Tom Brekke
Cattle, grazing, hauling
Moves the herd every morning at 6:30, rain or snow. Decides which steers are finished and which need another month. Drives to the locker. Will talk your ear off about meadow fescue.
About
Three generations, one red gate
The gate at the end of the drive was red when Arne and Solveig Brekke bought this farm in 1961, and it's been repainted every spring since. That's about the extent of our branding. The rest is cattle, grass, and a family that would rather sell you a quarter beef by name than a steak by barcode.
The story
From dairy to Red Angus
Arne Brekke milked 40 Holsteins here from 1961 until 1988, when the milk price and his knees gave out in the same year. He sold the herd, kept the land, and seeded the worst of the row-crop ground back to pasture with a government cost-share and a lot of hand-broadcast clover. He ran a few dozen Hereford-Angus cows on it, sold calves at the sale barn in Decorah every October, and worked at the Deere dealership in Calmar to pay the taxes.
His son Tom came home in 2003 after twelve years at a feedlot and a packing plant in Nebraska. He'd seen how most beef gets made and didn't want to make it that way. He also did the math and realised that selling calves at auction meant giving away every dollar of margin to somebody else. In 2006 he and his wife Anna took the first four steers to the locker in Cresco and sold them by the quarter to co-workers and church friends off a clipboard.
The clipboard became a spreadsheet, then a farmers'-market stall, then a website. Herefords became Red Angus in 2009. The last bag of corn was fed in 2010. The box truck came in 2019 when the Rochester customers got to be more than a Suburban could carry. Last year we fed about 640 households.
Arne is 91 and still walks out to check the heifers. Solveig passed in 2021; the Eggmobiles were her idea.
1961Brekkes arrive
2006first quarter sold
2010last grain fed
640households, 2025
- 1961 Arne and Solveig Brekke buy 160 acres and a dairy barn on Red Gate Road for $31,000.
- 1988 Dairy sold. Hillsides seeded to pasture. First beef cows.
- 2003 Tom comes home from Nebraska. Buys the neighbouring 180 acres in 2005.
- 2006 First four steers sold by the quarter. 11 customers.
- 2009 Herd switched to Red Angus. Daily rotational grazing starts.
- 2014 Herd closed. Pigs added to the oak woodlot. Farm store opens in the old milk house.
- 2019 Refrigerated box truck. Rochester and La Crosse routes start.
- 2024 Tom and Anna's daughter Ingrid joins full-time after ag school at NICC and two years on a grazing dairy in New Zealand.
Who you'll talk to
The people
Anna Brekke
Orders, invoices, the phone
The voice on (555) 016-8810 and the person who answers your cut-sheet questions. Ran the farmers' market stall for nine years. Keeps the herd book and the books.
Ingrid Brekke
Pigs, chickens, the truck
Runs the hog and poultry side and drives the Saturday routes. If you've picked up in Winona or Waukon, that was her. Also responsible for the pasture-walk coffee.
Mateo Reyes
Everything else
Full-time since 2021. Fence, water lines, hay, chicken processing days, store on Fridays. Grew up on a ranch outside Chihuahua and knows more about cattle than any of us.
What we believe
A few things we've decided
- Grass only, with no exceptions. The day we feed grain to finish faster is the day the beef stops being different from the store's.
- Say the price. Every number on this site is what you'll actually pay. If processing goes up, the page changes the same week.
- Sell to people, not packers. We'll never sell more animals than we can hand to customers by name. If we're sold out, we're sold out.
- The land is the business. Soil organic matter is the number we brag about, not herd size.
- Treat the sick animal. And then don't sell it as ours. Both halves of that matter.