hometownsource. com / heartland / Stories of the Heartland • Sunday, September 20, 2026 Page 43

SAUK CENTRE— On a dairy where workdays once meant 100-hour weeks and 3 a. m. milking, Todd and Louise Malecha have done what many family farms struggle to pull off: they’ ve handed nearly the entire operation to the next generation— and stayed out of the way.

“ If there’ s anything special about our facility, it’ s the fact that we have transitioned probably greater than 95 % of our operation all to the next generation,” Todd Malecha told visitors to his farm during a recent tour.

The Stearns County family, which started in 1989 with 13 paid‐for cows and no health insurance after a serious injury to Louise, built their operation by leveraging Todd’ s parents’ debt‐free land and steadily expanding. But growth alone wasn’ t enough. About 15 years ago, Todd said, they“ hit a ceiling” until they adopted EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, to professionalize management.

“ We had the people on the bus, we had to get them in the right seat,” he said, adding that EOS and key performance indicators( KPIs) took emotion out of decision-making. Those metrics now show the younger generation is outperforming the founders.

“ It’ s not anything emotional,” Todd Malecha said.“ It’ s a matter of fact.”

That unemotional approach, he argues, is exactly what’ s missing on many farms where succession plans never materialize.

“ Farmers, our guilt is that our identity becomes farming,” he said.“ We fall in love with our land, we fall in love with our animals, that we forget where our business is at … We’ re all going to die. We’ ve got to be able to transition it to the next generation.”

For Todd Malecha, the deeper issue behind shuttered barns and farm auctions is not just markets or scale— it’ s quality of

life. He recalls years when he and Louise milked twice a day, every day.

“ It’ s a brutal life,” he said.“ In today’ s day and age, that isn’ t going to cut it.”

Their children are community college – educated, lead employees, and, as Todd Malecha puts it,“ could go anywhere and get a job.” Keeping them on the farm requires more than nostalgia; it means creating opportunity, better schedules and a compelling vision of the future.

His prescription for other farm families is blunt: transparency, honesty and for older generations to“ trust and let go” once systems are in place.

“ Our business is really no different than any other business in town,” he said, comparing their transition challenges to local hardware or grocery stores.“ At the end of the day, when we wake up, we always ask, how can we add value to other people’ s lives? If we’ re not adding value to other people’ s lives, we have no business being in business.”

Jeffrey Hage / Stories of the Heartland

Todd Malecha of Malecha Dairy is pictured at his home near Villard.

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