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Vol. 5, No. 44 Copyright 2018 www.illinoisfarmertoday.com November 17, 2018

IN HOME DELIVERY BY NOVEMBER 17, 2018

DICAMBA decisionMidwest weed and chemical specialists react to the EPA’s new restrictions on dicamba use

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By Phyllis CoulterIllinois Farmer Today

T OPEKA, Ill. — When Jerry Tibbs woke up al-most six weeks after what

was supposed to be a routine heart surgery, he had no feet. The Mason County goat farmer started the new year of 2013 with the realization that for the rest of his life, he would have to adjust to having both of his legs ampu-tated below the knee.

Now, even on a cold November See page 6: Legs u

Beating theODDS

Illinois farmer offers message of hope after loss of his legs

IFT photo by Phyllis Coulter

Jerry Tibbs went for routine surgery and awoke with two legs amputated. He has made modifications to his farm operation in central Illinois so he can continue working, and he is an ambassador to others who have experienced amputation.

Stories of SURVIVORSFarmers who have survived fires, floods and financial stress share their stories and lessons they’ve learned

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November 17, 2018 / www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com Beating the Odds N 3

By Phyllis CoulterIllinois Farmer Today

Farmers are resilient. They have to be to endure weather disasters, physical challenges and fluctuat-

ing markets almost every season.

But sometimes those challenges reach crisis propor-tion — be it serious financial woes, a devastating fire, tornado damage,

a farm accident, poor health or even death. Over recent weeks, our reporting team has met survivors of these crises, who share their stories and some of their lessons learned.

Sometimes the challenge, like peel-ing an onion, brings fresh tears with every layer. So is the case for Jerry Mills, a southern Illinois orchard grower. In a single year, his wife died and a fire de-stroyed the centerpiece building of his orchard operation. Two years later, his son died in a plane crash.

This could have led him to retire; in-stead, he’s rebuilding with the help of his three surviving children who have a stake in his businesses’ future.

Some farmers are sharing their stories because they have benefited from the cautionary tales of others. Phil Borgic, who lost 10 buildings in a fire, includ-ing an office and sow housing on his pig farm, is one of those. A friend who had lost a building to a fire encouraged Bor-gic to make sure his insurance was up to date. Borgic updated his insurance in March, and the fire happened in May. Now, he too is rebuilding.

Other farmers have likely saved lives through efforts including the ”Telling the Story Project” where farmers, in their own words, explain what happened in a farm accident in hopes it will not hap-pen to others.

These incidents are happening every

day. For example, in the United States, during in a single two-week period start-ing June 18, 18 injuries or fatalities were reported in the Ag News Clipping service provided by the National Farm Medicine Center and National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety. A Clark County, Ill., teenager died in a grain bin incident on June 20; that same day, an Osage County, Mo., man

See page 7: Survivors u

Index

Jerry Tibbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Phil Borgic . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Donna Winburn . . . . . . . . . 14Kevin Rasmussen . . . . . . . 14Danny Kuenzel . . . . . . . . . 15Dwight Ellingson . . . . . . . . 16STORIES

SurvivorFrom farm crisis to flood, farmers learn from hard times

By Nat WilliamsIllinois Farmer Today

MARINE, Ill. — Jerry Mills has taken some punches in life. But in the wee hours of May 4, 2014, he was hit with a real body blow.

“It’s the hardest I’ve been knocked down in 88 years,” said Mills, who grows apples and peaches on his Madison County, Ill., farm, about 25 miles north-east of St. Louis.

He was awakened on that beautiful Sunday morning by a raging fire that consumed a large barn that was the farm’s center-piece. It took just two hours to destroy what had taken 40 years to build.

Because of an unfortunate series of events that resulted in increasingly high premiums, he had dropped his insurance pol-icy, and was left with a burned-out shell and future that was as hazy as the smoke rising above the farm.

His wife, Shirley, died that same year. Two years later his son, Larry, was killed in a plane crash.

But he is carrying on, aided by his three surviving adult chil-dren, who have a hand in the op-eration of the orchard.

“The interesting thing is the psychological aspect,” Mills said.

“I was 84 when it burned. I wasn’t sure if the kids really wanted to stick with it if I dropped out. I could have walked away from it and lived happily ever after. But the business can’t go on without my help.”

Mills mortgaged part of his farm and has arranged to replace the multi-function barn with a metal building that he hopes will bring his business back to where it was before the fire.

Mills planted trees in 1973 and began selling fruit four years lat-er.

“I always wanted to be a farm-er and wanted my kids to grow up on a farm,” Mills said. “It

started as a pick-your-own. I had apples I couldn’t sell, so I bought a cider press. Once you have a ci-der press, you have to have stor-age for the cider and storage for the apples you’re going to use.”

That meant building onto an existing barn. The structure eventually encompassed a re-tail shop, walk-in freezer, snack bar, processing line and bakery. As with many fruit producers in the region, Mills added an enter-tainment option, including wag-on rides and pumpkin carving.

Then the fire hit and he was left

with a bushel of trouble. A televi-sion report stated the entire or-chard was destroyed, though all the trees and some other struc-tures remained intact. The fami-ly has been battling false percep-tions ever since.

“I still have people who walk in and say, ‘I’m glad you’re going to be baking pies again.’ Well, we were baking pies a couple of months after it happened,” said Mills’s daughter, Sherry Chase.

The cider business has been negatively impacted, largely be-cause of the lack of storage and

equipment.One of the farm’s most pop-

ular products is its fresh-baked pie, sold on site and at farmers markets. The fire ruined about 100 5-gallon buckets of pie fill-ing that had been prepared by several workers and stored in the barn.

“Those girls were just sick,” Mills said. “They had worked hard on that.”

The building purchased to replace the barn has yet to be erected. The flooring is in place, and includes plumbing infra-structure for public restrooms, something the old building lacked. Mills hopes it’s up and running within a year.

Meanwhile, he stays busy on the farm, doing chores such as spraying and mowing.

“I don’t do much pruning any-more,” he said.

Mills expects the farm to be bigger and better than ever when the new building is com-pleted. He will continue to work here, along with Sherry and his surviving sons, Keith and Lowell.

“We want to keep it going as long as we can,” Sherry said.

There will be one big change: There will be an insurance poli-cy on the structure.

“I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid,” Mills said with a grin.

To file or not to file?The fire that destroyed the

main building on the Mills farm is a clear example of the value of insurance. Doug Smith, a Farm-ers Insurance agent in Marion, Ill., said that after an incident, farmers should call their agent to determine if it’s best to turn it in or pay it out of pocket.

“I would say don’t automat-ically turn it in unless it’s a ca-tastrophe, like a major fire,” Smith said. “If it’s something smaller, ask your agent if it’s cov-ered, and if so, how a claim is go-ing to affect the premium.”

IFT photo by Nat Williams

Sherry Chase and her father, Jerry Mills, discuss plans to erect a new building on the site of a large barn that burned down in 2014.

Farm family carries on after set of tragedies

6 N Beating the Odds www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com / November 17, 2018

uLegs: From page 1day such as this, you will like-ly see him wearing shorts. He doesn’t hide his artificial limbs, which bear the logo of his favorite tractor — Farmall.

He and his wife, Linda, live on a 16-acre goat and chick-en farm, and he enjoys col-lecting and restoring Farmall tractors.

“You can live without legs,” Linda said. Jerry nodded.

After he got over the shock, and learned how to get around and get things done, Jerry decided he would help others faced with an amputation or oth-er life-altering change. He confidently wears his Farmall red prostheses when he enters a hospital room as a volunteer to talk to someone who just had a limb amputated. He gives encouragement.

“I am proud of my legs,” Tibbs said.When children ask him what hap-

pened, he jokes, “I didn’t eat my vegeta-bles.”

The early daysWhile Jerry can comfortably tell his

story now, he still gets a little choked up when he remembers the exact moment he realized what had happened.

“I have no feet,” he shouted in shock when he first awoke from a medically in-duced coma. He said he was angry.

It was 3 a.m. on Jan. 3, 2013, when he awoke his wife, sleeping on a nearby cot.

“I was horrified,” he said. His family had had more time to ad-

just to the idea of the amputation. After the initial heart surgery in November, they knew his circulation was poor and saw his feet discolor. The doctors were considering amputation and 18 hours of complicated surgery for a rare heart con-dition to save his life.

“They had already grieved the whole thing,” Tibbs said.

Surgeons had to wait until his health was stable to do the amputations, on the last day of 2012. When he awoke three days later, he had missed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, and was faced with a new reality.

After the anger passed, he was happy be alive and started making plans. He and Linda talked about what would hap-pen to the farm where they have lived for more than a dozen years; they still weren’t sure what he would be able to do.

“The next step was to get therapy and get strong,” he said. He got his first arti-ficial legs in March or April. “That was so good.”

Jerry, now 66, has fewer goats than be-

fore the surgery, but says the farm is the right size for him and Linda. The goats bound towards him when he reaches the gate, and the chickens surround him, es-pecially if he has grain in his hands. Just a short four-wheeler ride away is his shed housing Farmalls, ranging in age from 1947 to 1957.

The Tibbs’ friends in the Tri County An-tique Tractors Association held a tractor pull benefit shortly after the surgery.

“That was a blessing,” he said. Linda remembers feeding the goats

when Jerry first got home and was sitting in a wheelchair. He was watching her and telling her how do things. She let him know that all the time he was in hospital, she had helped care for the animals. “Not one died,” she told him. Now they both laugh at the memory.

Early on, he had to get accustomed to how his legs worked. He recalls one time falling off a tractor and laying on the ground trying to figure out how to get up. Linda was at work, so he called her after he managed to get up.

As much as she enjoyed her job work-ing occupational therapy, they decided it would be best if she retired so she could be nearby. Throughout the process, her medical-related knowledge and under-standing of the recovery process helped.

“That’s probably the reason I am as good as I am. She cracks the whip,” he said with a smile.

Getting it doneAt home, he finds a way to do things. In

their living room, they shifted furniture for wheelchair use. Other adaptations have been made in the bathrooms and kitchen to give Jerry easy access to things he needs. An outside entrance includes a wheelchair ramp that friends had ready

when Jerry first came home. One of the things Jerry learned from

others is to have good homeowners insur-ance that includes coverage of replace-ment prosthetics if something would happen to them in a home disaster.

He has hand controls for his car and truck.

“I can drive tractors without hand con-trols,” he said.

He also has things organized for him to easily care for and feed his animals.

And, he keeps giving to others, some-times through participating in fundrais-ers, as a peer mentor and just by wearing those shorts year round as an advocate for amputees. He also started a Central Il-linois support group, Limbs Up Crew, for amputees, is active in the Amputee Coa-lition and goes to visit when “the hospital calls me.”

One of the happiest rooms in the Tibbs house is filled memorabilia of their pas-sion for Farmall tractors with models and photos. It also includes a little wooden sign that reflects their attitude toward life, “Do Your Best. Never Give Up.”

By Phyllis CoulterIllinois Farmer Today

Accommodations can be made to make farming easier for not only someone with injury or illness, but al-so for aging. The No. 1 growing need for modifications to keep farming to-day is aging, said Kelly Gagnon, Agr- Ability Unlimited marketing coordi-nator.

If a farmer wants to keep farming, age shouldn’t be the decisive factor when it’s time to hang up the trac-tor keys. Adaptations can be made to increase safety and comfort for the farmer, Gagnon said.

The first thing to do is call, she said. AgrAbility will do an assessment of a farmer’s needs and will work along-side the farmer to find the best solu-tions.

Aging can affect one’s hearing, eye-sight and mobility, sometimes caused by arthritis. There are ways someone can keep farming and do so safely, Gagnon said. Some of the common adjustments for aging may be to switch steering to hand controls, find easier ways to board farm equipment and provide adaptive seating for back issues, she said. Ramps and other worksite alterations are also possible, she said.

“More than 50 percent of our clients have an unseen injury or illness,” she said.

Often people don’t know that they need modifications unless they ask about what can be done to help them keep farming, she said.

“A smaller and smaller portion of the population has the expertise needed to farm today, on a small or large scale, and it’s important to provide ways to help keep them farming,” said Bob Aherin, University of Illinois professor and AgrAbility program director.

Along with access to adaptive tech-nologies to make farming easier, Aherin said, part of the group’s job is to be a reminder “there is hope.”

Help is available at agrabilityunlim-ited.org or by calling 833-810-7973. This is a new phone number, Gagnon noted.

Adaptations for injury and aging help farmers work

Gracefully give and receive help

Two pieces of advice Jerry and Linda Tibbs offer as survivors of a dramatic life change are to say

“yes” when someone offers to help and to help others in ways that only you can.

Jerry has benefited from Agr- Ability Unlimited services. The orga-nization helped him get hand controls for vehicles and make other adaptations so he can continue to farm. Neighbors, family and friends helped built a wheel-chair ramp, did chores when he was in hospital and moved furniture to accom-modate his wheelchair.

Prayers and food from friends and family also nourished them both.

Jerry established the Limbs Up Crew, a support group for amputees. He said ma-ny of the members are 55 or older with amputations caused by complications of diabetes and other illnesses, but they al-so have young people in the group.

The 15-20 member group meets regu-larly to talk about adapting a home and coping with challenges, and they had a cookout at the Tibbs’ farm in October.

The Limbs Up Crew Support Group meets at 6 p.m. the second Friday of ev-ery month at Bass Pro Shops, 1000 Bass Pro Dr., East Peoria, Ill. Find them on Facebook at “The Limbs Up Crew Sup-port Group.”

Photo courtesy of Jerry Tibbs

After he learned through physical therapy how to get around and get things done, Jerry decided he would help others faced with an amputa-tion or other life-altering change.

November 17, 2018 / www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com Beating the Odds N 7

ILFT7

uSurvivors: From page 3died in a tractor crash. Days lat-er, a man and a girl were killed in an Iowa tractor rollover.

Despite awareness and cau-tion, there isn’t always a pre-ventative measure to avoid a sudden illness. That’s where farm communities step in. While Dwight Ellingson, an Iowa crop farmer, spent two and a half weeks in a med-ically induced coma fighting an infection this fall, almost 50 peo-ple volunteered to ensure his soybeans were harvested.

Doctors also were uncertain if they could save the life of Jerry Tibbs, a Mason County, Ill., goat farmer, when a routine heart surgery got complicated. They were able to save his life, but not his legs.

Now, proudly sporting a trac-tor-themed design on his pros-thetic legs, he inspires others. Tibbs created a support group — ”The Limbs Up Crew” — for amputees.

Weather also often sends farmers into survival mode. Droughts, floods and torna-does can uproot some of the best farm operations. In Illi-nois in 2017, 59 tornadoes were reported, with one death and two injuries.

It’s water rather than wind that is the biggest challenge for Danny Kuenzel, who farms in the Missouri River bottom in east central Missouri.

“We have some high water events every year it seems,” Kuenzel said. “That’s just part of farming along any river sys-tem.”

The massive floods of 1993 and 1995 were far from the nor-mal river bottom experience. Kuenzel said the Great Flood of 1993, 25 years ago, was the most damaging flood he’s seen.

This year, the uncertainty of weather has been compound-ed by the uncertainty of export markets. Tight profit margins add stress to thousands of farmers. Survivors of the 1980s farm crisis and the pork indus-try lows of the late-1990s also offer hope for farmers who want to stay the course through the current market challenges.

12 N Beating the Odds www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com / November 17, 2018

By Phyllis CoulterIllinois Farmer Today

NOKOMIS, Ill. — It’s usu-ally bad news to be wo-ken at 4 a.m. Such was

definitely the case on May 25, when Phil Borgic was startled by an urgent knock at the door of his rural Nokomis home.

“It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad,” he said he heard as soon as he opened the door.

In the following minutes, Bor-gic, a southwestern Illinois pig farmer, saw his barns on fire.

The first responders were the Raymond volunteer fire depart-ment. They had been out to the farm as part of Borgic’s emer-gency planning routine over the past 12 years. Because of the visits, they knew the size and the layout of the buildings. They were soon joined by members of 15 other departments.

The raging fire attacked al-most 3 acres of buildings on the Montgomery County, Ill., farm.

“Don’t waste your time on the buildings burning. We couldn’t save them. Our goal was to get the fire trucks to the most criti-cal place,” Borgic said.

In all, 10 buildings including the office were lost.

Borgic Farms, owned by Phil and his wife Karen, also includes 210 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat. Borgic was in expansion mode at the time of the fire with new buildings under construc-tion. None of the new construc-tion was damaged.

“A concrete bunker saved it,” he said.

Immediately, people focused on getting the pigs to safety. They quickly moved 3,000 sows with the help of 30 semi-trucks. One nearby pork producer of-fered a truck, another a driver.

“A bunch of people working together made it happen,” he said. “We were able to get most of the girls out. That was a tre-mendous help and comfort.”

At least 200 people were on the farm, but Borgic and farm manager Josh Matli still thought of biosecurity.

Pig farmer shares lessons learned after fire

Early in the morning, two vet-erinarians, Sarah Probst Miller and Will Fombelle, showed up to pitch in. They did individual triage in areas where sows could be saved.

“By the end of the day there were four vets and three or four the next day,” Borgic said.

They had the advantage of working with 35 other family growers, some nearby that had room for pigs immediately.

The fire started in the main of-fice. There was no temperature control warning in that area as there is in all the other buildings that house animals, he said. The cause of fire was determined to be electrical, but investigators were unable to pinpoint if the cause was a battery charger or another device.

Both the Internet warning systems in the office and were destroyed quickly. Borgic is gathering information on oth-er options and backups for new warning and smoke detecting systems.

There were so many details to think about, including con-tacting the EPA about asbestos abatement, getting permits to remove the dead pigs and dis-posal of the burned structures.

“Forty semi loads of metal left the farm,” he said.

After the sows were safe, the next day he met with his 25 em-ployees. He told them he would understand if they couldn’t stay, but they would have jobs. They stayed with office staff working from an office building they al-ready had in nearby Raymond.

While Borgic’s inclination is to focus on rebuilding and sup-porting his family and employ-ees, he is still taking time to tell his story in hopes it may help others. He has spoken to local veterinarians and groups as far away as Des Moines.

“If I can help someone else, I’m willing to go there,” he said.

He knows the message is im-portant. Three large sow farms had serious fires within a five-week period this spring — his in

Illinois, one in Missouri and one in Ohio.

Reconstruction started as soon as cleanup was complete and insurance and banks gave the initial go-ahead. They will be modernizing the buildings to make them safer and more ef-ficient. He hopes construction will be complete in three or four months.

Borgic is aware of the impor-tance of an emergency plan and good insurance. A neighbor with a recent fire had repeatedly urged Borgic to update his insur-ance. He did so in March; the fire was in May.

The Borgics, known for being active in farm organizations and in their community, were over-whelmed when it was their turn to receive help.

“We sure got it back ten-fold,” he said.

As Thanksgiving approach-es, Borgic said, “Every year we are truly thankful. This year the outpouring of support is hum-bling.”

IFT photo by Phyllis Coulter

Phil Borgic carefully documented the expansion of his pig farm near Raymond, Ill. He had no idea how important it would all be when a fire swept through his operation in May.

Road to recovery: Before and after

Borgic shares insight from his experience:=Have an emergency

plan and a good relation-ship with your local fire department. Borgic had invited his local volunteer firefighters to the farm so they had a concept of the size and layout of the farm and its water sources.=Update insurance as

needed. It is important to up-date the value of buildings in your insurance plans. Costs of steel and lumber are high-er now because of tariffs, said Troy Alexander, Thorn Creek Insurance Services, Spring-field, Ill.

“If you have a million dollar building, but it’s only insured for $750,000, if something happens that’s all you’ll get,” Alexander said.

Also, have business inter-ruption insurance to cover extra costs incurred while getting back to regular pro-duction levels,

“There are a lot of extra ex-penses in getting back to nor-mal and back to full produc-tion,” he said.=Install fire stops in the

barns. A bunker area on Bor-gic’s operation stopped the fire from moving to some of the newest buildings. Fire stops within the other newer barns also helped slow the progression of the fire, al-lowing the fire department to stop it from spreading. =Have multiple warning

systems. The Borgic farm was equipped with an internet- based alarm system with a backup, but both were lost because the fire started in the office. Having a second-ary warning system — either telephone or cellular based — could have helped.

“Phil’s a good guy,” Alexan-der said. “He’s been through a real tragedy, and I think he’s going to recover just fine.”

14 N Beating the Odds www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com / November 17, 2018

By Jeff DeYoungIllinois Farmer Today

GOLDFIELD, Iowa — Kevin Rasmus-sen remembers meeting his wife at the door on a Tuesday in 1998. She was in tears.

“I remember telling my wife, Lisa, it was going to get bad, and I didn’t want to see the books and told her to let me know when we were out of money,” he says. “She met me at the door crying, and told me there was no money. It had gotten pretty bad.”

Twenty years later, the Rasmussens have not only recovered, but have grown their Humboldt County hog farm. They run a 1,000-sow farrow-to-finish oper-ation, marketing about 25,000 pigs per year.

Rasmussen began raising pigs as part of an FFA project in high school. He at-tended Iowa State University for a se-mester before returning home in 1982,

selling his purebred Landrace sows and starting a commercial herd.

As consumers demanded leaner pork, Rasmussen built a farrow-to-feeding building in 1994.

“I had been selling feeder pigs to my father-in-law, but early in 1997 he want-ed to start scaling back on his numbers and eventually stop raising hogs,” he says. “I decided to start finishing them on my own, so I put them in an open front building.

“Those pigs ended up selling for $8 (per hundredweight). We knew low pric-es were coming, but I don’t think anyone expected them to be that low.”

After obtaining a loan from the bank, the Rasmussens kept raising hogs, and continue to survive and thrive in a hog industry that is constantly changing.

“We learned a lot about the business because of 1998,” Rasmussen says. “We got better at marketing and biosecurity. We learned to lock in a percentage of our

product as long as we were making some money.

“And we really learned to focus on the things we could control. You can’t dwell on the bad, because it will eat at you and make you sick.”

Rasmussen credits his wife and her part of the operation.

“Lisa keeps the books and does all those things I don’t like to do, while I work with the pigs,” he says. “We’re a team. We support each other. We get done what we need to do during the day, so we have time for other things.”

Rasmussen says he continues to enjoy raising pigs, and is thankful for what it provides his family.

“We have done well. We have a nice house and raised three very successful children,” he says. “To do this, you have to love raising pigs. For us, it has never been about making more money than everyone else. It’s about doing what we love.”

By Gene LuchtIllinois Farmer Today

G RINNELL, Iowa — Don-na Winburn is not the same person she was

before the farm crisis of the 1980s. She is a little bit older, but like everyone who went through that time, that’s not the real dif-ference.

“The ’80s changed me,” Win-burn says today. “I’m a different person.”

Before the 1980s, she was a farm wife and mother. She did the books and marketing for the farm. She handled some of the duties involved in the care

Ripples of 1980s crisis continue to affect farms

IFT photo by Gene Lucht

Donna Winburn is a survivor of the 1980s. The family went to court to deal with lenders, and they managed to stay in business. But the farm changed, she says.

of the cattle and hogs the family raised.

But when her family nearly lost its farm and they ended up joining other farmers in dealing with the situation, she learned a bit about herself. She learned, for example, not to be afraid of public speaking. She became

active in politics, the Iowa Farm-ers Union and served in several positions in the Democratic Par-ty, even running once for county supervisor.

And she says the farm crisis of the 1980s also changed her fam-ily’s farm operation.

When the 1980s began, Donna

and her husband, Russell, were farming more than 1,100 acres, feeding about 1,000 cattle and growing 1,500 hogs a year. They had some alfalfa, but most of the land was in corn and soybeans. They had two full-time employ-ees, a pair of teenage sons and a daughter. They owned about

half their land and rented the rest.

But they had worked with a local production credit associ-ation (PCA) and with the Fed-eral Land Bank. When the farm economy collapsed, the lenders began calling in loans and push-ing borrowers to liquidate. At one point, the family was very much in danger of losing the farm, she says.

“We had been carrying a lot of long-term debt on a year-ly renewal contract with PCA,” she says. “Their interest rate was much higher than their sister organization, FLB, was charging, so we refinanced. That only worked for a short while.

“… We were encouraged to quit buying and feeding cattle and to sell the cows. … PCA threatened to repossess everything mov-able, livestock and machinery,

uuu

Pork producers come through ‘bad times’ in the late ’90s

Photo courtesy Iowa Pork Producers Association

Kevin Rasmussen, a pork produc-er in north central Iowa, struggled through the low prices of the late 1990s.

HARDtimes

“PCA threatened to repossess everything movable, livestock and machinery.”

Donna WinburnPoweshiek County, Iowa

November 17, 2018 / www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com Beating the Odds N 15

uuuwithin five days if we sold anything to make land pay-ments (to the FLB) against their wishes.”

The family went to court to deal with the lenders, and they managed to stay in busi-ness. But the farm changed.

The livestock and hired help went away over time. Donna took a job off the farm. They began no-tilling.

They started operating without borrowed money and did not buy any land un-til 2007, when they bought a neighboring 80-acre farm. In recent years, they began us-ing cover crops.

Their children are now in-volved in the farm operation.

Winburn’s husband, Rus-sell, died in 2017, but Win-burn is still very much in-volved in the farm. She is the primary operator, and her children work as employees, though each also have their own enterprises.

Being a survivor of such a difficult time changed Win-burn’s perspective on agri-culture. Today, she says, she would tell a young person to get a college degree and preferably marry someone else who has a college degree before deciding whether to come back to the farm.

She says her advice to a prospective farmer would also be to get a good job and some measure of financial independence before ever considering whether to farm. She says the spouse must be a part of that decision and should be willing to take the plunge as well.

And she says she would advise them to consider rais-ing a niche or specialty crop, preferably a food crop, as part of their farm, even if it is only an acre or two, just to re-mind them of what farming is really all about.

“It’s a different lifestyle,” she says of farming, “and sacrifices have to be made. But it is a great place to raise a family.”

By Benjamin HerroldIllinois Farmer Today

BERGER, Mo. — On a rainy fall day, Danny Kuenzel had been hauling corn to

St. Louis. The latest rain had kept him out of the field.

“We had six-tenths the other day,” he says.

In addition to slowing har-vest progress, too much rain can present other challenges for river bottom farmers. Kuenzel farms in the Missouri River bot-tom in east central Missouri, in Franklin and Gasconade coun-ties. He says the bottom hasn’t been entirely flooded since 1995, although in 2017, flood-waters breached a levee near Berger. But every year there are challenges like wet fields.

“We have some high water events every year it seems,” Kuenzel says. “That’s just part of farming along any river system.”

Of course, the massive floods of 1993 and 1995 were far from the normal river bottom expe-rience. Kuenzel says the Great Flood of 1993, 25 years ago, was the most damaging flood he’s seen.

“’93 was by far the worst,” he says. “Our bottoms sustained several thousand acres of sand in fields.”

After a wet fall in 1992, heavy, widespread rains during the spring and summer of 1993 pro-duced one of the biggest and lon-gest floods in Missouri history. The Missouri River at Hermann, near where Kuenzel farms, was

Good years in river bottoms help make up for floods

UNDERwater

above flood stage for 77 days, ac-cording to the National Weather Service. Some towns along the Mississippi River in Missouri and Illinois saw flood stage wa-ter levels for nearly 200 days.

According to the NWS, “On the Missouri River it was esti-mated that nearly all of the 700 privately built agricultural levees were overtopped or destroyed.” Navigation on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers closed in early July, costing $2 million a day in lost commerce. The Mississippi River at St. Louis crested at 49.6 feet, nearly 20 feet above flood stage.

The floodwaters deposited sand across the fertile bottom ground fields, 18 inches in plac-es, or as deep as 8 to 10 feet in spots, Kuenzel says. Mounds of sand are still visible around the river bottom, a monument to the great flood a quarter century ago.

“Some of that land was aban-doned,” he says.

Some of the land became publicly owned, used for wildlife preservation and other purpos-es.

“The Corps of Engineers owns a lot of ground along these bot-

toms,” Kuenzel says.As for the land that stayed in

row crop use, he says it took time for the land to return to its for-mer levels of productivity.

“That sand will take a long time to go back to what it was,” Kuenzel says.

As another option to speed up the recovery process, Kuenzel says some farmers in the area have hired an excavator, or track hoe, to dig deep into the sand, find the good soil down below, and bring it to the top. A friend of his did the reclamation work on 300 to 400 acres.

“That has helped him a lot,” Kuenzel says.

Kuenzel hired the excavator to do the work on about 30 of his acres. He has seen good results so far. In dry years, before hav-ing the work done to reclaim the good soil, the sandy field would see soybean yields around 15 to 20 bushels per acre. This year was a dry year, but the bottom ground field had soybeans yield-ing in the mid-50s. The initial process can be expensive, but the yield increases gradually pay for it.

“I have, over three years, recovered my investment,”

Kuenzel says.Maintaining a good levee sys-

tem is key to minimizing the effects of floodwaters. Kuenzel says the levees along the river are the same height as in the 1990s, and the Corps of Engineers has specifics and standards for le-vees and how high they can be built. He says the goal of this is to keep the system as uniform as possible.

“They usually do an annual inspection of them,” Kuenzel says.

The Corps lets local boards know if they need to do any maintenance on the levee sys-tems, like replacing drain pipes, keeping a good stand of grass on levees, and removing brush.

The efforts have largely kept the floodwaters at bay in recent decades, Kuenzel says. The good years in the river bottom help make up for flood years or wet years. Other than the localized levee breach last year, in general the last two decades have been good for flood control after the historic havoc wreaked in 1993 and 1995.

“We’ve been very fortunate over the last 22 years,” Kuenzel says.

IFT photo by Benjamin Herrold

After the flood of '93 dumped lots of sand on some fields, yields have been lower, especially in dry years. East central Missouri farmer Danny Kuenzel and some of his friends have hired an excavator to dig up good soil and bring it back to the surface, improving yields.

16 N Beating the Odds www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com / November 17, 2018

By Aaron VinerIllinois Farmer Today

IOWA FALLS, Iowa — When Dwight Ellingson went in to see the doctor in late Sep-

tember, he had no idea it would mean missing his own harvest.

Ellingson, who farms in Iowa Falls, Iowa, skinned a knuckle a week before the end of Septem-ber, just after starting harvest at his mother-in-law’s farm.

“I put in a few batches Mon-day or Tuesday and felt a little bit tired,” Ellingson said. “… By Friday I didn’t feel so hot and ac-tually went to the doctor. They did a blood workup and asked me to come back for a chest X-ray. They were thinking may-be it was pneumonia. But it kept getting worse.”

A rash appeared on his body, and after getting checked out again, the doctors made the call to have him admitted to the hos-pital. Ellingson would go on to miss the next two and half weeks in a medically induced coma as he was treated for sepsis — an extreme reaction to an infection.

While he was on bedrest, El-lingson’s family and community rallied around him and finished what he started.

Getting betterOn Oct. 30, Ellingson was re-

leased from the hospital and is now back home, working on building his strength back.

Despite the occasional dizzy

Community rallies harvest crew for sick Iowa farmer

spell from low blood pressure, he said his “legs aren’t so bad. I can walk around the yard,” though he said it’s easier to watch his sons work from his pickup truck.

He lost 25 to 30 pounds while in the hospital, and much of his upper-body strength. He said he could barely lift his arm up, and is working in therapy to slide a washcloth up a door.

“If I put my arm straight out, I can’t lift that washcloth,” Elling-son said. “If I put it on a door and slide it, I can do that.”

The doctors were never able to identify what caused the in-fection, but one of the surgeons thought it may be his gall blad-der. Ellingson was too weak for surgery at the time, so they weren’t able to remove it yet.

“He said it’s possible it could do it again if it was the gall blad-der,” Ellingson said. “They were telling the family they were giving me about a 30 percent chance of making it. If I had that same thing again, I might not make it.”

Having lost his wife sudden-ly to a brain aneurism not long ago, Ellingson said it never dawned on him how close he was to potentially dying.

“The reality of being that close to not making it was a bit surprising,” he said. “I didn’t know I was that sick. You hear

about it after the fact. My kids were spending the night the first few days too, and they were concerned because they just lost their mother just over a year ago.

“The fact that they could have lost both parents in just over a year’s time, that would have been a challenge for them.”

Finishing harvestWhen Ellingson was at the

hospital, Rob McCormick, a fel-low farmer, started working with another neighbor, Steven Stock-dale, to get people together to help their neighbor in his time of need.

“We are very fortunate to live in rural Iowa because when some sort of a hardship like this comes on, the whole commu-nity — not only farmers, but

businesses — volunteer to bring (help),” McCormick said. “We all pulled together to help some-body in need.”

When contacting people to donate their time or machinery, McCormick said he had little trouble finding helping hands. They had “in the neighborhood of” 40 to 50 people helping out, he said, and in fact he found himself needing to turn people away.

“We had so much help,” Mc-Cormick said. “It gets to the point where you get too many machines in the field, it could turn into chaos.”

Though McCormick said he wasn’t able to talk to Ellingson through the process, he knew how important this was.

“At the time we lined things up, Dwight wasn’t able to talk,”

IFT photo by Aaron Viner

Dwight Ellingson of Iowa Falls, Iowa, recently was released from the hospital after spending more than a month battling sepsis, including time in a medically induced coma.

Photo courtesy Rob McCormick

Many neighbors and farm-ers came out to help harvest Dwight Ellingson’s beans while he was in the hospital.

McCormick said. “He was in an induced coma. We just kind of took it on our own to do it be-cause we knew he wasn’t going to be able to do the harvest. We work all summer long to grow this crop — all the farmers do, that’s their pride and joy for the whole year — and not a lot of us like to miss the harvest.”

When Ellingson made it home, he said seeing his fields done was a relief.

“I had no input in arranging anything which was fine by me because I wasn’t mentally there enough to arrange it anyway,” Ellingson said. “We had all that rain while I was in the hospital. The family would tell me, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, nothing’s going on, it’s just raining.’ Of course, you do worry.”

He said the only problem he saw was “it might not all fit in the bins” — a good problem to have.

When he sees group pho-tos of the people who came to help with his harvest, he’s over-whelmed by the numbers.

“When I look at the photo and expand it, I still can’t identify ev-erybody,” he said.

Though he hasn’t had much time at home yet, he said the next step is to build up his strength with physical therapy, and he has his eyes set on get-ting back out in the fields next year.

“I can only assume I’ll be stronger and fit, ready to do the next planting season,” Ellingson said. “Plan B is my son gets to do more.”

STRONGERtogether