Curt Arens and wife, Donna, live on the fourth generation family farm that was first purchased by Curt’s great-grandfather, Joseph Arens in 1914. He and Donna and their three children, Lauren, Taylor and Zachary, feel honored and privileged to live in the same house on the same farm where Curt’s grandparents, John and Caroline Arens raised their eleven children and where his parents, Harold (1927-2010 Obituary and Video Tribute) and Margaret Arens provided a happy and warm family farm upbringing for Curt and his younger brother Paul.
Curt was born on January 1, 1964 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Yankton, S.D. Curt and Paul loved the farm. They had a stable of toy tractors, graders, implements and wagons that they pulled around in their sandbox, trying hard to be just like their Dad. They followed Harold around the farm and asked thousands of questions about everything under the sun.
Growing up on the farm, they enjoyed playing basketball in the hayloft of the big barn their grandfather built. They walked soybean fields in the summer, chopping cockleburs and velvetleaf, and learned how to drive tractors, pile hay bales, cultivate without tearing out too many corn plants, and how to work hard and play too. As a family, they often fished out of the West Bow Creek near the farm, ice skated on the creek’s beaver dams and piled into the family pickup for a ride to the pasture to check cattle.
Curt and Paul attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic Elementary School in Crofton. At the time, the school was blessed with compassionate and loving School Sisters of St. Francis, many of which Curt still recalls as the best teachers he had throughout his academic career.
In the seventh grade, Curt won the school’s first Modern Woodmen Civic Oration Contest. He also participated in his local 4-H club, Lucky Livewires. He exhibited beef, welding, woodworking and photography at the Knox County Fair each August. He excelled in 4-H Speech, winning the district contest and participating in State competition in Lincoln his sophomore year in high school.
In high school, Curt was in FFA and Speech. He took his share of college prep classes – college math, chemistry and physics. But he also took agriculture classes each year, as well as English, Speech, Biology and – honoring his family’s heritage - four years of German. Sprechen Sie Duetsche? Vie gehts?
In FFA, he made it to the State Farmer degree and also participated in State FFA Speech, but fell apart in the state contest when he lost his place and stood dumbfounded before the judges for what seemed like ten minutes, before composing himself again. Needless to say, he didn’t place.
Curt didn’t go out for football until his junior year in high school. The farm work at home seemed more important, and Curt wasn’t known for his athletic prowess, so he was just plain scared of getting clobbered. Finally, he summoned enough guts to try out for the team. He started varsity as the center that first year. During his Senior year, Crofton’s team went 6-3, winning more games that season than they had in a decade. Curt started at center and also played his share at defensive tackle, weighing in at a colossal 170 lbs.
He and one of his friends, Duane Schieffer, edited the school newspaper, affectionately known as the “Warrior Whenever”, because of the paper’s lax and irregular printing schedule. At this same time, Curt started writing for the Crofton Journal and he began learning journalism and news photography from local editors, Kevin and Tweeter Henseler.
He graduated from Crofton High School as Salutatorian, from a class of 56 students in 1982. He garnered a couple of scholarships and headed to Lincoln to the University of Nebraska that fall, majoring in agriculture. In college, Curt enjoyed attending four years of Husker home football and basketball games. He also worked three jobs to help pay for school. He was active in the University 4-H Club, serving as an officer several times. In addition to coursework toward his major, he took classes in agronomy, mechanized ag, agricultural technical writing, creative writing and journalism.
At this time, he helped edit the St. Rose Parish 75th jubilee history book, in between classes and several part-time jobs. He played intramural sports, including flag football, which was his favorite, and softball, which always got him injured. He lived his entire college career on East Campus, or “Dirt Campus” at UN-L, residing each semester in the same room in old Burr Hall.
Each summer, he returned home to help on the family farm, disking, cultivating, pitching straw bales into the upstairs of their old barn on hot, humid days. He continued to work for the Henselers at the Journal, writing mostly farm feature stories.
Curt graduated from UN-L with a B.S. in animal science in 1986. He took a half-time position in 1987 with the Knox County Extension office, filling in for County Agriculture Educator, Terry Gompert, who was taking a faculty development leave for six months. In that job, Curt answered farm calls, helped with the county fair and farmer meetings. He learned about customer service and he learned how to act like he knew what he was doing with some confidence. In reality, he utilized the knowledgeable staff in the office and specialists at the district extension research station to answer all of the hard questions.
After the six-month position was completed, he returned to farming full-time with his parents. His brother Paul, was away at UN-L at the time, so Curt began to rent land of his own and to think about someday purchasing farm land and machinery. His Dad, Harold, became ill with bronchial asthma in 1988 and had to retire from full-time farming. So Curt jumped head-first into debt and purchased some of the farm ground from his parents and some of the machinery as well.
At the time, he lived in a little house along West Bow Creek, about a half mile from the home place. He joined the local community club, and enjoyed helping out with their service projects like youth hoop shoots, an annual street dance, Kindergarten orientation and other social activities. For eight years, he also taught high school religious education at St. Rose and remained active in parish events and in promoting Catholic education at St. Rose School.
Curt continued writing for the Crofton Journal and became a part-time news correspondent for the Norfolk Daily News as well. He covered school board and city council meetings as well as ag features for the Journal and did human interest stories and farm articles for the Norfolk paper.
In 1991, Curt became involved in the Crofton Tree Board, helping form the first meetings and assisting in school Arbor Day programs and community tree planting efforts in the city parks. Since then, he has served as curator of Crofton Courts Arboretum, a series of tree plantings and identified tree groupings throughout the community, to further the forestry education of area residents and to promote the planting of a variety of trees in the region.
Curt and his buddy, Doug Moser, took up a DJ business they had begun in college with Paul and another friend, Randy Micek, and formed CPR Sound. Over a five year period, Curt and Doug played music for over 200 events, including weddings, anniversaries, birthday parties, alumni reunions and get together events of all kinds. Curt and his buddies enjoyed trips to the Black Hills and Colorado to ski and snowmobile. They also attended the 1996 Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, AZ, to watch the Cornhuskers win a football National Championship.
In the fall of 1996 he met Donna Zauha in Madison, where one of Curt’s old neighbors, Kurt Jackson and his wife Lisa were living and working. Donna, who grew up in the Omaha area at Papillion, was teaching at St. Leonard’s Catholic school with Lisa, and the Jacksons saw to it that Curt and Donna met. (See Chapter One of “Down to Earth” and several articles in “A Year with Farm to Family” for all the details.)
They began dating and were married. Curt’s parents moved to a new house in Crofton, and Curt and his new bride moved into the “big house,” on the home place. Donna took a teaching position a little closer to Crofton, at St. Ludger Elementary School at Creighton, Neb.
Shortly after Curt and Donna were married, hog prices fell through the floor. This was a major income source on the farm for the newlyweds, so the loss of cash flow was devastating. Curt began searching for new income sources. He sent a letter to Farm Journal, asking if they were interested in an article on farmers grazing standing corn, something Curt had covered for other area publications. To his surprise, he received an assignment from one of their editors. He wrote the story and was shocked that he received a healthy paycheck for his writing. He had gotten paid for writing before, but seeing his byline in a major farm magazine was a new, invigorating experience.
Curt and Donna’s first child, daughter Lauren, was born in the fall of 1999. Curt continued to farm, but started pitching story ideas to other magazines and publications, and he began writing even more for local newspapers. He found that he could work interviews and writing around his farm schedule, so it worked well with what he was already doing.
Their second daughter, Taylor, was born in January 2002. That fall, Donna took a teaching job at Curt’s former school, St. Rose at Crofton. With more mouths to feed and farm commodity prices continually in the dumps, Curt was blessed to be selected for a national agriculture communications fellowship in 2003. He traveled for training in Des Moines and to a food and farm policy workshop in Washington, D.C. He and Donna enjoyed traveling together to Lake Tahoe and Washington, D.C. to attend national conferences related to the fellowship. It was a life-changing experience not only for Curt, but for his family. The income from the fellowship helped them care for their growing family. The networking opportunities from the fellowship allowed Curt to write in new venues and to meet some of the most prominent movers and shakers in the sustainable agriculture, organic farming and local food policy arenas.
The two-year fellowship ended in 2005. Through the fellowship, Curt began writing and narrating a radio program, “Farm to Family Connection” for a local radio station, KK93, 93.1 FM based in Yankton, S.D. The weekly show features local family farmers who are raising food or processing food and farm products for local consumers. He continues writing for this show and a companion website – www.farmtofamily.net.
In 1999, he began writing for Nebraska Life magazine – a wonderful publication featuring the best stories of his home state. For Nebraska Life, he researches and writes feature stories about some of Curt’s favorite Nebraska characters and places. Through these experiences, Curt has interviewed former President Gerald Ford, senators, historians, authors, community activists, teachers and farmers and ranchers.
Since then, he has also written for Successful Farming, Nebraska Farmer, New Holland News, American Profile, Living Here, Farm and Ranch Living, South Dakota Magazine, Country Discoveries and Upper Room. He wrote a blog for Catholic Digest for a short time in 2010. For five years, he wrote “Farm to Family,” a weekly column about family, faith and farming for the Cedar County News and the local newspapers of the Northeast Nebraska News Company.
He also served as assistant director for Northeast Nebraska RC&D projects, “Farm to Family Connection” and “Farmers Market Moms.”
Click HERE for an index of Curt's books and articles.
Curt and Donna’s son, Zachary, was born in January 2006. Donna continues to teach English and Literature for 5-8 grades at St. Rose School.
In 2010, Curt was blessed to be offered a field editor position with Farm Progress, to write full-time for magazines like Nebraska Farmer and Dakota Farmer. This was an opportunity of a lifetime and Curt feels that he has been blessed to be selected, and to be able to do the type of writing full-time that he really enjoys most, that is covering agriculture and the real life operations of farmers and ranchers.
Curt continues to work the family farm and to tend a cow-calf herd. On their farm, they raise corn, soybeans, alfalfa, wheat, cattle and other assorted 4-H critters. They have a dog named Dolly, as well as a small flock of laying hens and a whole herd of barn cats. (You’d have to ask Curt’s daughters about the names of the cats.)
Curt and Donna are active in St. Rose School Boosters Club, Legacy Fund for a Faith-Filled Future and parish and school fundraisers like the annual Unity Supper and Grand Auction.
In February 2010, the family suffered a devastating loss when Curt’s father and friend, Harold, passed away at the age of 82. Harold was a strong and continuing influence on Curt over the years, and the day he passed away, Curt says, was the loneliest day of his life. Harold’s daily farm visits, teasing the grandchildren, his gentle and comforting mannerisms and his constant spiritual guidance are sorely missed in the lives of all members of the Arens family. (See “Down to Earth” chapter called “Dad and St. Isidore.”)
Curt’s first book, “Down to Earth: Celebrating a Blessed Life on the Land”, was published by www.actapublications.com in January 2008. The book garnered a Catholic Press Association Book Award for First Time Author of a Book in 2009.
His second book, “Making the Connection: A Toolkit for Starting a Radio and Web-based Local Food Campaign,” was co-authored with Sandy Patton of Royal, and was published by Northeast Nebraska RC&D in Plainview, Nebraska in September 2008. (www.farmtofamily.net)
The latest release by Curt is “A Year with Farm to Family: A Journal of Rural Life,” published in September 2009 by the Cedar County News in Hartington, Nebraska. This book is a compilation of a year's worth – 52 in all – of Curt’s favorite “Farm to Family” columns.