Monday, Jan. 29, 2024, Mike Hedge, president and CEO of Birkey’s Farm Stores, was given an official sendoff at the company’s flagship store in Bloomington, Ill. My dad, Frank, and I made the 7-hour round trip drive to say thanks to a guy who gave so much to the farm equipment industry.

Hedge was part of the Birkey’s operation for 32 years, including the last 11 as CEO.

After graduating in accounting from the Univ. of Illinois, he took the CPA exam and ended up working for Arthur Anderson and then in the hotel business. “My dad, Gary (who became an owner in 1967 and was president from 1979-99), told me no equipment dealer in the industry needed a CPA back then,” Hedge told me at his retirement party. 

The first 38 years of Birkey's Farm Store apparently didn’t require a full-time financial officer. Times have indeed changed.

Mike-Hedge-Layout

Lessiter got a master’s-degree type of schooling from Mike Hedge while interviewing him for the CFO position feature article in the debut “Dealership Minds” edition in February 2011.

But his dad, Gary, eventually changed his mind and brought him into the business in 1992 as CFO when Birkey’s had grown from 4 to 7 stores. He joined his brother Jeff (now COO) to become the first full-time financial pro in the business.

Today, Birkey’s Farm Store is a 19-location, 500-employee dealer group supporting Case IH and Case Construction in Illinois, Missouri and Indiana. In 2023, it generated $425 million in sales. 

Birkey’s & Farm Equipment

Birkey’s was profiled in the 2nd edition of Farm Equipment produced in our ownership in 2004. I believe my first encounter with Hedge was at a Illinois dealer association meeting in the winter of 2005. In 2007, Birkey’s Farm Store was selected to the 3rd class of our annual Dealership of the Year in program history and we reconnected on that project. 

A few years later, we approached Birkey’s on my dad’s “big idea” – to enlist all the Lessiter Publications staff writers, photographers and videographers to invade a dealership to do a “deep dive” into how all the different cogs in a dealership machine work together.

As the staff editor who most enjoyed the challenge of the metrics and ratios, I volunteered to be paired up with the CFO, Hedge. It was an enjoyable education, and I personally benefited from his simple and clear teaching style. Not only did he know his stuff, but he knew how to teach it so it became "knowledge" for his pupil.