Dan Maier Masters Building Innovative Displays

​By Luann Dart
Note: This feature is in the Aug. TF 2019 issue

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As he farms the fields of northwestern North Dakota, Dan Maier studies the specifics. The distinct contours of a field. The exact stubble pattern of a corn row. The hue of the rusty abandoned equipment lining a tree row. The meandering tracks of a prairie road. Then he meticulously recreates those details in his farm displays.
Raised on a farm near Morristown, S.D., Dan graduated from high school in Mobridge, S.D., after his family left the farm. But the farm never left Dan.
"I couldn't let it go," he said. "Farming is all I ever wanted to do."
He now lives in Wildrose, N.D., with his wife, Janae, and newborn son, Joseph. And he climbs into the tractor cab every day to farm with his father-in-law, raising small grains and field peas on the plains of North Dakota amidst the oil wells of the Bakken Formation.
Dan was 19 years old when he pulled his childhood farm toys out of storage and decided to pursue the creation of his first display. With an overly ambitious idea, Dan never completely finished both of the 4x8 portions of that display.
"But it was a good learning process," he says.
Those lessons led him to seek the advice and ideas of others, and Dan quickly formed bonds with other modelers, including Adam Frerichs of Virginia, Neb., Chris Delva, from Fremont, Neb., and Chris Putman, a farmer on the prairies of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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