Call In The Cavalry! Helping Farmer Family

Minnesota right now on another case with Farm Rescue Organization, this is the organization that I've been with a few times, I've talked about them quite a bit. Where they come in when families have a difficult time with something whether it's during harvest, during planting in season, even if it's just hauling with trucks delivering hay or whatever it might be, they come in and help those families out. It's a completely volunteer organization that we've been able to highlight several times and been able to give back to personally, so I got here. Right at a time when they're moving fields, they just finished up this corn field, we're going to run down the road and follow them to the next field. Luke, I pinned him down, we're going to get Luke to talk here, so as I mentioned, we're with Farm Rescue right here, you said you guys have been doing this for 20 years now, 2025 is our 20th anniversary, yes, and you've got how many cases just in this year alone? This year we completed 55, this is case number 55 and we could end up over 60 total for the year, all volunteer work? All volunteer work, yes. And what states are you guys in? We are in Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota. Wisconsin was recently added last year, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, and our latest addition is Kentucky, we are really trying to get our footing there. Those of a family in need, we're here to help. Correct me if I am wrong here, but this is all I mean, not only is it all volunteer work, but it's also it's all volunteers, donations, sponsors, it's all non-profit right? That's right, these activities are not free you know. So it's not free to run a combine? No no, it can move who to contact right? Yeah right right, I am shocked, the reality though is it costs us about an average of 7,500 dollars per case. So where does that money come from and how can anybody that's interested get involved if they want to? You bet, of course money comes from our many sponsors you know and that's John Deere and Anheuser-Busch and some of our big hitters all the way down to the local mom and pops want to give five bucks or ten bucks and there's two ways that you can really make an impact donating. One is anytime at Farm Rescue or if you know you can make a donation there online. Our largest fundraising period happens every year in February, it's called Giving Hearts Day and it's a large you know community-wide effort in northwest Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, but you know right now we're trying to raise funds where we can use portions of those dollars. As matching funds so we make the impact bigger in February on Giving Hearts. Okay so the impact is bigger specifically on that one day, is it one day or is it a week long? It's one day, it's one day, yep that is a sweet grain cart rig right there, I like that. I am going to have to see if I can jump into the combine and ride with Kenneth I am told his name is and actually get some information from one of the volunteers who's hard at work here today. So this is a super cool organization I've visited with them before at different cases that they've been on. Hopefully you guys can hear through the wind it's much less windy on this side of the road. I've told this story before for those who have watched me for a while you'll know this story but when my grandpa was sick back in 1960 long before I was born he was sick he was out in Denver for some treatments and he was not able to plant our family farm that year. And our neighbors got together and had a few days where they actually went out into the fields and planted my family's crop obviously it's long before my time but I kind of feel like this is very similar to that that's exactly what these guys do they can come in and help these families at times when they're really down on their luck whatever it is they might have going on that's what they're doing today right here for an actual local family helping out to do good for the American farmer so I love highlighting them. And just bringing awareness and using this platform that you guys have built for me to let people know what organizations like this are capable of. I hope they warned you I was coming. Yeah okay his trunk is down every time you turn. So I am with Kenneth here he's operating the combine today you get to operate the combine quite a bit all my life all your life farmer all my life so Luke says you've been up here for several weeks I come up on the 18th of September going home on the 23rd of November so two months you're up here for nine weeks nine weeks you run the combine the whole time is that your specialty or you bounce around a little bit 90% of it I haul to I have my CDLs okay so where are you from Kentucky oh you're from Kentucky yep wow okay and your way up here in Minnesota 1200 miles gotcha what keeps you coming back and how long have you been doing this with farmers this fall finishes my 15th year 15 years I come up here every spring every fall sometime here in the summer for wheat season if they need me usually I am here a month at a time are you still actively farming back home too I still have a farm that's soaked down a couple of programs for a while there and then now I sell pay on those okay extra stuff that's soaked down in grass do you have any idea how many different cases you've been a part of with farm rescue over 15 years seven so far this year seven this year I don't know someone told me a while ago I got two more I got another pork case another bean case okay how long have you been yeah and will you be in and out in a couple of days and how long will you be here I hope ma and I will be out of here okay so at least we'll be done at the time then but at least we finished up with the crop yeah I gotta imagine it's pretty rewarding to be a part of it keeps you humble yeah I would now you're going to offend me it's true we always think we can do it ourselves yeah sometimes we can sometimes we need help yeah that's all there is to it everyone needs help every day farmers think they're in control they don't get it they want to do it themselves yeah you know they have their own ways and they do things and it might not be the way farm rescue does it or I do it on my own farm but you know you have to you have to I don't know how to put it into words you have to realize what a sacrifice the individual farmer we're helping today is making even though he needs help he's trusting complete strangers with his livelihood to go into combat yeah exactly for his livelihood yeah to go harvest his crop right this is as you said this is his livelihood you're right even though he's not able to today you know if you mess it up he might not have a farm to do it next year yeah yeah and it's his it's not yours that's right you know so yeah that's a very good point it's a hundred percent his yeah you have to admire the person who needs help for even trusting us they come in we're total strangers right you know even though Luke is from Moorhead he's still a stranger to this guy right right you know and you're trusted with his livelihood that's all job for you and do it right I would imagine there's a lot of pride that comes with being able to help people out that trust you like that sure you know I want to I want to do a better job for them than I would do for myself yeah I guess I can understand that yeah actually I want to do the best I can for me whatever that is I want to talk to them yeah they're the ones who feed me right now and I would I would believe it most of the volunteers probably have that same thought I would hope so yeah how did you first find out about farm rescue and get involved the farmer magazine okay they were interviewing this guy about something else and he had mentioned that he volunteered for an organization I do work with others on farm rescue and I thought if there's something I am going to check it out and I went online and looked it up and filled out an they didn't call me the next year they called me the year after I've been there ever since now you can't get away this is part of it well thank you for doing this for being a part of it I think you know if I believe I don't play the harvest except when you get new yep you don't have time it's the same odds whether a million dollars or a hundred million anyway then I don't play two dollars at a time maybe I'll miss every time but anyway if I if I I mean I'd give a million dollars farm rescue without even thinking about it yeah that's how much I am thinking about it just because you believe in the organization I don't know what they stand for that says a lot well you know we're all volunteers a lot well you take you know we're all volunteers there are a couple of people in the office you don't have to pay I am doing here up here in our own way home farm rescue gives us up to 45 dollars a day for food we turn in 45 dollars a half we get 45 we turn in six we get six we don't get a strip in 45 okay and they pay for our lodging this is something we want to do but we wouldn't pay our own way up here right absolutely you know it keeps you humble yeah we all think we're going to live forever we don't think about getting hurt or getting sick but it happens yeah yeah you don't you don't think often enough maybe about how quickly something can happen that you wouldn't expect and the effects it can have on everything yeah I am 77 years old you know my mind says I can still think what I did when I was 30 yeah my body says I am a fool I am 41 and my body says that sometimes I appreciate it nice to meet you now I got Nicholas Nicholas is a brand new volunteer with farm rescue right yep and he's actually doing a school project on farm rescue right now yep so is this your first day with farm rescue or is this your first case yeah that's my first case with it I had to put in some volunteer hours for the project and basically doing this and I love farming and you guys farm some land yourself yep we farm up by Little Falls Minnesota and we run much smaller operations than this but I enjoy it I love going out there on weekends and stuff to farm and I enjoy it that's why I am here that's why I am doing this project on farm rescue is to raise awareness for farm rescue yep doing something I enjoy doing so how did you come up with the idea I assume you had to do a project on something and what made you pick farm rescue well I was I was looking at stuff because I knew I wanted to do something farm related I was looking at it and I am like farm rescue I know like that farms have problems and stuff they face difficulties like it could be economically justifiability of the farm and stuff and I know the importance of family farms because as I said I will have a family farm I know how important it is for families yep and seeing as farm rescue they help these farm families keep their farm in the family I know it's really important to some farmers like even our farm it's a century farm we've had in the family for 100 years and I know it's very important for farmers to want to keep the land in the family right absolutely farm rescue I am like oh these guys will get a chance to meet the combine and stuff see this is a very cool thing where we run stuff so yep I love it so did you finish up your farming for this year on the family farm yep about two weeks ago where we finished ours everything's all put away so got about knock out 100 acres about four days so there you go more than this thing can ever knock out much less than this thing can ever knock out and you still didn't get your farm fixed for the year so you had to come and help these guys out I didn't get the combine out of my system yet so did you know that these guys were coming to your area or did this all just kind of this is good luck this is just yeah good luck that they found it because I was prepared to drive out maybe an hour or two away to get volunteer hours and like they're like oh here we're coming to your backyard yeah yeah very cool now they're going to let you run the 780 with the 12 row header yep yep they ride the big machine it's a tiny six row well have fun yeah it will and thanks for volunteering with them and for doing the project it's really cool Nicholas must be doing all right because he went down to that end of the field he ran away from us and he hasn't been back for a while so I've got Luke here Luke coordinates this whole thing I don't know how he does it we don't need to get into that because I am not sure he knows how he does it some days but this whole deal Luke everything you know I've mentioned that it's all run by it's all volunteer help around here but when it comes to the actual finances of it to keep a non-profit situation like this going where you're running combines and tractors and semi trucks and all that where do the dollars come from to keep something like this moving really two revenue streams one is our sponsors you know so your John Deere's your Anheuser-Busch's you know larger co-ops what not all the way down to the average joe that wants to give five bucks the smaller guys dollars mean just as much you know many hands make the task light right and you know giving hearts day is our most important fundraising day for example and that is a community event up in the Fargo Moorhead community and a larger part in northwest Minnesota eastern North Dakota and it's you know this year it is February 12th 2026 and we acquire some funds that we use as matching funds to boost the dollars that we get in February so if I go online in February on giving hearts day February 12th and I make a donation how does that work then when you say there's matching funds in there so we are able to accumulate some funds from other sources that we use as a matching fund and so we say every dollar raised in February counts as two dollars more or less so there's just that much more leverage to it specifically on that day correct because there are other contingencies if you hit certain levels for the giving hearts day we are able to boost the total dollars raised you know a little further so if somebody's interested in that you could go to farmrescue.org and that'll give you all the information you need to find that out and figure out where you've got to go correct you really want see the signs for it come until you know December but anytime any dollar that comes in we are able to put into that bucket which helps and of course somebody could donate right now and on giving hearts day and on giving hearts day the more the merrier think of all the tax deductions that's right here he comes Nicholas was able to make his way back to the field I think they were taking off the last of the end rows over on the other end it's really tough on the fields and the trucks to load them in the truck or in the field I mean what did I say it's hard on the fields and it's on the semi trucks to load them in the field not only that but it brings mud out onto the road you can keep the tractor in the ditch like this and the truck on the road it's perfect a couple of final things here the truck says a thousand families served Luke told me earlier I don't remember if he put it on camera or not but it's actually well over 1200 now around 1250 some they've got a few more to go this year yet and that's in 20 years so whatever that average is out to be pretty amazing pretty cool and that's all thank you to these volunteers and guys like Luke and all of these sponsors that are listed here everybody on here gives in order to make this happen see this guy right here he only gives because he wants to be on the trailer but everybody else they want to make this happen one final note here before I get my daughter over to her hockey game they are always looking for volunteers as well specifically truck drivers everybody wants to come run a combine and a tractor and that's great but they really need truck drivers and it can't be every farmer out there who might have a million miles in a truck unless you have a cdl they have to have cdl drivers so that is that I think sometimes is their biggest difficulty when it comes to finding volunteers otherwise another awesome situation excellent organization look into them it's been awesome to be able to help spotlight them and show the good that they're doing so again thank you guys for watching