It has all the markings of a working farm — 70 milk cows, crop fields, tractors, hay baler, combine.

But there is so much more on the Martin and Loretta Jaus farm northwest of Gibbon. Marshes are humming with the spring nesting activity of wood ducks, teal and mallards, while toads make loud mating croaks.

In the prairie-plant pastures and stands of trees, there’s a constant flitting of bobolinks, bluebirds, swallows, yellowthroat warblers and mourning doves.

“When we first moved back here (in 1980), we had maybe a dozen species of birds,” Loretta said. “Now we have about 200 species that either migrate through or live here.”

The Jauses organic dairy farm is a lush haven for wildlife amid a sea of row cropped corn and soybean fields.

For Martin, whose great grandfather homesteaded the farm in 1877, having it look largely like farms would have a century ago is rewarding. But he feels a sense of loss for what has been changed and can’t be replaced.

“I heard the stories of how it used to be around here and wish it was more like that. The prairies had maybe 10,000 (plant) species. Now we restore prairies with 10 or 20 species,” Martin said. “There was a big lake over there. My dad used to catch sunfish on a little lake over there. There’s no water (bodies) any more.”

Going organic
After college Loretta, with a wildlife biology degree, and Martin, with a wildlife management degree, went to work at a wildlife research center near Chicago. In 1980 they returned to the family farm in Sibley County to work with Martin’s father and take over the operation.

“We came back in the middle of the ag crisis, so our timing wasn’t the best,” Loretta said.

They had no specific intent of becoming an organic operation, but the farm was already being run with low chemical use after Martin’s father had seen increased abortions in his herd and believed it was linked to pesticide use.

“With our training in biology and knowing how natural systems work, we were philosophically leaning that way anyway,” Loretta said.

“One day someone said to us, ‘Do you know you’re farming organic?’ We really didn’t realize it,” she said.

The Jauses got the farm officially certified organic in the early 1990s. “It was close already, so it wasn’t hard to do,” Martin said.

To qualify, farmland can’t have had any chemicals used in at least three years, the livestock can’t be given antibiotics or hormones, and their feed must be organic.

Organic market
They market their milk through the Organic Valley Co-op, a farmer-owned cooperative started by a few farmers in Wisconsin but now with 1,300 members across the nation. The Jauses send their milk to the Twin Cities for processing and sale under the Organic Valley brand.