Speaking From Experience…Burwell Banker Lives the Ranching Life
It’s 4:30 a.m. Maurie Larsen and crew saddle their horses and guide them gingerly through the pasture in the dark, rounding up cattle for the Larsen’s annual late-May cattle drive.
The day begins hours before daybreak. The crew is well on their way when the sun rises and turns the horizon a dark blue, still heavy with spring’s hint of cold and threat of moisture.
More than 30 generous family, friends, and neighbors are there ready to help, looking forward to this day all year long. Throughout the day, the Larsen’s and company move over 200 cow/calf pairs from their ranch north of Burwell, Nebraska 21 miles west to their summer range near Taylor, Nebraska.
The crew includes riders on quarter horses and four-wheelers. They check for straggler calves and herd the cattle cross-country and eventually down Highway 183. About six hours in, they break for a picnic lunch out in the Sandhills’ native grasses while the cattle rest. It feels like a holiday and looks like a scene from a Western movie.
At one time, Maurie was unsure if cattle and ranching were in his future. He had just graduated high school when construction of the Calamus Dam and Reservoir swallowed the family ranch that held his past and anticipated future.
“It was a beautiful river ranch,” Maurie said, describing the house he grew up in that sat less than 100 feet from the edge of the Calamus River. It was the centerpiece of his Sandhills childhood, where he walked to country school, ran the riverbanks with his siblings, learned to put up hay, and rode horses. There, he learned the value of community and good neighbors. Neighbors were role models and social groups. They helped each other with chores, cattle drives, branding, and other situations.
When the reservoir’s construction forced his family to relocate, it broke up the ranching community and upended Maurie’s dream of joining the family’s cattle operation. The path he expected to walk slowed and took a slight detour, but it led him to new aspirations, personal and professional.
The unexpected changes to his family’s ranch and the 80s Farm Crisis led Maurie to take a “temporary” job that evolved into his 30-year career in finance and banking. Today, he is the Burwell Market President for Heartland Bank and a Relationship Manager, managing its loan portfolio in Burwell and the surrounding communities.
When agricultural customers, in particular, come through the door, Maurie possesses the in-depth knowledge one wants on the other side of the table. He is someone that has spent nearly every free minute building his ranch, which grew from his family’s relocation site.
“This whole time while working, my dream has been to put something back together like the ranch [my family] lost to the Calamus Reservoir.”
Maurie built a herd of Angus cattle, banking during the days while ranching during the nights and weekends. He fixes the fence, vaccinates calves, and cares for the cattle – just a few of the experiences that give him a deep understanding of what his customers regularly encounter. The Larsen ranch is subject to the same volatilities of weather, markets, and other factors that affect his customers’ bottom line.
Maybe just as important as understanding, Maurie also brings heart to his career. The young man who said goodbye to his home by the Calamus River was shaped by that experience and developed a passion for helping family businesses succeed.
“I try to help them reach their goals and also be able to pass what is theirs on to the next generations.”
Maurie earned agricultural degrees from the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture in Curtis and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His career began with the Farmers Home Administration. He then moved to a credit analyst role with an Omaha bank. After that, he settled in for a 27-year stretch as a loan officer for the family-owned Bank of Burwell. When the bank changed hands and eventually came under the ownership of a much larger company, Maurie realized his strengths better aligned with family-owned businesses.
In 2013, he helped open, at that time, Geneva State Bank’s loan production office near Burwell. In the spring of 2015, this location became a full-service bank with a brand new building and an ATM on the southeast edge of Burwell.
“I can’t say enough good things about Heartland Bank and the people I work with. It’s a community based bank that understands agriculture and rural America… [The Bank] cares about their people – both customers and employees.”
Maurie won’t say it’s easy to work fulltime and ranch, but he has found ways to manage, such as tailoring peak times on the ranch to match the busy winter and slower summer months at the bank. Both the ranch and his profession offer rewards he wouldn’t get from either alone.
“It’s rewarding to go home and work together, to see our family business grow and thrive. I like to do the work and the physical side of it and then come to work and try to help customers. Hopefully by being in similar situations, I can understand where they are coming from, and we can work together to provide solutions.
The ranch became a family business in 2003 when he married Lynette (his ranching partner who also has an agriculture background). They have three children - Jaci, Wyatt and Ericka – ages ten to seven. All were on horseback for the cattle drive and in the mix for the annual branding day, another time when the Larsen’s ranching neighbors come together.
“Its part of making sure the ranching way of life continues,” Maurie said, something that hits close to home for him.
He thinks of it each year on the cattle drive when they herd the cow/calf pairs around the lake and across the Calamus River, passing very near the family ranch that flooded out so long ago.
“It’s a little bit like going home.”
