The Tannery Dumped Scrap Leather at Her Barn for 9 Years — She Turned It Into a $500000 Belt Company

For nine years the tannery trucks backed up the lane to Rosalind Halvorsen's barn every Thursday and tipped out another load of scrap leather. Her husband had agreed to it. After he died, the loads kept coming and the payments stopped. By 1988 the mound was longer than the barn and higher than her head, she had $312 in a coffee can, and the plant manager stood in her lane and told her she ought to be paying them for the fertilizer. But the night before, Rosalind had pulled one long strip from that pile, hung a bucket of sand from it, and watched it hold. What she noticed about those strips would take her from a kitchen knife on a workbench to a barn full of women, a buyer who hung his whole weight on her belts, a hidden problem buried in the pile, and a county hearing where a truck driver stood up with a stack of carbon copies. Have you ever picked up something others called junk and known it was worth more? #farmstory #widow #leather #belts #smallbusiness #wisconsin #ruralamerica #farmlife #underdog #1980s #countrylife farmer story, farm widow, tannery scrap leather, leather belts, belt company, small business story, rural Wisconsin, 1980s farm, dairy farm, underdog story, narrated story, farm life story, vegetable tanned leather, chrome tanned leather, county hearing, company dumped waste, waste to business, handmade belts, women in business, farm crisis, quiet determination, family farm, inspiring story, self made, barn workshop, leather craft, rural business