Volunteer Farm Rescue - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Volunteer Farm Rescue

Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on volunteers to help in their mission.
For six years Farm Rescue has been able to attract enough volunteer man power to help plant and harvest crops for more than 200 Farm Families in crisis.

Some of those volunteers travel from across the state, or even across the country, to help a complete stranger in need.
Shaun Sipma traveled to southwest North Dakota this week to get a first hand experience at being a volunteer for Farm Rescue.

(Jack Rutledge, Peach Tree City, GA) "I'm from Peach Tree City Georgia."

Jack Rutledge, from Peach Tree Country to the Wheat Field Country, he's a long way from home.

(Jack Rutledge, Peach Tree City, GA)  I'm out here because I love farming, I like to run the machinery and this is just beautiful country."

Country that he once only saw from the air.
JR, as friends call him, is a retired Delta Pilot, then Firefighter, educator and all around connoisseur of learning.

(Jack Rutledge, Peach Tree City, GA)  I've always helped other farmers and kind of been supervising now.  It was a challenge to me, can I learn this, can I learn the technology, can I work with the equipment, can I understand the farmer and how the operation is done."

This is JR's second year with Farm Rescue.
He is a licensed CDL truck driver, and his mission this week was not only help Farm Rescue but me as well.

With harvest getting underway almost everywhere all at once, and other Farm Rescue cases already underway, they needed one more combine operator for a few days.
Not being at the helm of a harvester in many years, and never working with the new technology I did do some training before I arrived.

(Shaun Sipma, KX News-Farm Rescue Volunteer)  "Really has been an interesting ordeal trying to learn everything there is to know about a combine after not being in one for about a dozen years."

I was fortunate enough to have a farmer give me a, well crash course, while I was doing a story north of Minot recently.
Then JR spend a few hours with a refresher course when I arrived and then it was time to really get to work.

(Shaun Sipma, KX News-Farm Rescue Volunteer) "There's a lot of reason for me to get it right, now only the money for the equipment, but for the livelihood of the farmer.  He's kind of looking to us to help him out. This means a lot it really does."

What I found is there is a lot to keep your eyes on at all times, even when the GPS guidance system is on.  
The reel height, is it too far out or in, the speed of the reel, the speed of the combine, the height of the header, how much grain is coming into the machine, is any of it being kicked out the back, any big rocks ahead to worry about, how full is the hopper, is the grain cart ready for an on the go dump or do I have to find a parked semi to unload.
It's busy work.....


(Shaun Sipma, KX News-Farm Rescue Volunteer) "It's a huge learning curve.  I'm just amazed at how technical these combines are but once you kind of get used it a little bit, just small adjustments and your just running hands free and just making sure everything is just flowing the way it should."

For the better part of two days, I ran the combine while JR ran the Farm Rescue semi into Scranton to dump at the elevator.
And before they left for the Mayo Clinic for Marv's surgery, Bernadine Jorstad hopped into the jump seat for a look at how the equipment was running.

It was an experience all of it's own and certainly gave me an even greater appreciation for the work that is done at harvest and the people who volunteer for Farm Rescue.

Near Regent Shaun Sipma KX News.