Lake City-area seed companies were also part of the hybrid corn revolution, starting with Heim’s Hybrids. The Heim farm was located in Calhoun Township, just south of Lake City.

Howard Heim founded his company in 1937, about a decade after Iowa native Henry A. Wallace founded Hi-Bred Corn Company (later known as Pioneer Hi-Bred and now Corteva Agriscience).

Tragedy struck, however, by the 1940s. The Aug. 22, 1946, edition of the Lake City Graphic ran the article, “Howard Heim Killed in Auto Accident.”

“Howard Heim, 38, well-known here as the originator and producer of Heim’s hybrid seed corn, was killed Sunday in an auto accident five miles south of his home in Bemidji, Minn. The Heim family moved to the northern Minnesota town a few years ago when Mr. Heim purchased farming interests a few miles east of there and was successfully operating a resort, along with his agricultural pursuits.”

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Ed and Glenn Hobart purchased the Heim Hybrid Seed Corn Company in Lake City in 1957. The family-run Hobart Bros. Hybrid Seed Corn Co. remained in business until 2007. This poster, along with other Hobart Bros. items, are on display at Central School Preservation, the museum in Lake City.

Howard’s brother George and his son Jerry managed the Heim’s seed company near Lake City for a number of years after Howard’s death. An ad in the April 16, 1957, Lake City Graphic promoted what farmers could expect from Heim’s Hybrids:

“Do you want to cut seed costs to the bone, without sacrificing yield or quality? Then you will want to plant Heim’s Proven Trustworthy Hybrids, the seed corn with the personal touch.

We have two new varieties that have proven superior in comparison and field tests for the past three years. They are 606C and 607C. Our old standbys are still doing an excellent job, and anyone using them wouldn’t want to be without them. We also have Redbine 60 sorghum, a good open-pollinated variety.

Our prices are as follows:

n Flat-grades $10 per bushel, 5 bushels or more $9.50, economy flats, $8 per bushel.

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Hobart Brothers' price list in 1979.

n Round grades, $7.50 per bushel, 5 bushels or more, $7.

n Redbine 60 sorghum, 8 cents per pound. If interested in sorghum, order as soon as possible.”

Hobart Brothers Seed took root in 1957

Big news broke in the Aug. 8, 1957, edition of the Lake City Graphic, which ran the story “Hobart Bros. Buy Heim Corn Company.”

“Ed and Glenn Hobart have announced that they have purchased the Heim Hybrid Seed Corn Company from George and Jerry Heim and have taken control of the business. The new owners, who farm south of Lake City, have been in the seed-corn growing business for 25 years.

-Messenger photo by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby
Hobart Bros.'s seed processing plant was located on the southeast edge of Lake City, across the road east from Landus Cooperative's Lake City location.

They state that they will follow the policy of the Heims in producing the same high-quality corn.

The business was established in 1937. The seed corn is all being grown on the Hobart land this year and will be processed under their supervision. They state that they plan to build their own processing plant next year.”

Jon Eichhorn, who graduated from high school in Lake City in 1993, grew up in the Hobart Brothers Seed Company business, which his family ran for the next 50 years.

“My grandfather Edwin and my great-uncle Glenn ‘Duke’ Hobart acquired the business from the Heims,” Eichhorn said.

His mother, Carol, was the oldest of two girls of Edwin and Irene Hobart and grew up in Lake City. She met Eichhorn’s father, Phil, when they both attended Iowa State. After the couple married, Phil served in the Air Force for a few years. In the early 1970s, Phil and Carol Eichhorn moved to Lake City, and Phil became involved with Ed and Glenn in the seed business.”

While Ed Hobart passed away in January 1974, Eichhorn and Glenn Hobart continued the seed business.

“By the early 1990s, Hobart Brothers Seed invested into expanding and improving operations, including a new warehouse, new seed storage bins, and new seed conditioning, treating and packaging equipment,” Jon Eichhorn said.

Eichhorn recalled how his father wrote his own Hobart Brothers Seed advertisements, which were broadcast on local radio stations. They tended to reflect Eichhorn’s unique wit and sense of humor. “His commercials were a little ‘corny,'” Eichhorn said.

For Eichhorn, summertime meant working with local kids who helped detassel Hobart Brothers corn.

“It got pretty hot in those fields around the middle of the day, after wearing clothes soaked from the morning dew and mud stuck to your shoes,” Eichhorn recalled. “Dad always had a $20 drawing in the afternoon just to get workers to come back after lunch.”

Fall harvest was Eichhorn’s favorite season. “I remember being in the top of the corn cribs, nice and warm when it was cool outside, and smelling that seed corn getting dried by the warm propane heat. That’s still one of my favorite smells. It’s amazing how smells, much like music, can take you right back into a moment of time.”

Eichhorn loved shelling corn when Buster McMeekin of Lake City had his Minneapolis Moline corn sheller and Farmall/International tractor.

“It was a blast going out and chiseling corn stalks and smelling that soil being overturned, listening to radio stations like KKRL 93.7 FM out of Carroll. I also remember sitting in the truck or tractor with Dad in the evenings and watching Jack Dowling of Lake City harvest our soybeans with his John Deere 6600 combine with a six-row soybean head.”

The 1990s brought big changes

While Hobart Brothers Seed survived the farm crisis years of the 1980s (which marked the end of other Lake City ag businesses like Snyder Implement), big changes would soon transform the future of independent, family-owned seed companies. Family-owned seed companies had a tough time trying to stay afloat during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Eichhorn noted.

“When the small seed companies have to purchase parent seed from larger companies, a lot of royalties have to be paid, since the large companies had a lot invested in research, trials, etc. The better the seed, the more you have to pay in royalties, because these seed companies were also using the same genetics, so you were their competition,” Eichhorn said. “Also, small seed companies were put into tiers as to what they could purchase, based on their size or what they could pay in royalties. As a result, many of the small seed companies were purchased or joined their business with the larger seed companies.”

As he approached retirement age, Phil Eichhorn decided to sell Hobart Brothers Seed around 2007 to Jason and Norm Phillips from Lake View. When the Phillips family bought the company, they joined with AgVenture Seeds.

By the mid-2010s, the former Hobart Brothers seed plant and acreage were sold to Steve and Nick Gorden of Lake City.

While the seed business is gone, the business planted a lifelong love of agriculture in the hearts of Eichhorn and his older brother, Chris. “We have a lot of great memories of growing up in the family seed business,” Eichhorn said.