Peter and Dora Danelenko came from the Ukraine to Pennsylvania in 1898 and spent a year working in a textile factory before moving to North Dakota to claim their McHenry County homestead in 1899.

Their great-granddaughter,Tania (Donelenko) Novak of rural Minot, still has the claim document they obtained for their homestead. A full-blooded Ukrainian by ancestry,  Novak said her family maintains Ukrainian food traditions that have been handed down and has relatives in Ukraine with whom they keep some contact.

The family had attended the Ukrainian Baptist Church in Kief, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The Danelenkos brought four children with them to North Dakota, where six additional children were born. Their son, Peter Donelenko and his wife, Maggie, eventually took over the farm and passed it on to their son, Gerald, and his wife, Jeanette. Jeanette died in 2021 and Gerald lives in Minot. The family name changed spelling early on, although the reason for the change has been lost over time.

Peter Danelenko

Ronnie and Tania Novak now farm the homestead property with their son, Jayd, who studied farm and ranch management at Bismarck State College.

“Whenever we were combining out there, I always try to think what it was like when my great-grandparents were there,” Tania Novak said. “And how hard it was compared to sitting in the combine with the air conditioning.”

Every generation has its own trials, but the pioneer homesteaders are to be admired, Ronnie Novak said. 

“It was just nothing but hard work and hope,” he said. 

Future generations also lived through challenges such as drought and war shortages of machinery and gas, but they were self sufficient with their livestock and gardens. Peter Donelenko’s weekly schedule included taking eggs and cream to Kief, filling the car with gas and bringing home favorite items such as saltine crackers and pickled herring.

Peter and Maggie Donelenko are shown with their son, Gerald.

Peter Donelenko was heavily into cattle. The Novaks have a picture of him in front of his barn with a huge flock of turkeys. He also had raised geese.

In about the 1970s, Gerald Donelenko broke up much of the pasture land and increased the farming operation. By the late 1970s, the farm was primarily a grain farm. The primary crops were wheat, flax, oats and rye.

Gerald Donelenko also became involved in soil conservation in the 1980s, trying different farming methods such as no-till. When the Novaks began farming the homestead in 1997, they increased the conservation measures. They also added soybeans and sunflowers to the crops grown.

“Now in the last few years, we’ve gone heavier into corn,” Ronnie Novak said. “There’s always still a certain amount of wheat but corn and soybeans have really crept in.”

The homestead has changed over the years in physical ways, too. Fires destroyed the original barn and house. The farmstead currently has two houses — one where Tania Novak grew up and the other where her grandparents had lived. The farmstead also still has a barn, a garage, a root cellar and half of a railroad boxcar used as a feed shed at one time.

Jeanette and Gerald Donelenko were the third generation on the family homestead.

The farmstead is marked by a sign designating it as a centennial farm, an honor recognized in 2006.

Ronnie Novak said homestead properties in the Kief area weren’t a squared-off 160 acres. Homesteaders were allowed to take whatever configuration of acreage they wanted. The Danelenko homestead is about a quarter mile wide and a mile long. 

Often the configurations reflected a desire to stay along a water source if they had cattle or to obtain the more prime farmland, he said.

The Novaks also farm south of Minot. Ronnie Novak is the second generation on the farm, although his family roots in the Minot area go back many years.

Until his recent death, Novak’s uncle, Richard Novak, lived on the original farm homesteaded by Gunder Kivley, Ronnie’s great-grandfather. The farm is located west of the new hospital under construction along 37th Avenue Southwest/Ward County 14.

Jayd Novak is shown with his friend Danika Malkowski, and Winstyn.

Novak’s grandparents, Frank and Bernice, also lived on the Minot farm. His parents, James and Pat, lived near her family home near Karlsruhe for a time until buying the farm south of Minot in 1956.

Ronnie Novak recalls how previous generations gambled in expanding their operations to help their children get into farming. He credits his own ability to continue the farming business to the guidance and support that has been the gift of one generation to the next. The gift continues as the Novaks instill the farming tradition in yet another generation.

Gerald Donelenko of Minot holds a photo of the centennial sign that stands on the family farm homesteaded by his grandfather.

Dora Danelenko holds her Ukrainian Easter bread.

Ronnie and Tania Novak, right, are shown with, from left, sons Layne and Jayd and son-in-law and daughter Ty and Taylor (Novak) Nygaard.