At www.heintzmanfarms.com, Heintzman sells his flax under the name Dakota Flax Gold to customers who want to get the health benefits of consuming flax. Heintzman also has a 100,000-name customer database that includes about 300 hospitals and clinics to whom he regularly sells his products.

"They are asking or requesting or demanding a high quality crop, which I provide to them at a very good premium price," Heintzman said.

Rick Heintzman uses Cat equipment to produce his Dakota Flax Gold.

"The premiums I receive give me the opportunity to invest in clinical research on diabetes, cancer, heart disease and AIDS.To maximize my farming operation I use the best equipment in the world and that includes Caterpillar."

Challenger 55

Heintzman’s first piece of Caterpillar equipment was the Challenger 55, with 225 PTO horsepower. The tractor comes with a standard 18-inch track belt, but Heintzman special ordered the tractor with 32-inch wide tracks and a 120-inch axle.

Heintzman works with Larry Nielsen, Butler salesman in Aberdeen, SD."They were asking why I would want a wide track on a wide axle," Heintzman said. "The wide axle was designed for row crops and I do all solid seeding, so the rows didn’t bother me at all.

"With the wide axle and wide track, I can turn on the headlands with no disturbance. My 42-foot planter, the 84-foot sprayer and the grain cart follow the same track. It’s just a perfect match."

Heintzman added nose weights to the front of his Challenger 55 to balance his tractor.

"Once you put those nose weights on, you’ve really made a tractor out of it," Heintzman said. "This way it performs perfectly."

Lexion 485

In June, 1998, Heintzman bought a Lexion track 485 combine—the big one—with rear wheel assist, 365 horsepower gross engine power, an accelerated pre-separation threshing system, and a rotary separating system.

The Lexion line of combines represents Caterpillar’s most significant advancements in combine technology and performance in more than two decades, with tremendously advanced grain quality and high throughput capacity.

Heintzman equipped the 485 with a 42-foot Honey Bee draper header. The header was custom designed by Greg Honey, Frontier, Saskatchewan, and is used to straight cut wheat and sunflowers.

This 42-foot head also has a swathing option that mounts on a Ford bi-directional TV-140 for swathing flax. Heintzman mounts a 25-foot header on the combine with twin five-belt pickups. This enables the combine to harvest 84 feet of windrows at about 40 acres an hour.

"That’s tremendous capacity, huge capacity. That’s the level of efficiency I need here to harvest a food grade quality crop," Heintzman said. "It’s very important to me to get this crop off the quickest way I can. That’s what Caterpillar offers me. It’s a huge machine with tremendous capacity."

Able to move 4 to 4.1 mph, Heintzman covers a lot of acres fast.

He runs an 850 bushel grain cart with the Challenger 55 and unloads the 300 bushel hopper on-the-go.

Heintzman quickly learned to appreciate Caterpillar combine tracks with rear-wheel-assist when harvesting sunflowers last fall. The area received close to 7 inches of rain and conditions were very muddy.

"There were times when I was harvesting sunflowers with the tracks, and I was spinning," Heintzman said. "I kicked in my rear wheel assist and away I went. I just went through the water, right through the mud, and never left a head standing. I just combined it all."

Telescopic Handler 83

"If every farmer got to run one of these for a week, it would be very hard to let it go. It’s one of the most useful tools I’ve ever owned."

Heintzman purchased his Cat Tele-handler in January, 1999. The Tele-handler comes with a standard 41-foot boom, a lift capacity of 8,000 pounds, and 105 horsepower to handle many different jobs at the Heintzman operation. The Tele-handler comes with three attachments—a one and three-quarter yard bucket, pallet forks, and a triangular shaped 11-foot boom that attaches to the end of the standard boom.

Heintzman uses the bucket attachment for loading gravel, sand, rocks or for filling in holes.

The pallet forks are used for loading and unloading semi-trailers. He can drive right up to the trailer, run the boom in to pick up a one ton pallet, and use the boom to take the pallet right out and to the flax shipping and receiving area.

...tremendously advanced grain quality...

With the 11-foot boom extension, Heintzman has a true construction tool that can reach over 50 feet. In fact, he’s eased the Tele-handler out to crews putting up rafters and handling other construction projects.

"It works very well, this is one of the best machines," Heintzman said.

Bold Operation

Heintzman was in Washington, DC, eight years ago, to file a patent when he had the opportunity to see what people were eating.

"Sprinkles and sprouts and seeds and nuts," Heintzman said, "and I was sitting there and the back of my mind goes click. ‘If that’s what these guys want to eat, I’ve got eight semi-loads of gold seeds at home in my bins I’m going to start marketing.’"

Flax contains large amounts of fiber that can help prevent certain forms of cancer and aid in the prevention of coronary disease. The average American consumes about 8.75 grams of fiber daily, but they need between 25-30 grams a day. Heintzman knew he had a good, healthy product that consumers wanted, but as with any new food venture, getting the business going was a challenge.

The reason flax seed has not been used in the food industry is because it has an unstable oil once the seed is ground. Without grinding the seed, the digestive system cannot absorb the nutrition, so Heintzman decided to market a small electric grinding mill along with his products.

He conducted research to determine that 1/4 cup of Dakota Flax Gold contained 11.7 grams of fiber. One of his most ingenious marketing tactics was to offer two cholesterol kits along with his products. He offered incentives to his customers who took the tests before and after consuming Dakota Flax Gold who sent him the test results.

With his data, he began working with nationally recognized doctors and researchers to learn more about the medical benefits of flax consumption.

Heintzman Farms, Dakota Flax Gold just received the Seal of Approval from the Diabetes Resource Center, Inc.—"By consuming a proper balance of pure foods like Dakota Flax Gold, which naturally contain a rich source of essential fatty acids, high-quality protein, soluble and insoluble fiber, lignans, vitamins and minerals, that are necessary to life, better blood glucose control can be achieved, and some illnesses prevented leading to a healthier life. These vital nutrients are a necessary component to complete nutrition."

The business continues to grow and Heintzman Farms now has a half dozen part-time employees in South Dakota, nine full-time employees in Long Beach, CA, and 35 full-time employees in Brazil.

Heintzman is making a documentary educational movie on flax production and the value of flax to the human diet. He’s also setting up business on the East Coast and arranging sales to Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco, Greece, Spain and Turkey.

It takes a lot of energy, business savvy and the right equipment to develop a global food business, but that’s exactly what Heintzman is doing from his farm in north central South Dakota. He’s depending on Caterpillar to help him do it right.