Melissa is the program director for the Minnesota Food Association. Grant, the youngest, farms in partnership with his mother and father. Ault repeats the question, tilting back in his chair and combing through a thick mane of hair with his hands. That's a good question. He gazes into space as if seeking divine intervention, now scratches his head for physical stimulation perhaps of his brain and sighs.
Truth be told, the answer is more complicated than that.
While he has been summer farrowing his sows since 1961, Ault has sought to reinvent himself as a farmer several times. In 1974, he had a hog confinement building constructed on his farm. It had an eight-foot deep manure pit, slatted floor and was totally confined. When the 1980s arrived, he became interested in the animal welfare movement and the second thoughts about hog confinement started to grow. He and his wife, Becky, visited Russia in 1993, but it was not until a trip to Sweden in 1994, that Ault was to undergo another agriculture transformation.