The entire Allen family is involved in farming. Dan and his wife,
Sonia, began farming in 1976 by growing traditional crops of corn
and soybeans. They first tried their hand at growing native seed
grasses in 1980. Today, the Allen’s four adult children each
have their own independent farm and pool their machinery resources.
“Between the five of us, there’s about 3,500 acres of
row crops and about 400 acres of bluegrass sod,” Dan says.
Native seed grass
Dan recalls that his interest in native grass seed production began
while he was in college. He put in about 15 acres in 1980 as a trial.
It would take two years to produce seed, if things worked out.
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At Allendan Seeds, wildflower
seed is harvested by hand, while grass seed is harvested
with New Holland combines.
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“Circumstances were right,” he says. “I found
a market for it. Then, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
started in 1985. The CRP really fell in line with what we
were doing.” (The CRP is a Federal program that encourages
conversion of highly erodible cropland or other environmentally
sensitive acreage to vegetative cover, such as tame or native
grasses, wildlife plantings, trees, filter strips, or buffers.)
The Allen’s farm grew, their native seed business grew,
and their family grew. In 1994, Dan and Sonia sold off their
last cattle. In 1998, they got out of the hog business and
expanded the native seed business.
During the expansion, they bumped production about four-fold
to the current level, brought in a large, old foundation seed
corn dryer from De Kalb, Illinois, and upgraded to a New Holland
TR™89 combine.
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Grass & wildflowers
“The challenge is to think like a plant!” Dan says, referring
to his grass and wildflower business. “Most of these are perennials.
It takes two years-- sometimes three years -- to get the first seed
crop and, in most cases, nobody has done it before.”
The family works together to solve the mystery of gaining seed
production from each species they produce. Dan says, “Each
type of plant responds to a totally unique set of environmental
stimuli. Our challenge is to figure out what the plant wants to
do, so it can re-seed.”
Seed from the wildflowers are harvested by hand, with up to 40
employees in the field on some days, while grass seed is harvested
in the fall with New Holland Twin Rotor® combines.
Harvesting grass seed
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In the mid-1980s, Dan purchased a New Holland TR™75
combine to handle the finer grass seed harvest requirements.
“Grass is a totally different crop. The TR is simple
and efficient in design, and just facilitates what we do,”
he says.
In 2002, Dan harvested the native grasses with two TR89 combines.
He estimates they put about 600 hours on the single TR89 used
for the 2001 harvest. The harvest starts in early September
and takes a full three months.
The rotary combines have played key roles in growing the
native grass business.
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A specialized cleaning and
air-drying system is used to process the delicate
grass and flower seeds.
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“Everything about them seems to work better than on any other
combine,” Dan says. “They’re more adaptable. They’re
pretty easy to adjust. The cylinders make material move through
a lot easier and quicker. The cylinders have pegs that help take
the wet trash through.”
He adds, “This material is so light and fluffy that some of
it will just bridge over an auger. The auger in the TR hopper goes
straight out. That material doesn’t have a chance to bridge
over.”
In-line cleaning
Specialized cleaning and drying processes are necessary for the
volume of seed Allendan Seed handles. They have a unique line for
in-line cleaning of grass and flower seeds that was first used during
the fall harvest in 2002. It is a $1.2 million facility.
“We need to clean pretty good volumes of material in a very
short time so we can get it to market by January,” Dan says.
Seed market
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(Left to right) Chad Allen,
Kelly Hayes, Dan Allen, Angela Barker and Scott Allen.
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The seed the Allens produce is sold throughout North America, often in 50-lb.
bags to seed distributors and government departments. “We
sell any amount, however we run a pretty large volume so the
biggest end of our business is with large orders.”
A new conservation seed industry has come into its own since
1985, when the Conservation Reserve Program began. Allenden
Seed’s main market isn’t an agricultural market
or a garden market. In fact, says Dan, indigenous seed material
is really supplying a “movement” rather than a market.
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“The movement on seed is toward putting government lands,
roadsides and acres that aren’t involved in gardening or agriculture
back into the native vegetation from which they came. Most of our
material is indigenous to the tall grass Prairie, and that’s
the main market for us.
“It’s expensive to do, but I think the political conscience
today is trying to put that material back where it was, on lands
that aren’t being used.”
