Our core values are built upon CHARACTER, HARD WORK and FAMILY.

This is how our values were built over the last century:

Taken a few years before I was born, this picture shows Dad reaching for the phone while sitting around a table with his buddies at the Green Giant Company where he worked for 35 years. It wasn’t unusual for him to put in 100 hours a week during the pea and sweet corn harvest.
	My Grandma Bertrang is at the far right. She worked many 8-to-10 hour days, plucking chickens by hand. Later on, she worked in the candling and egg breaking rooms. I can remember her working 12-hour shifts at a vegetable-canning factory too.
My dad’s father did custom farm work and road grading for the county with his horses. He worked with chickens along with my Grandma too. He also spent time working for a local canning company and did foundry work for a time.
	A French Canadian, my Great Grandpa Moison farmed 80 acres after coming to the U.S. Dad tells the story of getting into trouble with Grandma Moison, as a young boy for using the wrong paper in their outhouse. She always saved the soft wrapping paper from peach crates “for company” -- family was supposed to use the catalog.
Grandpa Kuntz was five years old when he arrived in the United States. He only attended five years of school because he was needed at home. In 1942, he and Grandma took over a bakery in northern Minnesota. They were so poor on their first day of business, that there was only $3.00 in the cash register to make change. They ran the bakery together until Grandpa retired at the age of 67. See the 11-year old girl? That’s my mom. As an adult, she worked for 20 years at a health clinic.
	Grandpa Kuntz’s ancestors left Germany for Russia with the promise of free land. Things weren’t as promised, so in time they left. Grandpa and his parents (left) left Russia with only a few possessions to begin their new life in America.
Grandma Kuntz’s German parents also came to the U.S. via Russia. I remember wanting to wear “bibs” to school when I was a teenager. Dad said, “Only poor people wear overhauls.” I think it was an uncomfortable reminder of how hard our families had to work to get ahead.
	Grandpa and Grandma Schela, my mom’s grandparents ran a little store for many years. The store was in the front, while they lived in the rear. They worked into their eighties -- saving for retirement. Their daughter, my Grandma Kuntz is standing to the left.