There was a day in October I could see six combines running from our own field where we were starting in corn.\u00a0 Harvest had gotten off to a slow start.\u00a0 A frustrating, rainy stretch limited farmers to a few sloppy days.\u00a0 Then in mid-October the sun proved it still existed, and we had a welcome dry spell of ten days.<\/p>\n
For those days (and nights) farmers could ignore markets, politics, and injuries to the Vikings\u2019 secondary.\u00a0 There was single-minded laser focus on getting the crop out of the field.\u00a0 As the six combines in my sight evidenced, it was all hands-on deck.<\/p>\n
Each of us farmers have our own fields and responsibilities.\u00a0 Most of our time is spent alone on the seat of a combine, tractor, or truck.\u00a0 But the season of harvest is something we all share.\u00a0 There is immediate connection with any farmer I meet at the elevator. \u00a0You can think of us as a big team stretching across the corn belt.<\/p>\n
One terrible day the \u201cteam\u201d here in Brown County was dealt two tragic losses.\u00a0 On October 17th<\/sup>, within hours, John Hoffman and Kaleb Fischer suffered farm injuries that led to their deaths.\u00a0 Every farmer when they heard of those, felt a wrenching in the pit of their stomach.\u00a0 It was deep sadness, but also the knowledge that such could happen to any of us.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know John or Kaleb.\u00a0 I know people who did, and all the reports I heard over the next days about the two men were filled with positives and tributes.\u00a0 One at the peak of his career and the other just starting out, they were dedicated to this craft of farming.\u00a0 More importantly they were good and decent neighbors and friends.\u00a0 One loss like that tears at the heart of our community; two is almost unbearable.<\/p>\n We know this can be dangerous work.\u00a0 Plants, soil, and weather can be fickle, unpredictable things.\u00a0 When the tools we use are large and powerful machines, there are sure to be hazards.<\/p>\n Logging, mining, and farming top lists of the most dangerous jobs.\u00a0 That is true of farming year-round.\u00a0 When you add the pressure of harvest, the risks ratchet up.\u00a0 When I was young, \u201charvest\u201d stretched over months.\u00a0 Haying, grain harvest, silage all took place before October.\u00a0 Now most fields are corn and soybeans, and the months are reduced to weeks.\u00a0 The calendar and impending winter breathe heavily on our necks.\u00a0 Those of us around for the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 have that implanted in our brains.<\/p>\n In off-farm jobs I\u2019ve had, there is time and emphasis devoted to safety training.\u00a0 Friend Scott Surprenant is the Safety Coordinator for Mathiowetz Construction Company, and he spends many hours prepping for Safety Week each winter.\u00a0 OSHA is the butt of jokes and complaints, but it has made workplaces safer and saved thousands of lives.<\/p>\n We really don\u2019t get training in this farming thing.\u00a0 We learn from our fathers.\u00a0 When we purchase a new machine, we get an hour with the mechanic who delivers it.\u00a0 We might compare notes with other farmers.\u00a0 My operator manuals are ragged and grease-smudged in the settings and maintenance chapters; the safety section still has crisp white corners.<\/p>\n I was twelve years old, home playing with my brother, when someone, I\u2019m not sure who, called my mom to tell her she needed to come the hospital right away.\u00a0 Something had happened to my father.\u00a0 I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Dean and knowing this was bad.\u00a0 We were an age when we weren\u2019t left alone much, so we knew it was serious.<\/p>\n Sometime later, probably minutes which felt like hours, my sister came to get us.\u00a0 We found out my dad had lost his right hand in a combine accident.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t even make sense to me at the time.\u00a0 I would come to know the consequences of that single moment in my father\u2019s life over the next thirty years.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the thing about accidents.\u00a0 A part of a second changes everything forever.\u00a0 Dad would go on to adjust to farming with a prosthetic hook where his right hand had been.\u00a0 He milked cows for ten more year and helped with field work till he was in his late eighties.\u00a0 I came to take for granted that we had a \u201chammer\u201d and \u201cpliers\u201d with us when we worked together.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure he would have rather had a hand.\u00a0 Looking back, I probably don\u2019t appreciate how difficult it was for him.<\/p>\n It was often said back then that you could tell the farmers in a crowd; they would be missing a finger or some other part.\u00a0 I remember hearing that and looking at my open hands and imagining life without all of those.\u00a0 Corn pickers were especially sinister.\u00a0 They are rare today, but I just googled corn picker and saw that a 27-year-old Indiana man was killed by one last week.\u00a0 Thankfully, farm equipment has been made safer.\u00a0 More of us are complete.<\/p>\n I try to be aware of risks as I go through my day.\u00a0 This time of year, I have to crawl atop bins.\u00a0 As my wife and I begin to consider a time one of us won\u2019t be here, I jokingly begin with, \u201cIf I fall off a bin\u2026\u201d\u00a0 I have made Scott the highly unpaid Safety Consultant for Krzmarzick Farms.\u00a0 He has me thinking \u201cthree points of contact\u201d while I am climbing with three of four limbs always on something solid.\u00a0 I appreciate that.<\/p>\n Certainly this time of year can be stressful.\u00a0 But every farmer knows that even in the midst of it, there are moments that catch our breath with their beauty.\u00a0 A setting sun, geese flying overhead, the crisp air of October: there are these times of overwhelming grace when we know we are blessed to be doing this work, sharing in creation\u2019s bounty.<\/p>\n I step off the combine after shutting it off.\u00a0 Usually some machine is running, so stillness is rare.\u00a0 There is the rustling of corn leaves in a cool breeze.\u00a0 I stop myself; this is one of those moments of blessedness. \u00a0\u00a0Then I think of John and Kaleb and offer a prayer for their families.\u00a0 I wish so much they could have more days to do this work and moments like this in a corn field.<\/p>\n Then I go to get the grease gun from the back of the truck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a day in October I could see six combines running from our own field where we were starting in corn.\u00a0 Harvest had gotten off to a slow start.\u00a0 A frustrating, rainy stretch limited farmers to a few sloppy days.\u00a0 Then in mid-October the sun proved it still existed, and we had a welcome …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 17:46:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110098,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110097\/revisions\/110098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}