John Nickel grew up on a small, mixed family farm near Miami, Manitoba. As a young man he became familiar with many aspects of production agriculture as well as logging and gained an immersion in the

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cowboy culture. After traveling the breadth of Canada and working in several provinces, he served a 16-year employment in the purebred cattle industry and settled on a small farm of his own.

He moved with his wife, Raylene Frankhauser Nickel, to North Dakota in 1990. After taking over the management of the Frankhauser family farm near Kief, he began trying to implement management practices that would rejuvenate soil and develop livestock genetically adapted to thriving on forage diets not supplemented by grain. In recent years his long-held vision for using draft horses to accomplish some fieldwork and much of the labor of feeding hay to cattle in winter has come to fruition.

Raylene Frankhauser Nickel grew up on a small family farm near Kief, North Dakota. After earning a bachelor's degree with majors in English and psychology, she moved to Manitoba and worked on a purebred cattle ranch for five years. She became a free-lance agricultural journalist in 1984, writing articles for regional and national agricultural magazines in both Canada and the United States. Her writing has won national awards in the realms of agriculture and rural electric cooperatives. In 1990 she moved with her husband, John Nickel, back to North Dakota to the family farm that she helped to care for in her youth.