Planting through the night
Katie Ryan
The Jamestown Sun - 05/17/2008

NOME, N.D. - Brent Strand had enough to worry about.

After the 40-year-old suffered two strokes last month, Strand’s focus shifted from wheat, corn and soybeans to balance, footwork and physical therapy.

Strand said he is recovering quickly for a while he couldn’t even walk but now he is at about 70 percent of full health.

Since Strand’s father, 10-year-old son and hired help couldn’t plant all 1,700 acres of soybeans in time, volunteers from Farm Rescue stepped in Thursday to help out.

“We’re a little behind,” Strand said, “and this will help get us caught up.”

Volunteers like Bill Gross, president and founder of Farm Rescue, planted about 700 acres of soybeans throughout the day and all night.

“We want to help the maximum number of farms,” Gross said. “And so we need to stay on schedule, saying volunteers keep on time by working at all hours.

Gross himself planted during the 1 to 7 a.m. shift.

And to get all the planting done by Farm Rescue’s June 1 deadline, the volunteers may have some more long nights ahead of them. Strand’s farm is the 18th out of the 28 farms Farm Rescue agreed to aid and one of seven in the Jamestown area alone.

Fifty farms were nominated, but because of time and budget constraints, not all could be helped, Gross said.

“We still turned down half of what we had,” he said.

The organization consists of about 50 volunteers, Gross said, and aside from its director of operations, none of them, not even the board of directors, are paid.

You’ve got to lead by example,” Gross said on why he’s never profited financially from the organization.

And for the volunteers, working together is like family, said Smokey Wright, Minot, who has worked with Farm Rescue for two seasons.

One of the Farm Rescue volunteers is having health problems, Wright said, and there’s a small void without him around.

“We really miss big Bill (Krumwiede, of Voltaire, N.D.),” Wright said.

“In addition to friendship,” Wright said, “volunteers give their time because they want to help others. They also get to have a little fun too.”

“I can still play in the dirt a little bit this way,” he said.

As the operation expands, Wright could play in the dirt throughout the region.

Farm Rescue will help 20 farms in North Dakota, six in South Dakota and two in Minnesota this year.

The operation determines who it helps based on where donations come from. Most donations come from organizations in North Dakota, which is why most of the farms helped are located here, Gross said. Some of the supporters include businesses like RDO Equipment, Cargill Malt, Dura Tech, Wedgcor Manufacturing and Newman Signs, Gross said.

Farm Rescue operates on about $200,000, Gross said, and as fuel costs increase, those dollars are stretched thin.

“We run on a very meager budget,” Gross said.

Unlike years past, Farm Rescue has had to ask some farmers to pay for the fuel used to plant or harvest to keep expenses down. Keeping expenses down means more farmers can be helped, Gross said.

As for Strand, he and his family will plant the remaining 1,000 acres of soybeans as well as the wheat and corn. They could handle planting the wheat, said Arlyn Strand, Brent’s father. Similar to the mission of Farm Rescue and its volunteers, Arlyn was already thinking of others.

“Maybe there were others who needed help more than we did,” he said.

Sun reporter Katie Ryan can be reached at 701-952-8454 or by e-mail at kryan@jamestownsun.com

Reprinted with permission from Jamestown Sun, May 17, 2008.