Larkin River valley, since 1958
Walt Oxbow sold it in 1961. Ray Pine sold it in 1994. Last spring his daughter Ellen sold it to the family who had farmed it on rent for eleven years. We have been at the closing table for 1,200+ farms and ranches in this valley (sample), and we know which of them flood in a wet April.
Every listing comes with the plat, the soil map, the tile maps if there are any, and the story of who farmed it. Ask and we will mail or email the full packet the same day.
Row crop, Hollis township
Walt Oxbow sold this farm to the Aldous family in 1971. Their grandchildren asked us to sell it again.
Send me the plat and soil map
Cattle ranch, Marrow Creek township
Cross-fenced into eleven paddocks. Dale Amundsen has walked every one of them twice this summer.
Send me the plat and soil map
Homestead, Cedar Ford township
Eight miles from Ferris Bend on gravel that the county grades every April.
Send me the plat and soil mapSold in this valley
Every dot is a farm or ranch we closed since 2020. A ringed dot is ground that had already been through our office once, sometimes twice. Pick one to see the acres, the price per acre and the year.
Hollis township, sold 2025
Sold by Walt Oxbow in 1961 and by Ray Pine in 1994. Same ground, same family name on the sign.
16 sales shown, 7 of them farms we had sold before. Sample data.
Ellen Oxbow-Pine, managing broker since 2015.
Walt Oxbow could sell a quarter section in four minutes from the auction block. Harold Pine could tell you what was under it to four feet. Neither of them could have run a land company alone, so they ran one together, and their children went one better and got married.
1958
Walt Oxbow, the county auctioneer, and Harold Pine, who mapped half the valley’s soils for the government, open an office in the old sale barn.
1966
June Oxbow marries Ray Pine. The two families have been one firm and one family ever since.
1979
June and Ray take over. June runs the auctions, Ray keeps Harold’s soil field books on the office shelf, where they still are.
2004
Ellen Oxbow-Pine gets her broker’s license at 24 and sells her first farm, a Quill Lake eighty, to a neighbor.
2025
The Hollis place sells for the third time, to the family that had rented it for eleven years.
Before we talk price, one of us walks the whole farm with you: the tile outlets, the wet corner by the road, the gate that sticks. Buyers ask about all of it, and we would rather hear it from you first.
Harold Pine’s 1950s field books, today’s soil survey and every sale we have closed in your township go into one opinion of value. Not the number a neighbor heard at the co-op.
Usually that is the family renting it, the farm across the road, or a buyer we sold to ten years ago who told us to call when this one came up. We keep that list by township.
Some farms bring more at a sealed-bid auction in the sale barn, some sell better quietly. We run both, we tell you which one we would pick for your ground, and we close at the Larkin County courthouse.
Sample letters, written for this concept.
“Ellen knew the north forty floods every third spring before we told her, because her grandfather wrote it down in 1963. The buyer never found anything we had not already put on the table.”
Marion Aldous
Sold 240 acres, Hollis township
“We had rented the Hollis place for eleven years and assumed it would go to an investor. Ellen called us first. We closed in March and planted it in May.”
Travis and Kim Lindqvist
Bought 240 acres, Hollis township
“Dale rode the ranch with me on a four-wheeler for a full day and priced the river frontage separately from the upland grass. That one decision was worth more than his commission.”
Russell Hauck
Sold 640 acres, Marrow Creek township
The auction ring is where Walt called his first farm sale and where Tom calls them now. The front room holds the maps, the coffee and Harold’s field books. Come in muddy, most people do.
Ellen Oxbow-Pine
Managing broker
Third generation. Row-crop farms, estates and anything with a family story attached.
Dale Amundsen
Ranch and pasture broker
Ran cows on Tamsin hill ground for 30 years before he sold his own place and came to us.
Maria Solberg
Broker and agronomist
Reads a yield map faster than most people read a menu. Handles cash rent and farm management.
Tom Pine
Auctioneer
Ellen’s cousin and Harold’s great-grandson. Calls every sale in the barn, the same ring Walt stood in.
Ellen or one of our brokers will call within two working days with an opinion of value built from your soils and the last sales in your township. Nothing goes on a list and nothing gets posted.