Raymond, Minn. -- When Jerome Taatjes graduated from high school, he didn't expect to come back home to the farm. And he never dreamed one day he'd be raising 15,000 hogs a year.

Instead, he went to work as an electrician in the Twin Cities. But in the mid-'70s, he had the chance to rent 240 acres from his father. So he and his wife Marcia settled into the farm place that had been in Jerome's family for more than 100 years. They obtained financing to buy his grandparents' land, and began farming Marcia's mother's land too -- a total of 550 acres of corn and soybeans.

Jerome had no experience raising hogs, but he made up his mind to give it a try. "I was bored one winter," he says, "so I actually bought 12 little pigs as gilts and went from there."

The Taatjes had no real livestock buildings on their farm site. With the land payments taking much of the money, it took time before they could afford farrowing facilities. Sometimes Marcia got tired of Jerome driving past other building sites and describing how they could be used for livestock.

By 1988, the Taatjes had a farrowing barn and 150 sows. In 1995, they built new farrowing facilities and expanded to 700 sows. They and their three employees house and feed about half the feeder hogs themselves; four neighbors finish the rest on other sites. Each year, the Taatjes plant half their land to corn and use it all for their hog operation. Still, that's just one-quarter of the corn they feed each year.