Aaron and Sherri Bootsma’s lives are almost never dull, especially when it comes to their business.
The rural Orange City couple is the co-owners of Boer & Bootsma Disc Sharpening Inc., which is celebrating its 56th anniversary this year.
“The business has grown quite a bit, even in the last 10 years,” said Sherri. “It’s definitely grown, which is great. We’re pulling in new customers all the time.”
The business’s point is to help farmers who want to improve the cutting ability of their farm implements—such as discs, finishers, rippers, and Turbo—Tills—without the cost and time of replacing blades.
Farm equipment like discs is typically used to till the soil where crops will be planted and to chop up unwanted weeds or crop remnants, such as cornstalks.
Aaron said he can sharpen the farm implements’ blades and keep them working better and longer with on-site work, and no disassembly is required.
“I roll the blades out,” Aaron said. “You just start about a half inch back and taper it to a point, so you’re not removing any metal.
“You’re just reshaping the end of the blade. You’re stretching the metal out, making the blade an eighth or a sixteenth to a quarter inch bigger, depending on the blade’s size.
Boer & Bootsma sharpens more than 500 discs, finishers, and rippers annually using a roller to extend and lengthen the blades or grind them to improve their cutting ability.
‘Physically demanding’
Up-to-date, cutting-edge equipment allows the business to sharpen new wavy blades, traditional blades, and thick, hard blades without damage or cracking.
Aaron will travel 200-250 miles to farmers in the four-corner region of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which Boer & Bootsma covers.
He puts 25,000-30,000 miles on his vehicle on average a year.
“There aren’t too many people who sharpen discs,” Aaron said. “It’s quite a bit of work.”
“It’s a pretty physically demanding job,” Sherri said. “You also have to be able to fit underneath the equipment easily with your equipment. You work long hours and weekends for a big chunk of the year.”
Aaron described his work as “seasonal.” He usually is busy from the middle of February through the end of April and from the Fourth of July through Thanksgiving.
June allows Aaron a brief reprieve.
“I do a lot of calling and getting stuff lined up for the summer and the fall,” Aaron said.
Sherri is in charge of bookkeeping for the business.
“If there’s one thing that’s different about this business, most of our business comes from contacting the farmers rather than them contacting us,” Sherri said. “A lot of it is keeping records and going through those. Most people are on a two-year schedule.”
“If I just waited for them to call me, they’d all call me in April, and they’d all call me in September, October,” Aaron said. “Then I wouldn’t be able to get them all done, and then I would only work three months out of the year.”
Before Aaron and Sherri owned Boer & Bootsma, Fred and Gerry Boer started the business in 1967.
Fred handled the disc sharpening while Gerry dealt with the bookkeeping.
‘It kept growing.’
Boer & Bootsma can trace its roots back to when Fred, a farmer, saw and bought a disc sharpener at the Clay County Fair in Spencer.
“He thought that would be a good thing for the boys to start doing to make money for college,” Gerry said of her and Fred’s two oldest sons. “That was the reason it was purchased.
“When he bought it, he learned to run it so he could show them,” she said. “Then, after they were through college, he just did it as kind of a side job, and it kept growing.”
The growth of Fred’s disc-sharpening business over time made it a full-time job. He hired Aaron in 2005 to help him out.
Aaron co-owned the business with the Boers 2006-13 — Sherri became a co-owner in 2008, the year she and Aaron were married — and then he and Sherri took over full ownership.
Fred died on April 9, 2012, at the age of 85.
That same year, Sherri took over the bookkeeping for Boer & Bootsma from Gerry, who had handled that part of the business for 45 years.
Aaron and Fred bonded over disc sharpening as well as fishing and hunting.
“Aaron is a great-nephew of Fred’s,” Gerry said. “They were very good buddies — both working and after working.”
The business has only had the Boer & Bootsma name for nine years.
“The farmers were very comfortable with Fred,” Sherri said. “When I entered the business in 2008, it didn’t have a name. It was just professional disc rolling, and then we decided it needed a name.
“If it didn’t have ‘Boer’ in it — because everybody associated the business with Fred Boer — they would think it was somebody else,” she said. “They wanted to support Fred. That’s how it became Boer & Bootsma.”
‘Stay busy’
Aaron and Sherri’s business keeps them busy, as do their four children—Olivia; Eli; Ezra; Amos, and London. Sherri also coaches basketball and teaches in the Orange City area.
“Thankfully, we both are very terrible at sitting,” Sherri said of herself and Aaron. “We both really like to be involved and stay busy.”
December and January are the least busy months for Boer & Bootsma.
“It actually works out really well because in the winter, when he has his downtime, that’s usually when we’re working on teaching and basketball.”
Even though disc sharpening is physically demanding and requires a lot of travel, Aaron enjoys owning the business with Sherri.
“The hours can be flexible just because you can schedule yourself,” Aaron said. “I like being outside, and I’m outside all the time.
“I get to travel around the countryside and see what people are building,” he said. “You get to meet a lot of interesting people, too.”