With respect and honor we remember our grandparents and our parents for caring and daring to give us a heritage we can carry on and teach our children.  Respect is a value that cannot be taught or expected, but earned, and we thank our forefathers for this virtue.

Everyone has a heritage.  Mine isn’t unlike many other people in agriculture.

My Great Grandfather John Bovendam came to the United States at 2 years old with my Great-great Grandfather Jan and Great-great Grandmother Hendrika from Staphorst, Netherlands in 1869, and began farming in Michigan.  After marrying, he moved his family to Washington state, and proceeded to try and make a better life for his family by taking opportunities that moved them back to Michigan and back to Washington again in 1908.  My Grandfather Henry was born amidst all this migration that year.  He was the 11^th child in a family of 12.  He helped on the home farm, as well as helping other neighbors on their farms.  He attended a small country school, then graduated from high school in 1926.  In 1934-35, he attended college in Seattle, and also Michigan, and entered the seminary in Michigan in 1939, preaching his first sermon back home in Washington in 1940.  After finishing seminary in 1942, he began preaching back in Michigan.  He married my Grandmother Ada in 1943, and my mom was born in 1944.

My Great-great Grandfather Ude Symens came to the United States from Emden, Germany, to Illinois, in 1869.  My Great Grandfather Harm came to Amherst, SD, in a blizzard on February 14, 1910.  My Grandfather Wilbert was 3 years old at that time.  By 1918 they had built a fully functional farm on a quarter of prime farmland, complete with running water and electric windmill power.  In 1936, the family was featured in Cappers Farmer Magazine in an article titled, “Uncommon Effort Won Over Drought.”  After buying and farming his own land and marrying my Grandmother Inga in 1933, they moved back and took over the Home Farm in 1942.  Dad was born in 1943.

Along with winning numerous soil conservation awards, running seed trials in corn, and feeding as many as 500 head of calves a year, Grandpa made strides in beef improvement.  In 1951, against the advice of many “experts” of the time,  he began crossing Shorthorn with Black Angus, and crossed those females with  Hereford bulls, eventually switching out the Black for Red Angus.  These cows formed some of the basis for what was to come.

My dad, Paul, after marrying my mom, Faye, in 1964,  took over the Home Farm with his brothers in 1966, and formed Symens Brothers.  After seeing the Limousin breed, they decided it looked like the right animal to finish and sell the most efficient retail product possible. Dad built a feedlot in the early 70’s, and soon found that buying back bull customers’ calves was a good way to predict the performance of those feeder cattle.  Dad and his brothers sold meat both by the pound off the farm to local customers, as well as by the refrigerated truck load to the west coast. I was 3 years old when Symens Brothers Limousin held their inaugural bull sale in 1981.

  In 1990, the brothers formed LimiGene to better help their customers utilize Limousin genetics and integrated their marketing skills to promote the calves in the marketplace.  This involvement in every enterprise, from the semen tank to the meat cooler, provided both learning opportunities and the kind of predictability it takes to provide the best product possible to cattlemen across the country. 

In researching the past to put this heritage into words, I came across the opening paragraph, that my dad and his brothers and sisters wrote, that better explains what Heritage Genetics is about than I could ever dream to come up with.