Gibsonburg, Ohio
Kristin Welling I Choose Stine
Juggling Hats and Generating Sales and Yields with Stine®
GibsonburgOhio
A typical day in the life of Kristin Welling begins in the early hours of the morning and ends long after most have settled in for the night. As a working mom, she makes sure that her family is up and that her daughter, Kira, is ready for the babysitter before making the quick trek from her farm outside of Gibsonburg, Ohio, to The Andersons® — an ag retail dealership in Gibsonburg. Kristin works full-time as an ag advisor for The Andersons, where she works with growers to help them with their seed and input decisions before heading straight home to greet her family and hit the fields.
"My day-to-day job is working for The Andersons in ag retail. I'm an ag advisor, so I work with growers every day, and then when I come home, I farm. My husband and I farm about 350 acres together as a 50/50 partnership, and we grow corn, beans and wheat."
Kristin is a sixth-generation farmer and attributes her career path and passion for agriculture to growing up watching her dad and grandfather farm. On her own farm, she is in charge of the management decisions — from seed, fertilizer and chemical recommendations to what fields to plant, when to plant them and what to plant them to. Her husband, Zach, is in charge of keeping the equipment running.
"I'm a mechanic by trade, so that works pretty good on our farm. I work on everything around here, get everything fixed and ready for spring and fall, so we work really well together. … It's been really good for us," notes Zach.
Kristin and Zach have seen their farm averages increase every year since they began using Stine® seed. In fact, they're so confident in Stine that they've transitioned 100 percent of their soybean acres to Stine Enlist E3® soybeans. Kristin also sells Stine to her grower customers through The Andersons.
"I won't sell something that I won't put on my own farm. I plant Stine on my own farm. And we want to make sure that the grower is happy and the grower is making money because that's the whole reason for this business."
Kristin notes that both The Andersons and Stine are family-owned businesses. That combined with quality products and service are a few of many reasons that make their relationship with Stine solid and sustainable.
"We bring value to Stine because we promote the Stine name. We have a lot of family values in how we do our business just how Stine does, and I think that's a pretty nice correlation between the two."
While Kristin wears many hats at work and home, one thing is certain: Kristin finds a way to maintain a work-life balance while never losing focus on helping growers maximize ROI with Stine.
"Being a full-time employee in ag retail, being a mom, being a wife and being a farmer is a challenge. There's not a lot of free time, especially in the spring and fall to go out and hang out with friends, hang out with other family because, you know, my first priority is my family. I've got to make sure my family is taken care of, make sure my daughter is ready to go to the babysitter and then go to my full-time job, and that's my full focus there. And then I come home and then we farm at night and try to get our own crops off. So yes, it is a challenge, but I wouldn't want it any other way."
We admire Kristin's passion for agriculture and the amazing effort she puts in every day (and night) to help her family prosper and farms just like hers succeed.
