Nate Anderson from Bayer along with Jody Young, Farren Young, Sydney Schneider, Addy Schneider and Kaity Guhlke at the Grain For Good check presentation.
Jody Young spends long days dedicated to tending his land so it will produce crops to help feed the nation - and maybe the world.
The Medical Lake area farmer's hard work and good fortune will allow a local club to get back on its feet and hopefully once again thrive. A recent news release reported that 10 charities each received a $5,000 donation as part of the Bayer Cereal Experts Grain for Good Sweepstakes. Young selected the Davenport 4-H Club as the recipient of the award.
According to its website, Bayer seeks to harness cutting-edge agricultural and environmental innovations for the benefit of farmers, consumers and the planet.
"My daughter is the leader of the Davenport 4-H Club and my granddaughter is also a member," Young said in the release. "I was incredibly thankful this donation from Bayer allowed me to give back to their chapter. The contribution will help the 4-H club keep telling the story of the productivity of our rural agricultural world to the public."
Daughter Farren Young is head of the Davenport 4-H Club and said this donation will be used to encourage community support and give back to the Lincoln County Fairgrounds. "This benefits not only local kids, but educates others and helps the fair and club achieve their goals," she said.
Young, his daughter and her husband attended a growers meeting, she signed him up and, out of the blue, his name was selected in random drawing.
"The 4H had kind of died in Davenport," Young said, and the $5,000 will help out a great deal."
Young, 64, has been in farming his entire life and did double-duty tending to his land while also working in the construction business until recently retiring this past April.
He grows mostly wheat and had dabbled in canola and grass seed, having just completed harvesting those two crops. "I (also) do quite a bit of hay," Young said.
Young farms about 1,400 acres just north of U.S. Highway 2 out near Fairchild Air Force Base, on the plateau above Deep Creek.
In describing the scope of his acreage, "It's all the bigger I want to be," Young said. "I got rid of some land that was marginal."
It was requiring too much work and was not productive enough. "I think it grew better rocks than anything," he joked.
Waking at the crack of dawn as he has virtually forever in his working life, Young likely needed all of the hours of the day to try to get back on track for the several week harvest. Because before he could start again, Young had to find a replacement combine.
Having what he described as a "catastrophic breakdown," his John Deere combine had a part break that caused a cascading series of problems and prevented him from unloading its crop. He was faced with the chore of trying to see if it was fixable or not on a piece of equipment that was "working flawlessly," Young said.
If not, it means buying a replacement that will run $10,000 – $15,000, used. But even spending that much will not provide a combine that truly measures up.
On the plus side, Young called 2018 a "phenomenal" harvest, and that the industry will survive the potential issues presented by the ongoing trade wars and issues with tariffs. He likened it to when farmers survived the 1980 embargo on wheat sales to the Soviet Union, punishment for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].
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