Looking back on their respective journeys, things rarely ever went according to plan for Adam and Hannah Guenther — though, from where they stand today, you’d think that they always had it all figured out.
Today, the couple’s lives are all about making plans and building connections. Hannah, a rural health educator, helps Nebraskans make plans for better diets and cancer prevention. Adam, who operates his family’s farm, sits on the other end of the food supply, planning for harvest each year and emerging as a local agriculture leader connecting producers with their communities.
But long before Hannah was working with Nebraskans in all 93 counties on eating better and living longer, Hannah was trying to figure out how to finish her degree at Nebraska while taking care of her newborn baby.
Years before Adam took over the family farm, was a member of the Cuming County Feeders board and providing fresh beef to local schools, he was a Husker student struggling to find his footing in college.
Back then, each of them leaned on the university to help them make a plan. By having their Husker communities meet them where they were at, they each got started down paths toward helping their communities flourish through food.
“The university has given me so much — some of my best friends and some of the best years of my life,” Hannah says. “I feel so deeply connected to it because of how formative those years were for me. The university has seen me through so many things, and it’s such a gift.”
And, along the way, Adam and Hannah both found another gift: each other.
We are Nebraska video featuring Huskers Adam and Hannah Guenther. Video by Aaron Nix | University Communication and Marketing
In his first year on campus, college wasn’t feeling right for Adam. He told his parents he wanted to come home to work on the farm — after all, they could teach him everything he needed to know to be a successful producer. His parents, though, had other thoughts about the value of a degree. Although his father never went to college, both he and his mother saw attending Nebraska as an opportunity for their son to learn more about himself and discover his own unique path, even if it did ultimately lead him back to the farm.
“I think college is an experience that allows you to figure out a little bit more about what kind of person you want to be,” says Adam. “You meet different people and get exposed to different thought processes. It helps you understand other points of view and see that you don’t necessarily have to change yours to adapt and get along with different people. I think my parents saw that.”
The next difference-maker in Adam’s Husker journey was his advisor, whom he sat down with to explore new degree options that felt more in line with his passions.
“My adviser really hit home with me. We talked through what I liked, what I didn’t like and what I wanted,” Adam says. “He told me that I might like construction management, and it was probably the best advice I got in college.”
Suddenly, Adam went from struggling in school to feeling more engaged than he’d ever felt in a classroom.
“It was like a switch flipped and everything changed. I got interested again and really felt like I learned how to study. From there, everything just took off.”
Hannah, similarly, developed a meaningful relationship with an advisor who guided her through two big shifts in her trajectory. The first came early — after a dream start to her college experience that wrapped Hannah in all the friends, opportunities and support she had envisioned for herself since she first stepped foot on campus, she started to feel like her initial major wasn’t right for her.
“It was so similar to Adam’s experience. I sat down with my advisor, Judy Hofeldt, and just explained what I loved, which was food. Anything that involved food, I was interested in it. She showed me the course list for the dietetics major, and I was like, ‘Wait, you can do this for a job?’”
One of those classes even asked her to map out her dream career. That assignment became a road map for her work as a rural health educator for Nebraska Extension.
“My dream job was to help people feel confident in making nutritious choices and building their strengths and skills in the kitchen. I literally used that assignment to apply for my job.”
Not long after switching her major, Hannah came to her advisor needing help with another change — Hannah was going to have a baby, and she needed to figure out a way to finish her degree while also being a new mom to her daughter, Charlotte.
“This was totally not on my bingo card for how college would go. Suddenly my world turned upside down,” smiles Hannah, “but the way everyone in my life rallied around me was amazing. My parents, eight-day-old Charlotte and I sat down with Judy, and we hammered out a plan for how I could finish school. Like with Adam’s parents, it was never an option for me to not get my degree — my parents knew I needed to finish school.”
At every stage, Hannah encountered Huskers ready to embrace her needs, even if that meant having an extra student in class.
“I emailed my professors
Adam Guenther returned to work on the family farm in 2015. Since then, he has become an involved member of the community while taking over the family business.
Buoyed by that support and her unwavering determination, her plan worked. Hannah graduated, moved back home to Oakland, and took a job as a classroom teacher. Adam, meanwhile, returned back to the family farm, Ulrich Farms Inc., in his West Point hometown after working for a number of years in Texas.
Not long after, Adam and Hannah began dating, fell in love, got married and, along with Charlotte, set out to begin a life together.
A year into their marriage, Adam’s father tragically passed away. Suddenly, Adam found himself harnessing the leadership skills, management know-how and every other bit of knowledge he accrued as a construction management major — and across his entire life — to take over the farm.
“I think it took a little bit of everything to get me to this point. I don’t know what I could have skipped that wouldn’t have adversely affected the outcome. In college, I’d already learned how to learn and how to overcome adversity. Honestly, I needed every bit of it, because once I had to take over, it felt like I went back to school again — it was my master’s and PhD all at once.”
Adam leaned heavily on his local community of producers for insights and guidance. He also continues to keep a close eye on the agricultural research and innovations happening at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, whose cutting-edge ideas often pique Adam’s interest.
“I’m really interested to see what comes out of the Klosterman Feedlot Innovation Center in Mead, because that kind of work helps us producers make more informed decisions. They’re able to evaluate options for people before we actually scale them into new practices.”
Once Hannah stepped into her role at Nebraska Extension as a statewide rural health educator, she was also using university resources to help Nebraskans make more informed choices — these, though, were about how to make more nutritious, science-backed choices about their diets. Her work was rooted in an issue Hannah saw right outside her doorstep: producers like her husband needed better food to eat to get them through their long workdays.
“I saw how our farmers were putting their own health on the back burner to feed everyone else. Ultimately, that’s why I really devoted a majority of my first six years in Nebraska Extension to helping rural constituents make healthier eating choices.”
The expertise she built eventually earned Hannah a call from the Buffett Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. They asked Hannah if she would step into a new role that infused her work with cancer prevention education.
Her new goal? Keep rural Nebraskans healthier and reduce the burden of cancer across the state.
“Our top priority is to create a cooking class that’s a community-based education program. It’s going to be called Prevention Plates, and it’s all about how to eat in a cancer-preventative way,” Hannah explains. “It’s really fun, because it feels like Adam and I are on both sides of the food world.”
Hannah Guenther prepares healthy lunches in her kitchen at home. Her work at the Buffet Cancer Center is focused on providing education about and access to nutrition that helps prevent cancer.
Adam has experienced his own career growth that’s brought his work — and the work of many local producers — directly into the minds of his community. As a board member for Cuming County Feeders, Adam works with his neighbors and fellow producers to tackle issues together, as well as educate the community about the importance of Nebraska’s agricultural economy.
By leveraging those leadership skills he built on campus, Adam and his board dreamt up new ideas for local outreach. Their “Beef in Schools” program is a particular favorite, which has local producers donate fresh beef to county-area schools for a monthly lunch called Cuming County Beef Day. Often, Adam and other producers come to school to cook for the kids themselves.
These fresh, locally-sourced lunches earn the praise of many Cuming County students each month, but one particular bit of feedback stands out from the rest:
“On one Cuming County Beef Day, Charlotte told us that her and her classmates had decided that ‘nothing beats a fresh grilled hamburger from the farm,’” Adam smiles. “And that’s the goal, really — we want everyone to connect our food with the people who provide it.”
