My family owes a
98 year old debt.
I’m proud to still
be paying it back.
- RANDY
Systems Engineer
Corn & Soybean Farmer
My great-grandfather moved from Illinois to North Dakota in 1904 to start farming, but you won’t see a centennial marker on our farm today. In the 20s and 30s, times were tough, and farming was tougher. When the bank called the loan, like so many other farmers then, he couldn’t pay.
That would have been the end of our family’s farming story, if it weren’t for the hard work of my great-grandfather, and the help of his neighbors. With their support, he earned the farm back, and eventually passed it down to my grandfather.
My Grandfather came back from World War II and took over the farm. Times were good for a while; he met and married my grandmother and they had my father. But farming life is a series of challenges, and when my father was 15, my grandfather died of cancer.
At the risk of repeating myself, that too would have been the end of our family’s farming story, if it weren’t for the hard work of my father, and the help of his neighbors. They rallied around my family and helped us plant our crops during my grandfather’s struggle with cancer and guided my father the first few years after my grandfather passed.
This year will be my father’s 50th crop. And he will remind us, as he has every year, that we wouldn’t be farming today were it not for our neighbors who helped get him started at such a young age.
Farming is tough. It’s long hours and hard days. It waits for no one, and doesn’t care about your schedule, your hardships, or even your health. But we are tougher. Our hands may be calloused, but our hearts aren’t.
Farmers build communities. We have a responsibility, to be there for one another when times are tough. My father, my brother, and I have taken that responsibility on many times. We pray each time it will be the last, but we’re ready if it’s not.
That responsibility is why I’m a farmer. It’s also why I take pride in my job as an engineer at Case IH. Because when I build a tractor, I’m not asking myself: “Is this is good enough?” I’m asking: “Will this tractor make my neighbors proud? Will it help alleviate some of the hardships they have no control over? Will it answer the call when the time comes?”
My name is Randy. I’m a farmer and I make the best damn tractors in the world.
Because I owe it to my neighbors.
