BOZEMAN - Farming isn't always a sure bet, but for the Kraft family in Bozeman, it's been a winning hand for five generations.
From horse hay to alfalfa, they've weathered droughts, record harvests, and everything in between — doing what they love and keeping a family tradition alive.
“We’re just professional gamblers!” Ty Kraft said, “We’re risking it all every year and just hoping it works out! And in reality, it always seems to work out, I mean a lot of things end up less than ideal, and then in some other areas they’re more than ideal, but we live to fight another day — and that’s the goal at the end of it…we get to keep doing what we love!”
It may be a gamble, but it’s a game that the Kraft family in Bozeman has been in for a long time… and like Ty said, they love it!
As a fifth-generation farm, Kraft Hay and Grain in Bozeman has seen just about anything in the agriculture market; however, the drought in 2021 even left them concerned about the future.
“You know, luckily for us, the price sort of offset, because it would have been such a loss, we wouldn’t have even — I don’t know if we would have even survived it if the prices didn’t do what it did.” Ty Kraft said.
Every season’s a gamble for this fifth‑generation Bozeman farm. See why they keep rolling the dice:
Kraft adds that a couple of years later, in 2023, the conditions dramatically changed and the market was soon flooded with hay.
“It was hard to get rid of hay!” Kraft said. “Then we had a similar year in 2024, everyone was carrying over hay. And this year it’s sort of nice. It’s sort of balanced out and everything’s — I don’t know if there’s a normal — but it’s more normal for supply and demand.”
