Century Farms are Koochiching pioneers

The farms are unique for continuous family ownership of more than 50 acres for at least 100 years. The families receive a commemorative sign and a certificate signed by the State Fair and Minnesota Farm Bureau presidents and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Milton Teufer still runs the same Northome farm that was started by his German immigrant father in 1908. Andrew Lucachick still resides on the Gheen farm that was homesteaded by his Galician immigrant father in 1907.

Lucachick

The Lucachick family is known not only known for farming, but for maintaining the Bremble Russian Orthodox church, a local cultural treasure that still stands adjacent to their farm.

The three neighboring villages, Greaney, Rauch, and Silverdale, held the annual “G.R.S.” pioneer picnic at the Bremble church this month. County Commissioner Kallie Briggs presented the Lucachick family with the Century Farm plaque at the event.

The Lucachick honor comes as Andrew, 86, and Florence, 82, adjust to his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. He exhibits comparatively mild symptoms at this point and was still farming until just this year. He still does light chores and gets around the property on his four-wheeler.

“Walking is difficult,” he said. “I take short steps and am not sure of my balance.”

The family also had a reunion in August. It was a time to reminisce the 56 years that Andrew and Florence have worked the farm that he bought from his father for $1. They raised six children: Jeff, Dave, Todd, Scott, Mark and Wendy.

“We will keep here for as long as we can,” said Florence. “You have to slow down sometime.”

The two loved to dance and are proud to claim that they attended all 37 Polka Fests at Iron World.

“We didn’t miss one,” said Florence. “…Things change.”

If there is a secret to keeping a farm in the family for a century it has been not to rely on it as a sole source of income, according to Andrew. He was logger, a carpenter, millwright, a construction worker at the mines and drove a school bus for 20 years.

Andrew, like his father before him, grew hay, oats and barley. He later worked three neighboring fields, raised chickens, hogs and had dairy cows before focusing on cattle.

“The kids helped out and my wife was a big asset to me,” Andrew said. “I threw a lot of hay bales and milked a lot of cows too.”

The low return for hay today would not offset the skyrocketing costs of fuel and fertilizer. That, and his Parkinson’s, led him to retire and let others farm his land.

“It was time to quit,” he added.

The children have moved on to other vocations. “They are interested in being here, but they don’t want to farm,” said Florence. “There is nothing in it anymore.”

The farm was homesteaded by William Lucachick, who came to America in 1900 from Galicia, a southern province of what was then the Austria Hungarian Empire that became part of Poland in 1918.

It was a time when landlords took everything from the peasants and forced them to live and work, according to Jeff Lucachick, grandson. William was just 19 and found work digging the Holland Tunnel in New York City before heading to the Pennsylvania coal mines.

“He worked there until he had an accident in the mines,” said Andrew. “A cable broke on a skip that was bringing them down to the level they were working and the skip went all way to bottom of the shaft.”

The resulting injury required William to have some gold teeth installed.

William met his wife Julia, who was working at a boarding house run by her sister. The two married in Pennsylvania in 1902, and then moved to Chisholm where William worked in the iron mines until they homesteaded in 1907.

The original homestead was a 12-foot by 16-foot log cabin that served as an immediate shelter. The 1912 home, with its dovetail joints, still stands across from the main house.

“I was born in that house,” said Andrew, the only farmer among his five sisters and four brothers that went to work for the International Falls mill.

The original barn was much longer and was replaced by in 1929 by the one that still stands.

Julia was from Czechoslovakia. The common language in the home was “Rooshin,” a blend of Russian, Czech and other Slavic dialects, according to Andrew.

“The first language I learned was something like Russian, and we had to go to school to learn English before I could go to school,” he said.

The religion at home was Russian Orthodox. Andrew recalls that his father would feed the cows Paska, a Slavic bread, on Orthodox holidays and that they had other rituals that included washing in the stream.

William donated two acres of his farm for the St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church that was completed in 1915.

“It was an active church for about 20 years and then it was difficult to get a priest to come out here from the Chisholm Orthodox Church,” said Andrew. “We never had a full-time pastor and over the years it became more difficult to find more priests come to offer services.”

Andrew can remember attending the “Bremble church” as a boy and is the last surviving member among many neighbors that were from the same Galician villages as his father. He remains a caretaker of the inactive, but functional church under the charge of Fr. Gregory Grivna of St. Nicholas OCA in Chisholm. There is no electricity or water and a wood stove still sits in the hall.

There are four icons in the church that are dedicated to William Lucachick for donating the church property, and Andrew Soroka, who donated the cemetery land. The other two are dedicated to Alex Terebenetz and Father Paul Berg, an Episcopal priest from Grand Rapids who happened upon the little church and helped to inspire its restoration in the 1960s.

William passed away in 1956, two years after Julia. The surviving members continued to hold special services including the annual summer Tikhvin festivals, a cultural and religious celebration. Andrew recalled that in 1978, an original Russian Tikhvin icon was brought to the Bremble church for a festival. The icon was taken to America during the Russian revolution and housed in Chicago, and is now reportedly back in Russia.

Andrew will remain caretaker as long as he can and expects that his nephews and children will take over for him.

Teufer

Milton Teufer still runs the same family farm in Northome that was started in 1908. He maintains large gardens and hay fields but sold off his sheep and an Angus herd in 1999. He misses his two blue hair merle sheep dogs that kept after the livestock. He says they were most likely killed by timber wolves.

“They were great dogs to have around,” said Teufer.

Managing the farm would not have been possible without outside income, according to Milton. He worked as a logger in his youth and was the Koochiching County Land and Forestry Department manager of the southern district for 30 years.

Patsy Teufer comes from southeast Iowa and taught school for several years in Burlington. She and Milton married in 1969 and have three grown children together. None of them became farmers and live in the Twin Cities and elsewhere.

These days Milton manages a lighter schedule of daily chores while undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. He still likes to spend his spare time and winter days in his wood shop.

The black ash wood is cut from trees on his property. They are milled locally to get the smoothness Milton needs for his small projects. The ash wood in particular has an attractive burl area that gives his pen and pencil sets a marble quality, according to Milton. He also makes cedar step stools and blanket chests and recently got into large cabinet making with projects for his daughters.

According to Milton, his father, Martin Teufer, was born in Germany in 1873 and came to the United States to attend the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He took odd jobs in Illinois as a butcher and at a milk farm where three men milked 60 cows three times a day by hand.

Martin moved to Minnesota in 1890, first to Renville and then to the Todd County township of Bertha. He bought 80 acres of farmland and sold it to move to Northome in 1902.

Around this time, Martin, now 26, married Ida (Lange), a 22 year old German immigrant. They would have two sons together, Milton and Eldor.

The family homesteaded about 80 acres near Northome and after logging the property moved 18 miles east to buy 160 acres at the present location of the farm in Plum Creek Township. He logged the land and began a small dairy.

The land would eventually be used for cattle grazing and hay. There was a logging camp nearby and he would sell them beef at eight cents a pound.

The original log home was torn down years ago but the barn still stands. Milt had it moved closer to the house years ago. He added other buildings.

Martin was an avid outdoorsman and that is what attracted them to Northome, said Milton, who shares his father’s passion for the outdoors.

The construction of an access road to the unnamed lake that was once Martin’s original homestead property prompted the county commissioners to approve the name Teufer Lake. Milton said that his father is credited with bringing several varieties of fish to spawn in the lake, carrying them in buckets.

Milton joined the U.S. Navy after graduating from high school in 1944. He took over the farm in 1946 and twice expanded land to what is now 240 acres. He grew hay, oats and barley, along with raising chickens, sheep and a modest cattle herd.

Martin passed away in 1960. Ida died in 1972.

Milton said the land has great value and he continues to get offers, but plans to stay on as long as the couple can manage the property.