The third week of March this year will see a couple of farm neighbors hauling a used 32-row, 15" modified corn/bean planter to another farm neighbor.

What is so unusual about one farmer helping another?

Farmer neighbors helping one another is not unusual, although it is not as frequent now as it was in the past. But this neighborly gesture has a twist that is unusual, even though understood to those of us in this electronic community. A neighbor in Kentucky will drive to Indiana and pick up another neighbor to help load the planter, and then truck it to the third neighbor in Kansas.

Your writer was fortunate enough to be involved in the scouting trip and make measurements to be sure the trailer involved could be loaded and hauled legally. As Dave Morgan of Indiana had business in our hometown, he stopped for a visit and involved us in the operation. All plans have been made, and next week Terry Wimp of Kentucky will begin one of his many adventures hauling farm machinery with his truck and gooseneck trailer combination. Dave will ride shotgun, providing technical support, navigational skills, and general moral support in the operation. No doubt Terry's notebook computer will ride in the cab as well, as he consults his databases as only Terry could do.


The planter was not an impulse purchase!

I recall over a year ago Mark Veits from Kansas posting on our farm discussion boards that he felt Case-International Harvester cyclo planters would be a good platform on which to build a better way of accurately placing soybean seed into his Kansas farm. He asked many questions about procedure, and began plans to build a narrow row bean planter combining parts from two front-folding corn planters. During the planning phase, he found a neighbor in our area of Illinois had already built the machine he had in the planning stage, and it was for sale. After discussion with Ramsey farms from near Casey, Illinois, Mark just had to look at that bean planter to get ideas.

Last summer, Mark's brother and farming partner purchased a used Ford truck on eBay for their feedlot operation that was located in New Jersey. Since the truck had to be driven from New Jersey to Kansas, Mark made a one-way trip by plane to the truck, and began a winding trip home, visiting many of his farming neighbors in various states on the way home. We got a chance to visit for a few hours, as I gave a tour of our farming operation, ending just a few miles from the bean planter Mark wanted to observe.

Mark ended up buying the planter, telling the Ramsey crew he would pick it up later. Having been such a long time waiting for confirmation, the Ramseys were beginning to think Mark had changed his mind when we showed up to survey transportation problems.

Now the plans are almost set, the date will be determined soon when the planter will be moved to Kansas from Illinois by a neighbor in Kentucky and his neighbor in Indiana.

The old saying is true, the world keeps getting smaller.

In our grandfathers' time, threshing, harvesting, and baling hay were almost always jobs that involved neighbors. As machinery made these jobs easier, often close neighbors drifted apart, since close physical contact was not as necessary. This varied by community, some still having strong bonds with each other, and some beginning to feel hostilities as the competition for rental land became fierce. Those areas that lacked in neighbor-to-neighbor contact suffered without their individual knowledge. Often we in farming are quite independent, as the battle with nature while growing crops and producing livestock sometimes overcomes our understandings that we all are important to each other. A good support group in a farming community is a valuable commodity, one that should not be taken lightly.

In July of 1998, I posted a story to this site about an electronic community titled "Bobby's Board of Directors". In that piece we discussed the formation of electronic help groups some farmers were producing using e-mail as a base. Several farmers were involved in discussing various problems, from personal farm problems, cropping plans, to shop procedures. As the internet allows us to get closer to others throughout the world, we have the ability to share in our acquired knowledge from the school of experience, as well as technical knowledge learned by others in the group.

We just cannot all individually experience everything needed to run a well operated farm, as the art of farming requires diverse knowledge. The old thinking expressed by farmers talking about their family was often, "Well, if he can't get a job anywhere else, he can stay home and farm." Those days are long gone, as a successful farm needs a crop and livestock manager, machinery repair expert, as well as the skills of a lawyer, accountant, and banker.

Since most of us cannot be expert in all the fields of study required to run a successful farm, we must outsource some of the skills we might lack. Often, consulting with a group on the Internet and through e-mail, we can help each other with some of these problems, since many experts might not realize how their profession is applied to a farm.

Forsake not the old friends, but strive to make new friends.

Your writer is blessed to live in a great community where most all farmers still are involved in helping each other. The far-ranging friends made through the computer are great, and give more of a worldwide perspective. We have enjoyed visiting with farmer neighbors in England (Farming land near the Sherwood Forest region that has history in agriculture since 1000 AD!) and Australia, as well as several other countries. An engineer in Turkey often posts in one discussion board and offers even more diversity, with ideas that are much different from our own. Even with all those different viewpoints, the old friends and neighbors are never forgotten, as they are an important part of our life.

Still, making new friends from greater distances allows us to expand our thinking, and understand even better that we all need each other badly just to survive in this world.

©John Dappert 2004