Back in the fall of 2024, our community lost a young man in a horrific combine accident and a farm wife to cancer. They were our friends, it was a lot, and I wrote this.
Fast-forward to the spring of 2025, and I nearly ignored the email I got from a man in London.
Prairie Farmer and Farm Progress are owned by Informa, a global events company based in London, England. The man who reached out was Terence Church, who heads up digital content for Informa’s communications division. My column got flagged as a Neal Award finalist, which brought it to his attention. He wanted to bring a film crew to our neighborhood and make a short film about what I’d written.
Informa is a big, big company, with 14,000 employees worldwide. At that level, Farm Progress is a rounding error, and I honestly figured they’d mistaken me for someone else. I was wrong about that.
By late May that spring, Terence and his Brooklyn, N.Y., videographer were here on the farm. We spent the better part of two days tromping from farm to farm, shooting video of everything from massive sprayers to barn cats. Spring flowers in the wind. Corn freshly planted and wheat ready to turn. We shot in the FFA greenhouse and in our church, and we spent time with both families mentioned in my column.
It was hard and heavy, but there were moments of lighthearted joy, too. Like when Calen Mahr opened wide the booms on the sprayer and I got to see that through the eyes of folks from London and Brooklyn. They loved it and thought it looked like Transformers. The videographer wanted to get low and have Calen drive over him because what a shot.
“Drive over? No, mate!” Terence said, no doubt picturing liability lawsuits.
We came back to our house in the evening for a good Midwestern steak dinner. And then we came in my office and recorded my voiceover. I don’t think anyone will be hiring me anytime soon for voiceover work, but honestly, it was an almost holy process. Revisiting it all, out loud. Thinking about what our friends have endured.
And that’s really the power of something like this — of a piece of writing or a film. It puts you in the shoes of the people who’ve lost. It grabs your heart and demands empathy.
We are a diverse people, from London to Brooklyn to Bushnell, Ill. But the human experience is universal. We love and we lose. And we keep loving. And we keep going. And hopefully we’re a little better to each other every day.
And hopefully, whoever might watch this will stop and think, for a moment, before they do that thing that might hurt them. They’ll realize it can happen to anyone, anytime, in a heartbeat. And maybe it’ll save a life, and a family.
Harvest is rolling on, all across the great American Midwest. Our wish is the same: Be safe.
Comments? Email holly.spangler@farmprogress.com.