Farm Rescue lends a hand

By MARVIN BAKER, Staff Writer, mbaker@minotdailynews.com
DEERING – It was a classic example of neighbor helping neighbor and when it was done, 600 acres of wheat and barley were seeded in McHenry County.

A Farm Rescue crew moved into the Paul Grilley farmstead Wednesday afternoon, quickly readied their equipment and was seeding the crop a mere half hour after arriving.

The three-man crew completed the task late Thursday and was expected to be back on the road at 6 a.m. today.

“We don’t waste any time,” said Farm Rescue spokesman Gene Spichke, Kief. “As soon as we get grain and fertilizer, we’re working.”

The Stutsman County organization that helps family farmers in crisis came to the aid of Paul and Fran Grilley almost as quickly as the crop was planted.

Paul Grilley broke a leg bone in a farm accident. He was cleaning barley in Norwich when a tarp mechanism broke loose from the truck, taking him with it. The accident landed him in a Minot hospital where he remains.

Grilley said Thursday it may be three months before he is back to normal.

“We didn’t know what to do,” Grilley said. “We could have called the neighbors, but they’re busy too.”

Grilley’s sister Linda Smette, Granville, said she knew about Farm Rescue and checked the criteria on its Web site (www.farmrescue.org) to see if Paul would qualify for assistance.

She made her first phone call to Farm Rescue headquarters in Jamestown Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. By Tuesday morning, the Grilleys were approved and at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Minot volunteer Charles Bartsch was gobbling up farmland with the latest John Deere equipment donated by RDO Equipment in Fargo.

“No words can describe this. It’s like devine intervention,” Smette said. “The neighbors would have come to our rescue, but that is time sensitive because of seeding. It would have been a few weeks. I just can’t fathom how things like this can be organized just with phone calls.”

But the neighbors did come to the Grilleys’ rescue, as was evident when the Farm Rescue crew arrived. Numerous people were milling about the farmstead, taking care of preparatory work so the big machinery wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Grilley’s cousin and neighbor Bill McDonald was spearheading the preparation effort. He had people getting the seed grain into place, another man brought in a load of fertilizer, other men were barking out directions and pulling tarps, while still others were moving Grilley’s machinery so there was room for the Farm Rescue rig to pull in and turn around.

McDonald also wanted to recognize neighbors Jerry Miller and Leslie Kitzman for their volunteerism when they have their own work to do. He said he was only organizing the priority of the field seeding.

“We’ll seed barley first, then wheat, then back to the original field and finish there with wheat,” McDonald said.

He added that neighbors are always there for neighbors. That’s just the way it is in a North Dakota farming community. But getting Farm Rescue in a couple of days certainly took any would-be burdens away.

“What a fabulous idea,” McDonald said of Farm Rescue.

According to Spichke, Farm Rescue actually operates two rigs, which aren’t identical, but are very similar. As Bartsch and fellow operator Lowell Rothmann, Washburn, were seeding the Grilley farmland, the other crew was working near Trail City, S.D., a small town west of Mobridge.

Spichke said schedules always change, but it appeared that the crew would be on its way to Ellendale this morning. The other crew most likely was headed toward Redfield, S.D.

Farm Rescue started seeding April 13 near Arnegard and has assisted farmers thus far in Halliday, Hazelton, Napoleon, Strasburg and New Rockford.

“Last year we worked around the clock,” Spichke said. “We’ll work as late as we possibly can, and depending on the schedule, we might just keep going.”

Rothmann said the three men take turns operating the 9620 John Deere with attached 44-foot seeder. He said the equipment should be able to plant 600 acres in a day, but things always seem to come up.

“The most we’ve done is about 320 acres in a day,” Rothmann said. “When you move fields and switch grains, it slows you down.”

Spichke said it’s up to the producer to furnish the seed and the fuel, and the Farm Rescue crew brings the equipment and the labor.

He added that the equipment is driven from location to location because transporting it on trucks would take a considerable amount of time to load and unload and quite frankly, would be too expensive.

Grilley is grateful to Farm Rescue, a brainchild of United Parcel Service pilot Bill Gross. Farm Rescue started out in the spring of 2005 with equipment Gross solicited from RDO to assist a half-dozen producers. It has grown to two seeding and harvesting crews helping nearly 30 producers a season.

“They do a great job,” Grilley said. “It looks like they are a great organization.”