Searching For A Niche vLinda Wuebben With four successful years of college under his belt in exercise science, Alex Hohenthaner discovered after working a year in a hospital, it wasn’t what he wanted. “I found I didn’t want to be inside and when summer came I wanted to be outside,” Hohenthaner said. Raised as a city boy, Yankton native Hohenthaner came to find farm life appealing kind of sideways. Although his grandfather farms outside Yankton raising corn, soybeans and cattle, he never was very involved in the farm life. Occasionally he would help in the summertime with haying. The summer before Hohenthaner’s last year of college, he traveled on the west coast, working on farms as extra help for 20 hours a week. The farm operators would give him a place to stay and meals and he stayed on a farm in Oregon a month and then in Washington did the same thing. He decided he really like it. Still, Hohenthaner came home, finished his last year of college and graduated with a degree. He was hired to work in a hospital setting, trying to decide if he wanted to go on for a physical training degree but soon found out he didn’t like working inside. He applied for the first job on a farm he found, which was a small farm near Lennox where he 6vHISVOICEvNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 works now. “The first year was like an apprenticeship and I was kind of like a laborer but the owners showed me the ins and outs,” Hohenthaner said. The farm raised vegetables on about 30 acres and the owners offered a subscription service for fresh vegetables to customers during the summer season in the Sioux Falls area. The following growing season Hohenthaner decided he wanted to try Colorado and found a job on a vegetable farm posted on a farm work site. The job was more in-depth with several added responsibilities. Last November Hohenthaner, now 27-years-old, moved back to Yankton with the idea of trying to operate his own vegetable subscription service. He describes his business as CommunitySupported Agriculture (CSA). “I kind of had it in my mind, wanted to try to do a year on my own,” Hohenthaner said. “The farm I had worked on here before going to Colorado was downsizing and things just fell together.” Hohenthaner said he had a good relationship with his former employers and they offered to help him get started. They had a good infrastructure and invited him to rent the land from them so he could try it for a year. It sounded like a good deal to him and he was excited to set up his business.