.”

He added, “Our big dreams with money at that time were, ‘Man, I’d really like to buy a pack of baseball cards.’”

The next step for Darren was attending auctions with his dad, and by about 10 to 12 years old, he was watching the grain and livestock markets every day.

“In the ’80s, there wasn’t a lot of money on anything,” he said.

They could make some money on hogs, however, and Darren recalled the time when he sold a batch of pigs for around $45,000.

“I was really excited when I told my dad, ‘Hey, I’ve got pigs ready to go to market. We need to get the truck ready and get them to town.’ And he’s like, ‘That’s great.’ And I said, ‘No…what’s really great, Dad, is we just made 40- or $45,000.’

“And he’s like, ‘Who’s we?’ That was my first big lesson of money. I was like, oh, I guess they’re all his. And I’m getting paid a nickel or whatever.”

Taking on responsibility

By the time Darren was 13, his dad was busy with both managing the farm and the family business, Hefty Seed Company.

There were jobs that Darren was too young to do yet, such as grinding feed, which led his dad to bring in a hired man.

“I was like, ‘I’m 13 years old,’” Darren said. “[My dad] goes, ‘But you know all the jobs. So, in the morning,’ — and this is the funny part…because I didn’t even have a driver’s license yet — ‘before you get on the school bus, you need to tell him what the jobs are. And then at the end of the day, when you get off the school bus, you check with him and see what he got done.’”

According to Darren, the hired man was a “great guy” and a kind person. Yet, he wasn’t prepared to start taking instructions from a teenager.

“Our first day actually on the job, I had a few pigs that I thought were not healthy,” Darren said.

Darren asked him if he was able to do pig vaccinations, to which the hired man responded that he could.

“I marked the pigs that I wanted — like six of them,” Darren said. “And I said, ‘Just put a crossmark on so I know that you got them.’”

When Darren got home from school, he noticed that none of the pigs had been vaccinated.

“So we had a problem,” he said.

Suddenly, here was a 13-year-old boy faced with having to confront a 30-year-old man about why the job wasn’t done.

“Fortunately, he was very kind about it,” Darren said. “He’s like, ‘Well, I don’t think any of them are actually sick.’”

The two struck up an agreement: they would vaccinate five of the six pigs, and the hired man could choose the healthiest one to leave unvaccinated.

“In a few days, that pig was on death’s door,” Darren said.

The hired man asked how Darren could tell the pigs were sick, “and so I talked to him about some of the things my dad had taught me about looking for sick animals,” Darren said. “After that, we never had a problem.”

In fact, the hired man recently celebrated his 40^th anniversary of working for the family operation.

Growing Hefty Seed Company

“My dad started our business a couple years before I was born, so it just was always part of the world I lived in,” Darren said.

During his younger days on the farm, the family business was small according to Darren.

“We were one store,” he said. “…You looked out the window of our house, and it was a building just right across the driveway.”

In part due to the proximity, Darren and his brother were always involved with Hefty Seed Company.

Darren previously described himself as having done all the jobs in the business “from the bottom up,” which included sweeping the warehouse, groundskeeping, counting inventory, and loading trucks.

By the time he went to SDSU for ag business, where he also minored in animal science, Darren was questioning his future with the family business.

“I wanted to farm. That’s what I wanted to do,” Darren said, fully intending to raise livestock and crops in the future.

“I didn’t know about the business thing,” he continued. “I don’t really view myself as a salesman, so that didn’t seem right for me.”

The situation changed quickly and unexpectedly, however.

“Little did I know, my dad’s plan was quite different,” Darren said. “So my last summer at home, before I went back to college, we loaded up all the livestock, hauled them off, and that was it. We were out of the livestock business.”

In 1993, Darren graduated college and returned home to the family business — at his dad’s request.

“He (previously) told us, you know, ‘Go off, get some other job, and get some experience,’” Darren said. “Well, for me, my senior year in college he’s like, ‘Okay, remember when I told you go get another job? No, I actually need you. I’ve got a job for you.’”

With Darren and his brother, Brian, back in the family business, their dad took Hefty Seed Company from a one-store operation to opening its first expansion store.

“My first year back was opening our first expansion store,” Darren said. “It took a few years, and dad got pretty confident that my brother and I had it handled. So, he just started looking for additional locations for us…and that became his job. And Brian’s and my job became running the business.”

Today, Hefty Seed Company operates in 50 locations across 12 states.

“And the cool thing with farming is if there’s 100 farmers, there’s 100 different ways to do things,” Darren said of expanding the business to different parts of the country.

Plus, the oldest member of the family’s next generation is currently working his way up in the business.

“It’s one thing my brother and I both saw: that we weren’t handed anything,” Darren said. “We had to be capable and show ourselves that we were good workers and could handle the roles before we were given anything.”

“So that’s been our thing from the start,” he added. “If anybody else wants to get in, great. We’ll give them a shot. But they’ve got to work their way up and earn everything they get.”

To hear more of Darren Hefty’s story, watch the full episode of Common Cents on the Prairie at the player below or listen on your favorite streaming app!

And if you want to talk with an expert about your own financial situation, reach out to our team at First National Wealth Management; we’d be happy to have a conversation.

Any comments, insights, or strategies discussed in this article are intended to be general in nature and, therefore, may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything written here, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.