From Finland to farmland

COKATO — The Keskeys are proud of the generations of their family that preceded them, and feel the love of farming has been passed all the way from Finland. It is a love they hope to pass on to their descendants; Roger Keskey is already seeing it in his four grandsons.

“You have to like to farm to farm,” Roger said. “We have 6-year-olds who know more about farming than anybody else, … and with what we have today, there aren’t many kids who know that much.”

The Keskeys trace their lineage to the seven Bajari brothers who were born during the early 1800s in Tervola, Finland, a village located just below the Arctic Circle. Their father, John Sandberg, was an officer in the Swedish Cavalry who retired after Sweden lost control of Finland during the conflict with Russia. Because the family lived on the Bajari farm in Tervola, Sandberg’s sons received the farm’s last name, as was the custom of the time; they were also known by other last names including Punkka, Sandberg, Pajari or Johnson.

Life was hard in Finland at the time. Both of the Bajari brothers’ parents died while the boys were still young, and they had three other brothers who died in infancy. From the 1870s through the early 1890s, all seven of the brothers immigrated to the U.S., including Roger Keskey’s great-grandfather, John Erick Bajari, who went by Erick.

Erick arrived in the U.S. in Hancock, Michigan, in 1871. He and his wife, Sophie, lived in Michigan until 1876, when they moved to Minnesota and homesteaded their farm on Cokato Lake.

Erick’s son, Frank Bajari, farmed the family land next, but his two sons did not get along, so Frank handed it on to his oldest daughter, Mamie Bajari, who married Ernest Keskey from Wakefield, Michigan. They farmed the land on Cokato Lake, and Roger was raised there as the youngest of five.

The family farm went to Roger’s older brother, Melvin Keskey, who later retired it. So Roger bought nearby farmland in 1976 and 1979, plus 10 acres on Mud Lake in the 1980s, where he currently lives.

“We rented land and started farming,” Roger said. “I started organic (farming) in 2000; 2003 was the first year I was certified, and then, the boys got into it. … My first tractor was a steel-wheel, McCormick-Deering 15-30 tractor; my mother gave it to me.”

Roger mainly grew corn, soybeans and a little hay. When he started farming organically, the process was not popular, but Roger figured smaller acres with more time per acre would yield a better profit.

When Roger started organic farming, he picked weeds by hand — a practice he still does today with the help of local children.

“We have big families around here,” he said. “I’ve picked rocks with 35 kids. … They’ve picked more rocks in a day than most people could pick in a year.”

Roger and Janet Keskey raised their six children — three girls and three boys — on the property they bought in 1976, just over the hill from their current residence. One of Roger’s sons, Mark, started conventional farming around 2006, and after picking up more acres and joining Roger, he founded Crop Fertility Services with another organic farmer, Scott Niemela. He started by hauling manure from a local chicken farm.

“It’s been a busy life ever since, between farming and that (CFS),” Mark said. “There was nobody out there providing fertility to organic farmers; there was some, but not in this area.”

Another of Roger’s sons, Thomas, started farming in 2015 on eight acres — two small alfalfa fields, which were near the Keskey farm. The previous year, he had worked a job in the concrete business.

“I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to do with my life,” Thomas said. “I’d spent summers row-crop cultivating. … It’s all work at the end of the day, so I changed my approach about life a little bit.”

Thomas started with organic farming right away. In 2016, he started organic farming 80 acres for a man near Mayer as well, and there has been more land and client acquisition since.

“We get kind of spread out,” Thomas said. “There are other farmers a landlord can contact, … (but) with organic farming, we can provide added value to a landlord.”

When Thomas started farming, the Keskeys had begun growing a couple of acres of pinto beans, and alongside the corn and soybeans, they raised a rotation of spring wheat with an under-seeding of a fall cover crop. The pinto beans then gave way to black turtle beans and kidney beans.

“It’s a lot more labor-intensive, but we’re gluttons for punishment,” Thomas said.

The Bajari-Keskey farming legacy in Minnesota has seen generations of improvement. When Erick arrived, he farmed with oxen. Frank upgraded to horses, Ernest brought in tractors, Roger started using John Deere, and his sons introduced today’s high-tech tractors.

“Each one (generation) had their own thing,” Janet said. “It’s a progression of farming.”

Granted, part of that advancement came by accident, such as the time when Thomas blew out the engine on Mark’s 1980 John Deere. They had to get a 2001 model with tracks, which eventually introduced them to farming with GPS technology.

“(The tractor) bounced us into the 21st century,” Thomas said. “That in itself was a godsend because it opened a window into a world of what a crawler tractor can do in an organic environment, so our go-to machine is a track machine.”

The Keskeys have also grown from 8-row planters to 12-row planters, and this year, they plan to upgrade to 16-row. Additionally, 2025 was their first year operating as an LLC, with Mark and Thomas combining their farms; Roger and another of his sons, Scott, continue to farm with them.

With fewer small farms around, the Keskeys plan to carry on their farming legacy through continued growth. One of the ways they have grown is through CFS purchasing a lime-spreading business and increasing to five trucks and five spreaders. They will likely need another truck soon.

“You have to grow,” Mark said. “Otherwise, you shrink; it’s just the way it is.”

Mark likes the business side of farming, but there is also the simple pleasure of just driving the combine.

“Farming isn’t what it used to be,” he said. “Farming is changing; years ago, in this area, everybody had 80 acres, … but there isn’t much of that around anymore (with) the evolution of farming getting bigger.”

On his end, Thomas enjoys the independence of farming, solving his own problems and being his own boss.

“I like pushing the farm forward,” he said. “It’s kind of fun to see the old man (Roger) involved with it. … He gets excited about it.”

Indeed, Roger does get excited to see the Keskey farming legacy continue. With organic farming, he believes the family is closer to their ancestors’ ways of farming than today’s methods — even if the equipment is more advanced.

“A new tractor is like a new toy,” he said. “They’re still playing in the sandbox, but it’s much bigger.”