{"id":122696,"date":"2021-03-13T17:56:16","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T22:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/?p=122696"},"modified":"2021-03-13T17:56:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T22:56:16","slug":"weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick-missing-two-good-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick-missing-two-good-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeds by Randy Krzmarzick: Missing two good friends"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Photo courtesy of the Fuchs family Nicole Fuchs loved farming<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Photo by David Buckland Dennis Sellner, in a 1991 photo exhibit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a tough winter here west of Sleepy Eye.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean the weather.\u00a0 It was soft as far as winters go.\u00a0 I mean the loss of two good people.<\/p>\n

As we turn toward spring, a crop will get planted.\u00a0 It always does.\u00a0 But I won\u2019t be waving in my tractor cab to Nicole Fuchs and Dennis Sellner in theirs.\u00a0 Nicole and Dennis were two of my favorites, and our farming community is going to miss them.<\/p>\n

Nicole grew up south of me, the daughter of Joe and Cindy Steffl.\u00a0 From young on, I would see her out helping her dad across the line fence, a real farmer\u2019s daughter.\u00a0 After college, she came back to work on the farm and her family\u2019s carpentry business.\u00a0 Those were a fit for her, as I can\u2019t imagine Nicole being happy either sitting or being inside too long.<\/p>\n

Nicole was simply put, good at things.\u00a0 As a kid, she was one of the best players in sports she tried.\u00a0 That led to college volleyball career.\u00a0 She was a skilled farmer.\u00a0 I teased her that it wasn\u2019t good for my ego farming next to them as they were always done before me.\u00a0 Nicole was an excellent carpenter.\u00a0 Their family built a porch onto our house.\u00a0 I can picture Nicole being up on a rafter swinging a hammer one minute and the next on the ground working through the architect\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n

Nicole was good at things like smiling, too.\u00a0 She had a wonderful disposition, ever cheery and positive.\u00a0 She said nice things about my writing.\u00a0 Not because she always agreed with me, but because that\u2019s the type of person she was.<\/p>\n

Seven years ago, when Nicole was 30, headaches began that would lead to diagnosing and battling a rare form of cancer, chordoma.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean much that it\u2019s rare when it happens to someone you know.\u00a0 Like I said, Nicole was good at things.\u00a0 Fighting cancer was also something she was good at, facing numerous surgeries and treatments nobly and courageously, always concerned about those around her.<\/p>\n

Nicole and her husband Paul ended up living on the home farm when Joe and Cindy built a new house.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good place to raise their boys, Brecken and Corbin.\u00a0 That will fall to Paul now.\u00a0 Paul walked the path the last seven years with Nicole with grace and fortitude.\u00a0 Blessedly, he will be aided by loving families that surround them.<\/p>\n

Dennis Sellner was a fixture in the neighborhood by the time I came home to farm.\u00a0 He was one of the people I talked up as I took a crash course in farming.\u00a0 About every third sentence with him was a laugh, so learning was fun.<\/p>\n

For a while Dennis sold Keltgen seed.\u00a0 Seed Order Days were in his heated workshop, and that was something to look forward to in mid-winter.\u00a0 Dennis\u2019 wife Mary created a grand spread of food, there was a beer in the fridge, usually a card game, and lots of good farm talk.\u00a0 Pam wondered why it took four hours to place my seed order.<\/p>\n

Near the end of last fall\u2019s harvest, I was driving the gravel road past the Sellners.\u00a0 Dennis was pulled over and looking at an odd assemblage of bones on the side of the road and into the ditch.\u00a0 It turned out to be a deer but led to some interesting speculation.<\/p>\n

Dennis was in his usual good spirits.\u00a0 I wish I\u2019d have known that would be our last talk.\u00a0 That\u2019s a thing I\u2019ve noticed.\u00a0 When I hear of a friend\u2019s passing, my first thought is, \u201cOh, I wish I could talk to them one more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dennis appeared in an early version of this column.\u00a0 Exactly thirty years ago, the photograph you see here was part of an exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society.\u00a0 \u00a0It was a collection by British artist David Buckland.<\/p>\n

Buckland had been commissioned to take photographs of a cross section of people involved in Midwest agriculture.\u00a0 He had some connection to here, so it had a strong local flavor.\u00a0 Besides Dennis, there were photos of Bob Greibel and sons, Jim and Elaine Braulick, and Sleepy Eye Farmers Elevator staff.\u00a0 The exhibit, called \u201cThe Agri-Economy\u201d began at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts before moving around the Midwest.<\/p>\n

Two photos stood out to me as a poetic juxtaposition.\u00a0 I wrote this in 1991:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne pair of photographs leapt to my attention.\u00a0 Dennis Sellner farms down the road from me.\u00a0 Next to him is Robbin Johnson, Cargill\u2019s Vice President of Public Relations who I met once at a workshop.\u00a0 Mr. Johnson\u2019s job is to shed the best possible light on his company\u2019s activities.\u00a0 He is basically a highly paid apologist for Cargill and he\u2019s good at it.\u00a0 He is articulate and handsome, forceful, but not threatening.<\/p>\n

Dennis is good at what he does, too.\u00a0 He works hard, farms hard, and hunts hard.\u00a0 I doubt either would do well in the other\u2019s world.\u00a0 Mr. Johnson would have a tough go of baling hay for six hours under a July sun.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Dennis would struggle to get through one teleconference, much less eight hours in a suit and tie.<\/p>\n

Here then, we have two players in American agriculture from very different places.\u00a0 Dennis, his family, his cows and fields, are firmly rooted in the family farm tradition.\u00a0 Robbin Johnson is an executive from the world\u2019s largest and most powerful private company.<\/p>\n

Oddly, they depend on each other: Dennis, on the markets Cargill offers; Cargill, on the commodities Dennis supplies.\u00a0 They are also locked in a struggle to define the future of farming.\u00a0 Cargill and other corporations are expanding their grasp into the production level which historically belonged to farmers like Dennis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty years later, I won\u2019t go into how that struggle has evolved.\u00a0 Suffice it to say there are 200,000 less farmers today.<\/p>\n

Regardless, like I said, a crop will get planted.\u00a0 Sadly, Nicole and Dennis won\u2019t be part of that in 2021.\u00a0 But in the way that winter gloom relinquishes to the warmth of spring, the story of my two friends turns to renewal.\u00a0 Nicole\u2019s boys are smitten with farming and will be tagging along with Paul.\u00a0 Dennis brought his grandson Lee into his operation and passed his skills on.<\/p>\n

I will think of Nicole and Dennis when I see their fields.\u00a0 I will think of them when the perfect green sprouts push out of the soil.\u00a0 Their time here has ended, but the work goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a tough winter here west of Sleepy Eye.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean the weather.\u00a0 It was soft as far as winters go.\u00a0 I mean the loss of two good people. As we turn toward spring, a crop will get planted.\u00a0 It always does.\u00a0 But I won\u2019t be waving in my tractor cab to Nicole …<\/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-122696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 07:26:46","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\/122696","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=122696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122699,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122696\/revisions\/122699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}