Editor’s note: this letter was submitted and is beyond the typical word limit, but in celebration of National Ag Week, March 17-24, it is being printed in full.
To the editor,
In August of 1975, we bought a 30-acre farm and went back to Arizona. In the spring of 1976, on March 18, we made it to the farm.
South Dakota wasn’t very kind to us. Our moving van caught on fire. We were at Hwy. 281 and Wessington Springs Rd.
Remembering 1976 was in a statewide drought, and a lot of years of the 50 years have been dry.
Thanks to the government farm bill, it helped us through those dry years, as well as the bigger farms, too.
I think back to those early years of farming. Not many in the area gave us much of a chance of making it.
We did need help in November of ’76. Irene (my wife) started working at the South Dakota Development Center at $2.72 per hour and her check probably kept us on the farm, as well as all of her help on the farm. Hear that, guys!
On the internet, I found that small farms dropped by 250,000 in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Another 50,000 went away from 2017 to 2022. In South Dakota, 500 farms were lost every year from 1975-1988.
After a few years of farming, I went to a farm sale to buy a tractor/loader. I didn’t get that, but came away with a quarter of land. That helped our chances some. Then CRP came around, and we lost rented ground to that government program!
Things were getting pretty bad, so we sold our cattle and paid off debt, and I started working nights at the SDDC and farming days. Both Irene and I were putting in a lot of hours and running on three to four hours of sleep. Then Irene started having dementia problems. I told her to retire, and I would keep working and caring for Irene for 10 years.
Then, in 2014, I received a call that Farm Rescue would plant the wheat crop along with SDWG (now Agtegra), helping with the spreading of fertilizer and spraying the wheat crop one time without charging us. That was on Good Friday of 2014. That was the best wheat crop ever. Lots of prayers were answered.
Not so much a good farm story from a small farmer, but it made a real nice love story of a small farm farmer caring for his wife. Irene passed on December 18, 2016. I was truly blessed that I did that for her.
March 18 marks 50 years on the farm, and I’m still thanking God every day that I am still here.
Roald Amundson
Redfield
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