Ole Enestvedt first tilled this land in 1867 with a pair of oxen and a single-bottom plow, beginning a Norwegian family’s hard homesteading life in the Minnesota River valley. In 1900, while attending the St. Paul School of Agriculture, Ole and Anna’s youngest son, Engebret, started the Enestvedt Seed Corn Company after the University of Minnesota had released 13 open-pollinated seed corn varieties in 1897, and he began growing and selling seed corn. Engebret married Clara in 1908, and after his death in 1923 at age 43, Clara and their five young children carried on the home and the seed corn business. In the mid-1930s, the company began growing University of Minnesota hybrids called Minhybrids, and planting changed to tractor-pulled multiple-row planters with staggered planting dates to accommodate hybrid crossing. The Enestvedt brothers, Odean, Johannes, and Bert, guided the business through changes and improvements in the seed corn industry, and Johannes invented a machine combining two- and three-row corn planters on one tractor so that up to six rows could be planted with one machine. In 1994, Bert received the Eldon Siehl Prize for Excellence in Agriculture for his lifetime of service in production agriculture, and the company also received many awards, including the University of Minnesota release of Bert Soybeans named for Bert and his involvement in the soybean industry. The family-owned company continues under third-generation member Roger Enestvedt. Hybrid seed corn production depends on detasseling, the removal of the pollen-producing tassel so plants cannot pollinate themselves and are instead pollinated by another corn variety in the same field, producing seed with the genetic characteristics of both varieties for healthier crops and higher yields; despite technological advances, detasseling is still done primarily by hand, though workers now ride instead of walk.