Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig will present the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award to the Lawless Family of Monroe County during an event to be held on Thursday, April 11 at 11:00 a.m. The presentation of the award will take place at the family’s farm, located at 5316 235th Trail, Melrose.

Lawless Farms Partnership, which originally began during the 1930s, is today a highly diversified multi-generational family farm. The operation includes John Sr. and Mary Kay Lawless, a retired nurse, and their son John and his wife Jo Beth Lawless, a nurse practitioner. John and Jo Beth’s two sons, Blake and his wife Ashley, a general manager for a direct-to-consumer beef business, and Dalton and his wife Ashley Schnor, a 4th grade teacher in the Chariton Schools, are also actively involved. John and Jo Beth’s daughter Brandi Reupke and her husband Tyler, an employee of Johnson Machine Works in Chariton, along with their children Addilyn and Maverick, live in Russell and own a catering company. The farm also employs John West and Ed Flattery, two full-time farm hands that have each been with the farm for over two decades.

“Hardworking, dedicated and entrepreneurial farm families like the Lawless Family keep rural Iowa strong and make our state a wonderful place to make a living and raise a family,” said Secretary Naig. “Because of their deep devotion to their community and their love and care for their land and livestock, I am pleased to present the Lawless Family with the Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award.”

The family grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa and they place a high priority on conservation. Over the past eight years, the Lawlesses have utilized wheat and oats as cover crops. They deploy innovative precision technology on their row crop acres to maximize inputs, utilize no-till, enroll some acres in CRP, build ponds, and also carefully spread their cattle manure for maximized nutrient optimization.

They also raise Shetland Sheepdogs for pets and maintain a herd of Black Angus cattle. Their calves are fed at the farm from weaning until they are ready to head off to a feedlot for finishing. The family works closely with their herd veterinarian and a local nutritionist to ensure a high standard of health and nutrition.

Diversification has been a key to their growth and success over the years, as they recently started offering custom services, including trucking, row crop farming, haying and spraying.

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