After 15 years of traveling, Sue Bellman had the urge to come home.  So she traded in her suitcase for a pair of work boots and a clipboard, and headed back to the farm in the town of Richmond where she was born and raised.

  A clipboard? 

  That's right.  When Bellman heads out to the fields these days, she tends to make notes.  A lot of notes.

  That's what researchers do.  The difference between Bellman and some other people in her profession is that she usually stays home to do her work, walking the land where her father once raised beef cattle and where her grandfather once pastured and milked a herd of dairy cows.

  Now this mother of two has found yet another way for the farm to help support the members of the Bellman family.  She's turned about 10 acres of her 330-acre farm into a testing area for fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and insecticides on behalf of agricultural chemical companies from all over the United States.

  Each year, her Great Lakes Agricultural Research Service conducts approximately 50 test projects, and then reports back to companies with the results.  She even conducts tests at other sites.  This year, it's an asparagus plot in Burlington and a cherry trial up in Door County.

  Obviously, Bellman's days of traveling aren't over completely, but she's glad she came home to the family farm 13 years ago and started her new business.

  "I like being back on the home farm," she said.  "I like being my own boss.  I like running a small business and having a few employees, setting my own hours, and not traveling too much. 

  She also likes the fact that she can spend time with her children-Kristina and Michael-now that they're getting involved with sports in the Whitewater School system, as well as in 4-H projects.  Kristina favors basketball and softball; Michael is into soccer, and he's getting excited about showing hogs at the Walworth County Fair for the first time.

  Bellman attended UW-Madison,

where she earned a degree in agronomy, before moving on to Colorado State University to earn a master's in weed science.  Then, for the next 15 years, she lived in Ohio and worked for a chemical company to help develop herbicides and pesticides.

  Now, her company provides a rather unique service.  Great Lakes is on of only three private agricultural research companies in Wisconsin, and the only one located south of Milwaukee and Madison.  Each year, Bellman hooks up with some of the world's biggest chemical and seed producers, and they all count on her to help them gather the information they need to decide on which products they'll offer to farmers in the future.

  It isn't small potatoes, and it doesn't happen overnight, either.  Bellman says it can take up to 15 years and $70 million to get a new herbicide registered at the federal level and ready for sale to customers.

  Private companies do their own research, too, said Bellman, but they need help to the kind of area research that's best provided by local research companies.  Her tests are only one piece of what is often a very large puzzle.

  "If it's a product that applies to corn, experiments have to be conducted throughout the entire corn belt," she explained.

  Bellman's field work begins in the spring, of course.  She keeps three full-time people busy with planting and watering and conducting the experiments in the exact way the her clients specify.

  " You have to abide by all the rules," she explained.  "For a residue experiment, there could be 20 pages of instructions."

  Of course, the wild card is the weather, just like it is for any other farmer, and that's caused its share of headaches for Bellman and her three full-time employees.  Irrigation and sprinkler systems help guarantee against a lack of rain, but when the rains are a little too heavy, Bellman and her crew have been known to spend hours trying to save their little test plots by building barriers around them to keep out the unwanted water.

also been raided by birds and animals.  One year, said Tom Hartfield, the farm manager, they whitetails proved that they'd go to great lengths to feed on strawberry plants.

  "They dug under a foot of snow, and then a foot of straw, to get at them," he said.

  Bellman says that while her work may seem a little strange and even dull to some people, there have been times when the results of an experiment have been rather eye-opening.

  "Sometimes you get really excited," she said.  "Sometimes they (the products) fail."

  Last year, one of Bellman's test went from boom to bust with the turn of a shovel.

  "We had a new variety of potatoes, and they were beautiful, with beautiful vines and leaves, but when we dug the potatoes up they were the ugliest things you ever saw," she said.

  Bellman said that chemical companies also turn to colleges and universities to help them with their research, but her company offers them something that they can't get from a place like the University of Wisconsin's agriculture school. 

  That element if privacy, which is critical to companies as they spend large sums of money and operate in a competitive environment.  Bellman understands, because she has competition, too.  Fortunately, she's had all the business she can handle over the last three years.

  Besides her research business, Bellman raises beef cattle and cash crops.  She's assisted by her father, Ken, who sold his farm to his daughter when he decided to go into semi-retirement.

  Bellman says that while her children may decide to go in a different direction, there's the chance that the Bellman farm may be passed along to yet another generation someday.

  "I don't know if they'll want to run it, but it will be available to them if they do," she said.

Story reprinted with         permission from The Week, Sunday, July 11, 1999