One year ago Tom Soat lay in a hospital bed, having just endured three surgeries that spanned 30 hours.

Then doctors told the Milford, Iowa, farmer in his mid-fifties that he would spend several more weeks in a Sioux Falls, S.D., hospital room before he could return home.

It was inevitable that questions would swirl in his mind about how he would take care of the couple hundred head of sheep that were on the verge of lambing and plant the 400 acres of corn and soybeans he rents from an uncle.

Help came to his rescue not only that spring but last fall as well, when a growing organization based in North Dakota volunteered to haul its combine and grain semi to Soat’s farm and rally help from around the region to drive them until everything was harvested.

And the organization stands ready for another spring to dawn — and more farm families to help.

“For people you never met to travel hundreds of miles to help you out is pretty overwhelming at times,” Soat said.

Yet that’s precisely the mission of Farm Rescue, a nonprofit that plants and harvests crops free of charge for family farmers who have suffered a major injury, illness or natural disaster.

“Our ability to help families on the land is 100 percent dependent upon some pretty amazing people — volunteers, sponsors and individual donors,” the organization states on its website. “They give of their time, talents and financial resources to help put a crop in the ground or harvest its bounty for families that are in crisis. Selfless acts. Selfless people. It doesn't get much better than that in our book!”

For Soat, those efforts came in the form of a married couple and three others — plus neighbors, of course.

“They showed up, brought the machine and truck and everything else and stayed until they were all done,” Soat said.

The combine and semi arrived from another job 100 miles to the southeast at about 7 p.m. and work got started right away, running until probably 1 a.m., he said.

That continued over the next three or four days, with personnel shifting around and sharing some meals with Soat.

“They’re a very friendly, talkative group, but they were there for a job and wanted to get to that too,” he said.

At one point, though, they talked to 2 a.m. after shutting off the combine.

After the work finished up, the Farm Rescue crew pressed on to another site near LeMars, Iowa.

“It’s a very good organization. If you need help, it’s a great outfit to work with,” Soat said. “If someone has other health issues, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask them. They want to be asked.”

In Soat’s case, Farm Rescue found out from his brother-in-law.

Soat’s five-way heart bypass and repair of a hiatal hernia — part of his stomach pushing up through his diaphragm — which he said was worse than the heart surgery, were the culmination of a health condition that had its start way back in 1995, when he was diagnosed with lymphoma in his spine.

He said part of his cancer therapy caused the hiatal hernia.

“I tried to learn to live with it as best as possible, but it gradually got a little worse and a little worse,” he explained. “Last winter, I just kind of ran out of air and woke up on the 14th of February feeling really miserable.”

What he thought was an acid reflux attack took him from a hospital visit in Spencer, Iowa, to a six-week stay in Sioux Falls, S.D. And after he was released, he was on oxygen until about the 4th of July.

Early on, “a couple neighbors already told me they were going to plant my crop for me, and they did,” Soat said.

Another couple of neighbors took care of his ewes, which were lambing out at the time.

“Everything was pretty well taken care of when I got home,” he said.

That summer, a brother-in-law who worked at Green Plains Grain Co. in Superior, Iowa, happened to be talking with Farm Rescue and mentioned Soat’s situation.

“They wanted to know if they could come down and do my harvest,” he recalled. “… I was apprehensive at first — nobody likes to ask for help — but if the need is there, I definitely recommend them.”

Founder Bill Gross later visited for a brief interview in person, and then Soat was asked to give them a couple weeks’ advance notice so they could line up the equipment and people.

But by the time the first of September rolled around, he was discouraged by the worsening drought and told the organization that maybe it wasn’t worth bothering with — half his corn yielded three bushels per acre and a quarter of his beans got four bushels an acre.

“Beans at four or five bushel an acre doesn’t pay the combining bill, but you have to do it anyway,” he said.

The folks at Farm Rescue followed through on their offer for help, collecting the better half of corn at 90 bushels per acre while half his beans netted 30 bushels an acre and a quarter got 50.

Because of it, Soat said he saved more than $10,000 in the cost of hiring someone to do it.

As spring approaches, the crisis hasn’t let go of Soat, but it has loosened its grip. His livestock are worth about half of what they were a year ago while the price of grain and feed has climbed higher.

“With no more yield than there was last year, right now it doesn’t look very good,” he said.

But considering where he was, the difference is like night and day.

“It’s good not to have to have that (harvesting) expense out there; that would have been another disaster,” he said. “… It’s much better than it was a year ago. I’ll never be back to perfect, but it’s better than I thought it would be. Some people are surprised I’m back to doing anything at all. I’m back to taking care of as much as before.”

Farm Rescue helps farm families in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and Iowa. Applications are currently being accepted for the 2013 planting season, which can be obtained by calling (701) 252-2017 or visiting www.farmrescue.org. Priority is given to applications received by April 15.

Joel Talsma wants farming to be in his future plans.
“Agriculture has always been in my blood and I’ve wanted to be a part of it,” the 27-year-old said. “If I live rural, I kind of want to be a farmer living rural – I have no appeal to live on an acreage out on a gravel road and drive to Sioux Falls.”

Helping with Talsma’s rural-living goal is Paul Lanoue, an instructor through Minnesota West Community and Technical College’s Farm Management Program. This is the first year that Talsma began working with the program.

Lanoue, who is based out of Marshall, said today’s trend has young people working off the farm first, then building their own farm enterprise.

“As a young person, it’s hard to build cash equity,” he said. “They need to work at it, keep good records and have good communications with their banker.”

With his parents, Glen and Marcia Talsma, still active in farming, but the family operation is not large enough to sustain two households, Talsma said he knows his own full-time farming efforts will not come to fruition over night.

Currently, Joel and his wife, Abby, live in Luverne and have off-the-farm jobs. Married this summer, Abby works as a paraprofessional at Adrian Public Schools and at Target in Sioux Falls until she can apply for a full-time teaching position and Joel as a grain originator for Eastern Farmers Co-Op in Luverne, Magnolia and Kanaranzi, a position that recently became part-time to allow him time to focus his growing farm operation.
At first, Talsma said he really didn’t plan a life in agriculture but wanted to explore other careers.

When he graduated from Southwestern Minnesota Christian High School in Edgerton, he said like any 18-year-old he wanted to leave home and experience life away from the farm he grew up on between Chandler and Lake Wilson. He planned on becoming a history teacher. After spending a semester in college, Talsma said he came back that Christmas and announced he was enlisting in the Minnesota Army National Guard.

“I was a senior in high school and I was leaning toward the military. My parents and most everybody strongly encouraged me to go to college first,” Talsma said. “I don’t like to live with regret and I didn’t want to be 30-years-old and say ‘I should have joined the military when I was younger’ or ‘I should have done this.’”
Talsma said he spent eight years in the Reserve and was deployed with his Twin Cities-based infantry unit to Iraq from September 2006 to October 2007, serving primarily as a combat engineer.
“It was nerve-wrecking,” he said of his deployment “And extremely hot.” Talsma said he realized a full-time military career wasn’t something he wanted to pursue
.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he completed an 18-month associate’s training program with the farmer-owner cooperative CHS, which had him complete work in a grain elevator operation, a commodity brokerage and later at his current position in grain procurement with Eastern Farmers Co-Op.
He said it was while he was working in the Twin Cities that the rural lifestyle began pulling him more towards farming.
“I wanted to be closer to the area and start to be more involved in farming,” Talsma said.

At the time he was completing the associates program, he said he began a beef cattle partnership with his older brother, Greg, who lives near Edgerton. They were able to utilize their parents’ empty beef facilities at first until the herd grew in numbers to be evenly split, he said. His own herd has grown to 25 beef cows, he said. He has kept the calves from this season to finish out.
It was while he was tending to the cow-calf herd, Talsma said that he began thinking about crop farming.

“I like the sustainability of grain and livestock – not separating them out so much – I think one thing necessitates the other,” he said.
Talsma began working with the Farm Service Agency’s Beginning Farmers Program in an effort to secure financing to purchase his own cropland.

Not knowing when or even if he would be able to purchase cropland, Talsma said he began to build cash equity through livestock production. He said he invested in sheep last year and now has a 46-ewe flock.

“They are a smaller investment generally to grow,” he said. “They are usually a pretty good margin animal.”

Since sheep prices have fluctuated the last 18 months and market prices as of late have been low, Talsma said he decided to keep this year’s ewe lambs in his breeding herd versus selling the animals. He also has planned lambing to occur in mid March and April, after winter grows mild but before spring planting.

Last year was the first growing season for Talsma, whose work through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Program yielded a loan to purchase 160 acres near Edgerton, about 10 miles from his parents’ home. Talsma said he uses his parents’ machinery as part of the loan agreement.

The 160 acres consists of a 50-acre pasture, 100-acres of cropland and a 10-acre farm site. He said the drought and more conventional farming practices used prior to the land purchase has his first-year yields lower than projected from the 50-acres of corn and 50-acre soybean yields.

This fall, Talsma said he began his minimum tillage plan and is preparing for next year.

To help with next year’s yields, Talsma said he changed the previous corn-on-corn rotation to a corn-soybean rotation in efforts to improve soil fertility naturally. This fall, he said cattle grazed on the 50-acres of corn as a fertilizer source and to clean up dropped ears, controlling next year’s growth of volunteer corn. He’s currently working with Lanoue in penciling out plans to add a third crop to the rotation – possibly a sorghum-sudangrass to use as forage for his 25 beef cows.

“You definitely have to look at the finances,” Talsma said. “If I want to expand certain areas -- is this a good idea or is this a good one. It all takes pen and paper.”