Chelsea farm family honored with ‘The Way We Live’ award at Iowa State Fair

DES MOINES -- As thousands of people descended upon the Iowa State Fairgrounds last Saturday to try various fried foods, take in the entertainment or just simply people watch, Bawnmore Farms of rural Chelsea -- owned and operated by Joe and Francine Behounek -- were recognized on the Anne and Bill Riley Stage with a special "The Way We Live" award honoring their longstanding commitment to Iowa agriculture.

The Bawnmore name actually comes from the Gaelic word for "White Pig," and the Behouneks, unsurprisingly, focus heavily on breeding purebred Yorkshire pigs with an emphasis on strong maternal lines and purebred Suffolk sheep with an emphasis on frame and structure. Their two children, Kate and Shane, and their four grandchildren are also heavily involved in the operation, and Bawnmore Farms was previously recognized with the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award back in 2023.

The fifth-generation farm is located just over the county line along the very north edge of Poweshiek County, but Joe is a South Tama County (STC) graduate and previously served on the school board for eight years as well.

"I always liked pigs, so I wanted to be in 4-H. I did that. I bought my first purebred sow. She raised me a litter of 10 pigs, and I wanted to keep going with that," he said.

After graduating from STC, he tried to avoid going to college, but his mother had other plans -- so Joe earned a degree from Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids and met Francine in the process. Teaching history could've been a backup plan if farming didn't work out, but he was eager to return and started exporting pigs all over the world even while he was still in college.

A trip to Ireland in the 1970s helped the family to coin the Bawnmore name, and even when the industry changed drastically toward a more mass-produced, corporate model of hog farming, Behounek adjusted. In 1998, pigs went to eight cents a pound, and they pulled back to 100 sows. Two years later, the number was down to 20, but they maintained the large white lines.

Today, they still run a small herd with an emphasis on sow productivity, number of pigs per sow, high birth weights and good weaning rates.

As he looks to the future, Behounek noted that many modern consumers are disappointed in the quality of pork available for mass consumption, and he sees an opportunity for higher quality, smaller quantity producers to succeed.

"I think there's a big potential for that kind of thing. I'm not saying I'm gonna do that or go there, but maybe for some of these grandkids down the road, it might be a good route," he said.

Right now, they don't take pigs to lockers themselves and end up selling a lot of them as feeder pigs at the Keosauqua Sale Barn, while they keep the best females for themselves.

Contact Robert Maharry at (641) 753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.