Prussman-Hofmeister awarded as Colorado Centennial Farm

    It’s been six years since Terry Hofmeister moved back to Amherst to take over his uncle’s farm and continue the 100-year legacy that his family has built on their plot of prairie land.
    On Aug. 24, Hofmeister-Prussman Farm was recognized as a Centennial Farm and Ranch, along with 30 other farms that have seen more than a century of operation by a single family.
    “It means everything to me,” Hofmeister said. “That was the goal, to keep this place in the family.”
    In 1917, newlyweds William and Grace Prussman established a 160-acre farm seven miles northeast of Holyoke. They had known each other since their childhood in Missouri and were married in Denver during Grace’s first trip out to Colorado by rail.
    The couple raised livestock and a variety of crops, including wheat, corn, oats and millet. They also sold cream, milk and eggs in town.
    Their first son, Dale, was born in 1918. In 1919, the family moved their two-room house on rollers to its present location, three miles south and a mile east of Amherst. Horse- and mule-drawn tools were used early on, before the farm switched to steam and gas tractors.
    Dale started working on the farm after he returned from World War II. He took over operations after William’s death in 1984, and worked it until his own death in 2004, when a quarter of the land was inherited by his nephew, Terry Hofmeister. Hofmeister bought an additional quarter from his uncle’s estate in 2011, and moved onto the land in 2012.
    Today, Terry and his wife, Sherill, own and operate Prussman-Hofmeister Farm. Across their 320 acres of land, they grow wheat and millet, and raise some cattle.

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