Views from the Cab

By David Tollefson, Columnist

At Oslo, Minn., lives the oldest shareholder for American Crystal Sugar. On Aug. 14, 2022, 200 guests celebrated Earl Mallinger’s 105th birthday. He is also the longest resident of Oslo, (population 232) and has been involved with more than 100 harvests during those 105 years. Also celebrating with him at the party was his kid sister, Ina Dahlum, from Moorhead. She is 101 years old.

A story in Agweek on Aug. 17, 2022, documents his farming career, with both horses and modern farm equipment, and he witnessed firsthand the birth of the American Crystal Sugar Cooperative. Mallinger’s family were among the first sugar beet farmers in the Red River Valley region. His farming career and the American sugar beet industry grew and developed together, and Mallinger still actively farms today. He grows sugar beets, soybeans and wheat on 1,000 acres in the Oslo area.

“I guess what keeps a guy alive at 105 is to keep busy,” he said.

Mallinger’s father Peter was born in Luxembourg. After working as a butcher in France, he came to America in 1895 at the age of 20. He went to Minnesota because he had a sister living in Barnesville. Shortly after his arrival, he worked at a meat market in East Grand Forks.  

“Dad didn’t know any English and only spoke German,” Mallinger said. “He went to night school to learn English and get an education.”

Earl was the fourth of Peter and Hjerda Mallinger’s seven children. He was 13 pounds at birth. “Dad took one look at me and said I was going to be a farmer,”  Mallinger said. “I’m glad he did that.  I really enjoyed farming and I always knew I wanted to be a farmer.”

Mallinger attended school in a one-room schoolhouse that held 28 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

“I walked two miles to and from school each day. As I walked past people’s houses, more kids would join me. Quite a group had accumulated by the time we got to school,” he said. “I went to school until eighth grade. I did awful good in arithmetic, but history and geography were my favorite subjects. I wasn’t good at spelling.”

He began farming with his father after his eighth-grade graduation in 1932.

  “Dad was a real hard worker and taught me how to work,” he said. “He was willing to try new things, and he first planted potatoes in 1926. That was also the year the East Grand Forks sugar beet factory started. Before that factory was started, beets were sent to Chaska, Minnesota.”

Mallinger has an incredible memory for dates and events throughout his farming career, and vividly recalls his father’s decision to start growing sugar beets.

“In 1927, field men from the new factory visited all the farmers and talked to them about growing this unique new crop called sugar beets. They told us beets would help control weeds like wild oats and pigeon grass,” he said. “We had to hire people to hoe the weeds out of the beets. It was $6 a ton for beets then. They were not a high paying crop, but they would clean up the land and help the rotation.”

Peter was excited to try sugar beets and was one of the first farmers in the area to grow the new crop in 1927.

“We had 30 acres of sugar beets when we started, and Mexican folks helped us by hoeing the weeds,” Mallinger said. “We got the beet seed from the factory, and they got it from Germany. It came from there in great big burlap bags.”

“We planted the beets with a four-row horse-drawn planter.”

After the beets were grown, “We had a lifter that loosened the beets and the Mexican workers put them in rows,” Mallinger recalled. “Then they topped them with beet knives and shoveled them into a truck.” 

“We loaded the beets into open railroad cars which took them to Grand Forks. After a while, we had a piling site in Oslo. Then, sometime in the late 1930s, we hauled them to Grand Forks in a truck,” he said.

The 1930s were a trying time for the Mallingers and their fellow farm families in the Red River Valley.

“We didn’t have much money then.  Nobody did, and everyone was in the same boat,” Mallinger said. “We all played kittenball. It was like a baseball but with a larger ball, a smaller diamond, and an underhand pitch. Those are some of my favorite childhood memories.”

The family farmed with horses until 1936, when Peter bought a combine.

“I was 19 years old. In Warren, Minnesota, the dealership there would take used horses in trade for tractors and other equipment. We traded horses for a combine,” said Mallinger. “I ran the combine, but I missed those horses. They were extremely well-trained.”

Today Mallinger hires others to do field work for him, but owns some of his own equipment and makes all the decisions for his 1,000-acre farm.

“I never quit farming because it is so much fun,” he said.

Mallinger is assisted by his friend and neighbor, Debbie Hanson, a semi-retired Lutheran pastor.  The two have known each other for over 20 years, and she calls herself his “enabler.”

“I drive him around so he can farm and do the things he loves to do. His day starts around 8:30 a.m. with breakfast at Kitty’s Café in Oslo and wraps up around 9:30 in the evening,” Hanson said. “We’ve done a lot of off-roading and I’ve gotten stuck helping him scout fields, but I’ve learned a lot about farming from Earl.”

Hanson is amazed by Mallinger’s incredible memory and life experiences.

“You could go to the Sugar Beet Museum in Crookston to learn about the history of sugar beets in the Red River Valley, or you can talk to Earl,” she said.

“He has seen the whole industry develop. He remembers it all.”

As Mallinger reflects on his farming career, he says his best advice to beginning farmers is to work hard, be frugal and put God first.

“If you didn’t inherit land from your parents, start small. Remember that God is in control. You have got to have Him with you. Also, don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. I didn’t work much on Sundays, and I still made a good living.”

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Please contact David Tollefson with thoughts or comments on this or future columns at: adtollef@hcinet.net