Let Freedom Ring! Farming towns don't shut down!

Local welder, Luke Forbes, fixes the planter right in the field on Sunday morning.

It goes without saying that farmers don't often take breaks, and that includes weekends and holidays.

This is especially true for Independce Day this year, with planting already delayed for weeks because of continuous wet weather.

As the weekend approached the sun was bright and hot and the forecast looked promising- which meant long days and short nights for the farmers (here and across the country as rain has kept much of the country from planting, cutting hay and harvesting wheat.)

But in order for our farmers to plow through weekends and holidays, it often takes other people in the community also willing to do the same!

On Sunday the planter broke down. This could have been disastrous. The forecast is calling for rain on Monday evening, which means Matt needs to plant every minute he can. Before the weekend we did not have a single bean in the ground and it's already pushing too late.

When Matt went to fold up the planter to move to a new field, something snapped in two and he was stuck!

A phone call and less than 15 minutes later, local welder and boilermaker Luke Forbes was set up in the field and working hard to get Matt back rolling.

It took several hours, but Luke, who has returned to the area for the summer to start his own welding shop, had Matt good as new and allowed him to run the rest of the day and well into the evening without issue!

Luke's Sunday "house-call" gained Matt precious hours he would have lost if he would have had to wait until normal business hours!

We are blessed to have well trained welders like Forbes, who make themselves available to farmers 24/7.

In addition to planting this weekend, wheat harvest started for us. When grain is being harvested, it also has to be hauled and stored or sold somewhere!

Mace and Papa Steve take lunch back to the semi while unloading at our local elevator on Sunday morning.

This means that whenever farmers are running, and wherever they are running, local elevators are also running! These elevators take anywhere from one to a dozen employees to stay open! All of these people also give up their weekends and holidays.

But nothing sounds or looks like Freedom more to us than a much needed weekend of work and we are thankful for all those that also worked so our farmers could too!

Meyer eating lunch in the fields, watching Daddy work!

Our combines lined up and ready to start wheat harvest in the next field.