Built by family

SPRING VALLEY — One of the uniting factors driving Dan Borntreger’s business decisions over the years has been the ability to labor alongside his family.

“Working with the family is a big thing to me that is so precious,” Dan said. “(I like) seeing the children grow into men (and) women … and having happy customers. … I do enjoy working with people.”

Dan and his wife, Ada, and their children operate several businesses based from their rural Spring Valley home and property. During the winter, the Borntregers, who are Amish, operate a seasonal butcher shop and make metal cattle panels. Last year, they also re-launched their business of building custom, small, moveable buildings.

“You name it, we build it,” Dan said. “We always like for (our customers) to feel that it was made for them. Something that they had a vision of what they wanted. And so, we like to take that and try to make them their building especially for them so that they feel a connection to it.”

In the summer, the family also works for their son, Ernest, who owns a concrete pouring business which does agricultural and rural jobs across southeast Minnesota and into Wisconsin.

The Borntregers became a licensed butcher shop in 2023. The family learned how to butcher meat from books, internet print outs and Ada’s father, John Borntrager, who had worked at a butcher shop for years.

“I’m sure our first steaks probably people laughed at,” Dan said. “Now, it just comes so natural. It’s like you know where the cuts are.”

Initially, the Borntregers were butchering year-round. To power their refrigerated, walk-in freezer and hanging room, they use two diesel truck reefers. To save energy, they have since switched to seasonally butchering during the colder months from early December to April.

“In the summertime, it just almost cost too much to keep the butcher shop going,” Dan said. “My son was doing concrete work, and it was just like we couldn’t keep up with everything.”

Beef, pigs, sheep, goats and alpacas are all processed by the Borntregers. The butchering is a whole-family affair. Two of the Borntregers’ sons, Steven and Marcus, work full time alongside Dan and do much of the butcher work like the grinding. Ada is also a big part of making everything happen. Dan does the cutting, and his daughter, Mary Edna, does the wrapping. The school-age children, Kathryn and Felty Wayne, also help.

“A lot of times, if we’re busy in the butcher shop, when they get home from school, they’ll come and scrape the steaks,” Dan said.

The children also help with wrapping the meat and cleanup.

The Borntregers’ property did not have the butcher shop or carpentry and welding shop when they moved to the land seven years ago.

“This was just a steep old hill, so it took a while to get everything built,” Dan said.

Their butcher shop has capacity to hang around 30 beef animals. If they add more rails to the ceiling, they could increase their hanging capacity to 80.

Dan said they toured several butcher shops before building their space. One of the decisions, as a result, was to put in 14-foot ceilings for better airflow.

The custom, portable buildings business Dan has traces back to his teen years in his first job. There, as a carpenter, he helped repair and improve these types of small buildings. As a result, Dan said, he decided he wanted to build nice-looking buildings that lasted.

Dan launched this business initially in the early 2000s when he lived up north. At the time, he and his crew were building several of these structures a week as well as operating a lumber yard. However, he did not like how the business was affecting his family, so he moved to Milaca to milk goats for several years.

“I wanted to have something where our whole family was together more,” Dan said. “We got so busy with our buildings and the lumber yard … that it seemed like my employees were raising my children, and I was buried in paperwork.”

Now, several years after moving to Spring Valley, Dan has re-launched his custom-built buildings and is hoping to grow this business. Customer confidence in Amish-made items is something Dan said he wants to continue.

“We try to keep that trust there,” Dan said.

Each building style the Borntregers make can be personalized. For example, Dan said he has had customers come out with their hunting chairs and guns to get the correct window height on a permanent hunting blind.

“I always enjoyed making something unique that not everybody makes,” Dan said.

The Borntregers build a variety of buildings. Some of their most unique buildings are their wacky shacks, which are creatively-designed, cabin-like structures. Other styles include small red barns, storage sheds and more.

“Of everything that I’ve done, I always seem to go back to these little buildings,” Dan said. “I can’t get away from building little storage buildings it seems like. It’s almost in the blood.”