Members of the Geditz family were honored at the South Dakota State Fair by the S.D. Farm Bureau and S.D. DANR. Pictured are, left to right, Ray Geditz, Deloris Thares, Karen Geditz, Mary Kay Geditz and Gerald Geditz.
Ray Geditz of Ipswich was one of the recipients of the South Dakota Farm Bureau's 2024 Quasquicentennial Farm and Ranch Award recognized at the S.D. State Fair in Huron.
The South Dakota Farm Bureau (SDFB) and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) celebrated 44 farms and ranches that have been in the same family for 100 or more years recently at the S.D. State Fair.
SDFB President Scott VanderWal joined Governor Kristi Noem, Lt. Governor Larry Rhoden and Sec. of Agriculture and Natural Resources Hunter Roberts to recognize farms and ranches that have been in the same family for 100, 125 and 150 years.
Raymond Geditz is the great-grandson of the original 1889 homestead owner, Anna Sindelar, whose husband Wenzel Sindelar laid claim to the property in 1882. Wenzel and his family were among the first of the Bohemian Settlers to lay claim in Dakota Territory prior to the organization of Edmunds County in 1883 and before South Dakota became a state in 1889.
Many Bohemian settlers followed and settled in the same area of Cleveland Township. Wenzel had a dream of building a Catholic Church on his land but the dream went unfulfilled as he died from pneumonia and was laid to rest in St. John's Cemetery, established in 1889 upon Wenzel's death before the church could be built on that same land. To this day, that cemetery is maintained by the families of those interred there.
For 142 years the Sindelar Farm has been an active farm remaining in the same family. Raymond Geditz, the present land owner, inherited the Sindelar Farm upon the death of his uncle Tony Sindelar in 2011. Tony and his brother John Bernard farmed the land that their father John Sindelar inherited from his parents, Anna and Wenzel Sindelar, the original homesteaders.
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