Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that there are communities where everybody helps everybody, where one person’s emergency is a call to action. I imagine that the North Dakota farmers who gave up a day to help a neighbor feel as great as the family that benefited. What goes ’round comes ’round.

As Sydney Page reports at the Washington Post, “Lane Unhjem was driving his combine harvester across a field of durum wheat on his North Dakota farm [in September], when suddenly smoke began billowing from the machine. …

“Unhjem’s neighbors saw the fire and raced over, helping him extinguish the blaze and saving the field from ruin. But the shock of the moment, coupled with the thick plumes of smoke Unhjem inhaled, triggered the 57-year-old farmer to go into cardiac arrest.

“ ‘He flatlined three times in the emergency room,’ his daughter Tabitha Unhjem, 31, said.

“Lane Unhjem, who also had a heart attack several years ago, was airlifted about 100 miles from his farm near Crosby, N.D., to a trauma center in Minot, N.D., where he remains in critical condition.

“When other farmers in Divide County, N.D., heard what happened to Unhjem on Sept. 9, they immediately halted their own harvesting.

Nearly 60 of them showed up at Unhjem’s farm, equipped with a range of heavy-duty machinery, to finish his harvest for him.

“ ‘I made a couple phone calls and started getting equipment offered left and right, plus the help to go with it,’ said Jenna Binde, 28, a fellow farmer and family friend of the Unhjems. …

“Dozens of farmers and neighbors congregated at Unhjem’s farm on Sept. 12, bringing with them 11 combine harvesters, six grain carts and 15 semi-trucks. They spent almost eight hours harvesting 1,000 acres — an area comparable to 758 football fields — of durum wheat and canola. …

“What the group accomplished in one day would have taken Unhjem nearly two weeks to complete on his own, estimated Brad Sparks, a neighboring farmer.

“ ‘There were guys there who had their own harvest to do, and they just quit and came to help,’ said Sparks, who was there with his machinery that day. … ‘In this part of the country, any time anybody needs a helping hand, everybody will stop what they’re doing at the drop of a hat and come help.’ …

“ ‘If we hadn’t done it, I don’t know if he would have gotten the crop off in time,’ said Binde, adding that weather affects the quality of the crops. “It was crucial to get it off when we did. It’s one less thing for the family to worry about.’ …

“If the fellow farmers hadn’t stepped up to help, Tabitha Unhjem said, it would have been devastating for them. ‘This farm is our livelihood,’ she said.

“Lane Unhjem grew up on the farm, which has been in his family for more than six decades.

“ ‘This is the farm our dad was raised on and we were all raised on,’ [Unhjem daughter Toni White] said. ‘He has dedicated his whole life to this farm and to this community.’ …

“ ‘He has a long road ahead,’ White said. “We are looking at months of recovery. This is going to be a marathon. She called it a blessing that the other farmers were able to get to her father and the farm so quickly. ‘We were so thankful for that,’ White said.

“But for the farmers, ‘this is just something that comes naturally. This is the farming way of life,’ Binde said. …

“ ‘You can’t truly appreciate it unless you were there,’ [local photographer Don Anderson] said. ‘The ground was rumbling. It’s not only something you felt emotionally, but it was also a physical feeling. It was really something to be proud of.’ ” More at the Post, here.