“Sascha Boden, who was a German exchange student at our farm 15 years ago, returned to help during our last week of harvest,” said Bahls, whose family’s Center Township farm east of Rockwell City was homesteaded 150 years ago by his great-great-grandfather Carl Bahls, a German immigrant.

The Bahls family’s farm received a Heritage Award in 2024. (This award recognizes farm families who have owned at least 40 acres of Iowa farmland for 150 years or more.) “As Sascha said after we combined the last rows, ‘This operation started with an immigrant from Germany, and it ended with the help of a German,'” Bahls said.

The Bahls family first connected with Boden, 37, in 2009. At the time, Bahls’ wife, Deb, was in charge of the foreign exchange students at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge. Boden, who was in his early 20s back then, was interested in learning about American agriculture and gaining hands-on experience on a farm.

“We’d always wanted to learn more about Germany, so it was a good fit,” said Bahls, whose ancestors came from the Jargenow area of northern Germany.

Boden’s family was from Rostock in northern Germany near the Baltic Sea, about an hour and a half west of Poland.

“This part of Germany is about 20 to 25 minutes east of where the Bahls’ ancestors came from,” Boden said.

Tracing the farm’s German heritage

Iowa was the land of opportunity when Bahls’ ancestors came to Calhoun County. In 1874, several land seekers (including Carl Bahls’ friends Fred Ramthun, Fred Berner and Frank Wendt) left Lindenwood, Illinois, (west of Chicago) to locate new homes on the western frontier for their families.

They arrived in Fort Dodge, a prime spot for land seekers and land agents. The trio met up with a land agent, who brought them to Calhoun County in a horse-drawn buggy.

Each man bought land for $5 an acre.

“After their purchase, they hurried home to Lindenwood with the good news,” noted the book, “Immanuel Lutheran Church, Rockwell City, Iowa, Celebrating 125 Years 1878-2003.” “With them they took a map of Center Township, from which four other fathers at Lindenwood selected a parcel of land. We are astonished at the faith of these men who selected land without sight of it. But they trusted their friends and took their word that the land was good.”

Carl Bahls was among those who purchased Calhoun County land on Aug. 13, 1874. Bahls, his family and six other families from the Lindenwood area traveled to Manson in mid-March 1875, arriving in the midst of a snowstorm. According to the Immanuel Lutheran book, those hardy pioneers “found shelter in a home, which was called a hotel, and bedded themselves in straw on the floor during the storm, a genuine blizzard that lasted for three days.”

After settling permanently in Calhoun County, the Bahls family and their friends established farms, along with Immanuel Lutheran Church east of Rockwell City. Through the years, generations of the Bahls family tended the land that Carl Bahls purchased in 1874.

While Bahls would have liked to have farmed full-time, there wasn’t enough land in his family’s farming operation to support another family when he started his career.

“I did the next best thing — I worked in agribusiness,” said Bahls, who spent 35 years of his career as an ag lender.

He began operating his family’s farm full-time about 15 years ago. Around that time, Boden lived with the Bahls family during the 2009-2010 school year while he attended Iowa Central in Fort Dodge.

“I took ag classes and started helping the Bahls family in August 2009,” Boden said. “It was terribly hot, and sweat was pouring off us as we worked on the farm.”

Bahls was impressed by the way young Boden didn’t hesitate to work, even in the scorching heat.

“He dove right into any job that needed to be done. I thought, ‘This guy is going to work out alright.'”

‘I love the land’

Boden had a lifelong interest in agriculture. “I wasn’t born and raised on a farm, but I was born interested in farming,” said Boden, who got his first toy tractor at age 3.

He studied agriculture in college.

“To be a farmer in Germany, you have to be a trainee for three to three and a half years,” said Boden, whose family installs wood-burning stoves for a living.

During this educational program, students are required to study all types of agriculture. That means learning about dairy farming, for example, even if the student never intends to work in the dairy industry.

The students also learn about crop production.

“In Germany we grow rapeseed, wheat, oats, barley, corn and hay/forage — everything but soybeans,” said Boden, who wanted to study abroad in America after completing his ag education in Germany. “I got lucky coming to Iowa.”

His international program required students to purchase a vehicle so they could have transportation in America. Boden bought a 1992 Dodge Ram pickup truck in Chicago, which he used while working on the Bahls’ farm. “I liked that truck so much I had it shipped back to Germany when I returned home,” he said.

Learning English was a big plus of his international studies in Iowa, Boden added.

“The language — not the farming — was the toughest thing. You have to use the language every day to really learn it. Also, the English I was taught in Germany was British English.”

During his time in Iowa, Boden learned to speak fluent English. His love for Midwestern agriculture also took root. Through the years, he has returned to Iowa a few times, in 2015 and again this past harvest season. “Everything is just so big here, I love the land, and everyone I’ve met in Iowa is so nice,” he said.

While the journey from Germany to Iowa requires a 15-hour flight, Boden appreciates the opportunity to reconnect with the Bahls family. Not only did he drive the tractor and grain cart during harvest 2024, but he hauled the family’s field cultivator, wagons, auger cart and stalk cutter to Sac City for Green Auction Company’s fall machinery auction on Nov. 15.

Bahls and his wife plan to travel to Germany in 2025 to visit Boden and his family. Technology helps Bahls and Boden stay in touch in the meantime, thanks to the WhatsApp instant messaging app.

“We hit the jackpot with Sascha,” Bahls said.