MANSFIELD, Ohio — Randy and Eileen Eisenhauer, of Eisenhauer Family Farm, were recognized as the Richland Soil and Water Conservation District Cooperator of the Year at the district’s annual celebration. The Eisenhauers both grew up in agricultural families and have passed along their passion and dedication for agriculture and soil and water conservation along to their daughters.
The Eisenhauer Family Farm started with bare ground in 2003. Today, it is a diversified operation with beef cow/calf and meat goat production, hay and grain production and honeybees. They have about 22 acres in pasture and another 25 in grain.
They rent an additional 44 acres for crops and hay and generally have 12-15 cows that they calve each year. They kid around 30-35 does annually for the 4-H and FFA project market and have 10 hives of honeybees and harvest and sell honey.
Practices
Conservation practices the Eisenhauers have incorporated throughout the years include waterways, windbreaks, riparian buffers-filter strips, wetland development, spring development and rotational grazing.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service Environmental Quality Incentives Program allowed them to make great strides in soil conservation and water quality protection as they built their farm.
The Eisenhauers installed a riparian buffer strip and two waterways, which help make it affordable to maintain these conservation practices, adopt other practices and continue to improve the soil and water quality on our farm. They compost manure and wind row it so it can be turned.
They have a forestry management plan and worked with a state forester to come up with it. They cut out grapevines and poison ivy, girded trees and did a select cut to remove trees to improve the livelihood of others. Since the devastation from the Emerald Ash Borer beetle, they have planted a variety of trees in their woods to replace the ones lost.
They released pheasants in 2019 and would like to release more pheasants in the future, along with some quail. They had a covey of quail until the ice storm in 2005, which froze them out and destroyed their habitat. They have installed wood duck boxes at the WHIP pond and along the creek in the woods. Bluebird houses are installed along the buffer strip and on fence posts of the pasture.
Family
The Eisenhauer family includes their daughters, Kaitlyn, married to Brandon Spangler, and Kristen Eisenhauer. All of the Eisenhauers attended Ohio State University and earned bachelor’s degrees in agriculture.
Randy is in his 29th year of teaching agriculture and being an FFA advisor. He is currently at Shelby High School.
Eileen works as the county office administrator for Crawford, Marion, Morrow and Richland county farm bureaus and has been with Farm Bureau since 2003. Eileen is active as a 4-H volunteer, is the senior fair board goat barn superintendent at the Richland County Fair and serves on the county livestock committee.
