Submitted Photo Jackie Feller has been carrying on her family’s over 100-year tradition of farming and ranching.

KARLSRUHE — Before her parents, Joe and Eva Feller, passed away, Jackie Feller promised her dad she would carry on the family’s tradition.

“I said, ‘I will do everything you taught me,'” said Jackie Feller, who still tears up when she remembers her parents.

Her father grew small grains and also raised dairy and beef cattle and had continued the operation with Jackie after Eva Feller passed away in 2013. Jackie then carried on the ranching operation five miles east of Karlsruhe alone after her father passed away in 2017. The family rents out the cropland.

She said she has been doing her best to keep the promise she made to her dad, with some help from good friends and her nephew when she recently had knee replacement surgery.

She said the land has been in the family for over a century.

It is sometimes a challenge to run the ranching operation on her own, especially on days like this past winter when the temperatures were well below zero and it was hard to get equipment started because they froze up. Feller admitted that she was scolded by her doctor for trying to do too much too soon after the surgery. She could have waited for her nephew, Josh, to help her, but she wanted to do it on her own.

“I’m stubborn like my dad,” she said.

She misses her dad a lot and remembers the way he used to come out on the four-wheeler to check on her when she was working. Now he isn’t there to do that and that can be really tough.

But she said her friends and her family also have been a big help, both before and after her dad passed away. Joe Feller was also doing his best to take care of his daughter before his death and had taken steps to make it easier for her to run the operation alone, such as selling off the milk cows and buying new equipment.

She enjoys seeing the younger generation start to fall in love with the land and the animals the way she did as a child. Her great-nephew, as a toddler, enjoys coming to the ranch with his dad and watching the cattle, which he calls his “moos.”

Feller has always loved animals herself and at one time had considered becoming a veterinarian. She said she used to bring home all the stray cats and dogs when she worked at the Souris Valley Animal Shelter back in the 1990s. She still has two pet Shih Tzus to keep her company.

“I want to continue the family ranch,” she said. “I’m proud of it … and what I’ve accomplished.”

Feller also has been active in the community. She does some part-time bartending for one of her good friends.

In addition to ranching full time, she is a volunteer firefighter and a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and is on hand when someone else needs her. While she was talking on the phone with The Minot Daily News, her pager went off for an emergency and she had to cut the interview short and rush off to respond to the scene.