Growing up on our multigenerational family farm, I spent my childhood riding in the tractor and combine and doing chores alongside my grandfather and father. Each year I took on more responsibility, from pulling the combine’s unload auger to eventually farming beside my dad on our 800-acre grain operation.
Although I always knew I wanted to return to the farm, I first went to school and built a career as a lawyer and CPA. I now live back in my rural hometown of Oxford Junction, Iowa, providing legal and accounting services to the community while working toward taking over the family farm.
In 2024, I took my first step into ownership by using the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit to rent a field from my dad. After seven years of college, this program made farming financially possible and shifted my role from farmhand to equal partner in management decisions. It also gave my father an incentive to rent to me at a fair rate.
Farming a piece of our family land has been a lifelong milestone, and the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit has become a key tool in helping our family move forward with transitioning the farm to me as my father, now 63, begins to plan for retirement.
-Marshall Shedeck, Beginning Farmer Programs, Oxford Junction