Ione Kleinschmit always preferred working outdoors in the corn, sorghum, oats and alfalfa fields on her family’s Bow Valley, Nebraska, farm, but most of her childhood she ended up helping more with housework.
“I had four brothers so even though I preferred to be working in the fields, I never could.”
Until she accidentally met Utica farmer David Cap.
“Both of us got stood up for our blind dates the same night and ended up at the same bar – Our Place Two – and he decided to bug me,” recalled Ione of the evening 61 years ago.
After marrying David, Ione got to work outside on his family’s farm as much as she wanted.
David is a third-generation South Dakota farmer. His grandpa, Frank II, emigrated from Czechoslovakia and homesteaded the land eight miles northwest of Yankton in 1894. His dad, Jerry, took over the farm in 1924.
“When I was growing up we milked cows, had stock cows, hogs and chickens – you can’t forget the chickens. My mother would order chickens every year. One year she ordered 1,000 chicks. She would butcher the chickens for us and she also sold them to a few people in town,” David recalled.
After they got married, in addition to helping David in the milking parlor and fields, Ione also planted a large vegetable garden. “The kids helped me in our big garden and we would can more than 100 quarts of pickles and 200 quarts of beans as well as other fruits and vegetables,” Ione said. “I liked canning because then there was something on the shelf to add to any meal.”
With a growing family and dairy herd, meal prep was often last minute. “I did not have time to make fancy meals,” Ione said. “We were out milking morning and night. We’d work in shifts. The three oldest would go out and milk around 5:30 then come in and shower and go to school. Then I’d wake up the youngest and get them ready for school. We were usually out in the barn until 8 or 9 at night.”
Ione and David raised six children on their farm: Brad, Kevin, Sheryl, Roxann, Ronnie and Carmen.
“They learned responsibility and a good work ethic,” Ione said.
Today they have 15 grandchildren. They are grateful because their oldest son, Brad, and his wife, Paula, and their sons, Justin, Brandon and Hunter, carry on the family farming tradition.
“I am happy to have someone to hand the farm down to. But when prices are not good, I worry about them. I don’t want to see my son or his sons go broke and lose everything,” David explained.
David and Ione understand challenging times. They were raised by Depression-era parents and weathered the Farm Crisis of the ‘80s because each of them had off-farm incomes. Ione babysat and David drove semi and did custom combining.
Then in 2018 the family had to sell their 60- head dairy herd because inputs were rising but the price of milk was not.
“It was good timing because in 2019, it rained so much the milk truck would not have been able to get through to pick up milk,” David said.
Because he milked cows his entire life, selling the herd was a difficult decision. David and Ione loved their dairy cows. “You get to know the cows so well because you spend time with them twice a day, every day and they become your pets. I always had a tough time when a cow got too old to milk and I had to sell her,” David said.
They credit their faith with helping them through the challenging times. “It is easy to lean on the Lord and turn to him in prayer,” Ione said. “We prayed together as a family all the time and I taught religion classes. I love to sing and I have been in the choir since the eighth grade. Half of us joined the choir as a family.”
Unlike Ione, David said he joined the choir, not because he loves to sing, but because he felt left out. “I did not want to sit downstairs by myself.”
Preparing for the future of the Cap family farm
When David’s dad passed away in the mid-1980s, his estate plan was not what attorneys today would approve of, however, it allowed for David and Ione to continue farming.
With the future of their farm’s legacy in mind, David and Ione are working on an estate plan that will help ensure that the next generation of Caps can continue farming.
“We have heard some horror stories where the children who are farming have to sell off land just to pay the taxes or they cannot afford to buy the ground from their siblings, so it gets sold outside of the family,” David said.
In addition to ensuring a healthy transition of the family farm, David and Ione have also worked to ensure the health of the land they pass on to the next generations of Caps.
“We are no-till on most acres and the water holding capability of the soil has greatly increased due to the organic matter that has been gained,” David said. He explained that to further increase organic matter and keep a living root in the ground as long as possible, the family plants cover crops after small grain harvest. “We use a mix of beets, radish, turnips and rye.”
“I like planting cover crops because they help us keep the ground from blowing away – literally,” said Brad, David and Ione’s son.
Similar to Ione and David, Brad and Paula met on a blind date. Paula grew up on a dairy farm near Waubay. Also similar to Ione and David, the couple worked together on the farm full time until 2018 when the family sold the dairy cows.
“It is in our blood,” Brad said. “Farming is hard work. Especially with dairy cows, you have to milk them even if the prices are bad or the weather is bad, but I like doing it. I like watching the calves grow. I like being outside with the cattle first thing in the morning. I see sunrises all the time.”
“I like the fact that I got to raise my kids here on the farm,” Paula added.
Now that their older sons, Justin and Brandon, are building up their own beef herd on the farm, Brad and Paula work full time off the farm. Their daughter, Megan, is a registered nurse for Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls and their daughter, Carly, is studying to become a nurse at South Dakota State University.
Justin and Brandon began building up the farm’s beef herd after Justin graduated from college with a degree in accounting. Justin works full time off the farm as an accountant, while Brandon, who graduated from college spring of 2025 works full time on the farm.
“We have sat around this kitchen table and discussed where we want the farm to go and how we want to get there,” Justin explained.
The brothers are in the midst of calving right now. Because Brandon is alone on the farm during the work week, the brothers sort cows each weekend so the cows close to calving can be nearby and under surveillance.
“We have several cameras and we all have access to them on our cell phones so if we see a cow is having trouble, we can go out and help her,” Brandon said. “If we save one calf, it more than pays for all the cameras.”
Hearing their grandsons discuss their future on the Cap family farm is heartwarming for David and Ione.
“It’s a good feeling to know they will be here and farming even after we are gone,” David said. “There is a lot of pride to having a name continue on, on the farm. When a person goes through a cemetery, you think, ‘I remember those people, but they are not farming anymore.’ There are not many five generation farms anymore.”
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