Tracker Pixel for Entry

Aunt Deloris

Last Word | October 11th, 2017

Deloris Boehmer is my last living aunt. She’s the only remaining member of my parents’ generation in our family. She’s 88, and lives in Edmore, North Dakota, about 40 miles northeast of Devils Lake.

She’s got a pretty nice house in Edmore—used to be the Lutheran parsonage. She and my uncle Leonard—my mother’s brother—bought it about 40 years ago and moved off the farm into town.

But they didn’t quit farming. The farm’s just a few miles out of town and they kept the machinery there and drove out there to work. They drove together until my Uncle Leonard died, about seven years ago.

She buried him, and kept on driving to the farm to work. She’s still doing it. At 88.

Aunt Deloris is a little spitfire, about 5 feet tall if she stretches up on her tiptoes, a bundle of energy who weighs less than 100 pounds. Aside from a chronically bad back, she keeps pretty fit, and her work uniform in the summer is cutoff jean shorts, tee shirts and tennis shoes. In the winter she substitutes blue jeans for the shorts and puts on a sweater.

She farms with her son, my cousin Jimmy. Together, she and Jimmy farm 13 quarters.

[A quarter is a quarter of a square mile, or 160 acres. Deloris and Jimmy’s farm would be a field just over 1.8 miles long on each side, if it were square.]

Deloris and Jimmy raise wheat, soybeans and canola. When I talked to her Tuesday afternoon, the third of October, she had just gotten off her combine, getting pretty near the end of the canola harvest. She was taking a break because a hunter from Minnesota had made his annual pilgrimage to their farm to hunt ducks, and he offered to drive the combine for the afternoon.

Usually, by the time he arrives, the combines have been put away and the grain is in the bin. Not this year. And so the city boy is getting a special treat this year, driving a big old combine.

“I’ve never seen two years like the last two,” she told me. “So much rain. We can’t get anything done.”

The wheat got combined, “but it isn’t worth anything,” she said, mourning this year’s low grain prices. She’s hoping the canola, a relatively new crop for her, puts some money in the bank this year. And she and Jimmy still have soybeans to combine.

“I can’t remember combining in October before,” she told me. “I remember one year we finished on September 21st—I remember that because it was my mother’s birthday—and I thought that was late.”

But by the end of last week she’d finished cultivating the wheat stubble—four quarters of it—and was ready to start on the canola fields, probably later this week. Before she’s done this fall, she’ll have cultivated ten quarters, “black and pretty.”

Aunt Deloris farmed with her husband Leonard all of their 59 married years. She grew up on her parents’ farm, not far down the road from my Grandma and Grandpa Boehmer’s place, which became hers and Uncle Leonard’s farm after Grandma and Grandpa died.

She grew up driving machinery and milking cows. She married Leonard after he came home from World War II, and she was an active partner in the farm.

During some lean times on the farm, she took a job as a security guard at the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) “pyramid” down the road in Nekoma, and she later worked as an aide at the Edmore nursing home, just down the street from her house. But through all that, she still found time to be active on the farm.

Uncle Leonard had a long battle with cancer, spending his last months in a nursing home in Grand Forks in 2010 while she ran the farm. When he knew he was dying, he said he wasn’t worried about the farm. “She has always been a better farmer than I am,” he said with a smile.

When he was in Grand Forks, she put up a new steel building on the farm for their machinery, and didn’t tell him. “I didn’t need him worrying about things like that,” she said.

Uncle Leonard was a John Deere man, believing that if it wasn’t green, he didn’t want it. Deloris wasn’t so sure. After Uncle Leonard died, she decided she’d had enough of that green stuff. “I drove that old John Deere for too many years,” she told me this fall. So she bought herself a great big red Versatile tractor, and decided a new combine was in order too, so she bought a big gray Gleaner. Neighbors said Uncle Leonard was rolling over in his grave. She paid for them in just a couple years, when crop prices were good, and still drives them. Jimmy runs the green stuff.

With a new swather and a new sprayer, she’s got about all the equipment she needs. Oh, and there’s the new semi too. She drives that in the fields, but doesn’t take it on the road, leaving it to Jimmy to haul the grain to the elevator.

Uncle Leonard had a pretty nice pickup, but it wasn’t quite what Deloris wanted, so she bought herself a new Dodge Ram four-wheel drive a couple years ago to get back and forth to the farm, and to drive to Devils Lake for groceries. It takes her a little work to climb up into it, but when she’s sitting behind the wheel with a smile on her face, she’s the Queen of the Road.

My cousin Jimmy, a REALLY good farmer, a strong man with an easy smile who handles the heavy work on the farm and who has land of his own and his own machinery (the green stuff), is happy with the arrangement he and his mom have worked out.

They’re steadfast partners, day in and day out, making decisions together about what and when to plant, when to fertilize, when to sell, and the dozens of daily choices that need to be made on a successful farm.

He’s been farming nearly 40 years, and runs a snowmobile repair business in the winter. That, and chasing after grandkids all over northeast North Dakota, keeps him plenty busy. He also looks in on his mom most days—she is 88 after all, and lives alone—and reports in to his sisters, who have moved away and have families of their own.

Tuesday he was fretting a bit about the canola—it was just a bit too wet. There was a big wind blowing, and the elevator man said “Just wait a couple hours before you combine it and it will dry out.” Jimmy replied “In a couple hours it will be dark.” So he and the duck hunter got on the combines and took it just a bit too wet, but Jimmy thought that would be okay.

Aunt Deloris found some odd jobs to do around the farm. She wasn’t going to quit and go to town before the men did. In fact, she says she has no plans to quit farming any time soon.

“My neighbors all say I should quit. Heck, what would I do?”

___________

[Jim Fuglie, among other things ex-Executive Director of the Democratic-NPL Party, was recently cited as the most influential blogger in North Dakota in the Fargo Forum. You can read more of Jim’s writings about the Bad Lands at theprairieblog.areavoices.com]

Recently in:

By Winona LaDukewinona@winonaladuke.com The business of Indian Hating is a lucrative one. It’s historically been designed to dehumanize Native people so that it’s easier to take their land. ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,”…

SHSND delves into their ornament collectionBy Jenny Yearoushistory@nd.govIn 2017 we received Christmas ornaments from the North Dakota Former Governors’ Residence. The ornaments were gifts from local chapters of the Germans from…

Saturday, December 21, 7 p.m.Drekker Brewing, 1666 1st Avenue N, FargoEmbrace the naughty and celebrate the dark side of the solstice. From 7-close, Drekker’s mavens of mischief transform their taproom. There’s a photo booth,…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com I’m really sick of the “Nobody wants to work anymore” narrative. Like, really sick. I can’t hide the eye rolls and I don’t even try to hide them anymore. In fact, I feel like they’ll…

By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comA new type of Civil War: “smash-and grab” capitalism and healthcare The Divided States of America has the greatest economic inequality among wealthy nations on Planet Earth and has birthed a…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com In this land of hotdish and ham, the knoephla soup of German-Russian heritage seems to reign supreme. In my opinion though, the French have the superior soup. With a cheesy top layer, toasted baguette…

By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.com Local band Zero Place has been making quite a name for itself locally and regionally in the last few years. Despite getting its start during a time it seemed the whole world was coming to…

By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com Writer-director Nicole Riegel’s sophomore feature “Dandelion” is now playing in theaters following a world premiere at South by Southwest in March. The movie stars KiKi Layne as the…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comIn 1974, the Jamestown Arts Center started as a small space above a downtown drugstore. It has grown to host multiple classrooms, a gallery, performance studio, ceramic studio and outdoor art park.…

By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comHigh Plains Reader had the opportunity to interview two mysterious new game show hosts named Milt and Bradley Barker about an upcoming event they will be putting on at Brewhalla. What…

By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…

By Josette Ciceronunapologeticallyanxiousme@gmail.com What does it mean to truly live in a community —or should I say, among community? It’s a question I have been wrestling with since I moved to Fargo-Moorhead in February 2022.…

By Faye Seidlerfayeseidler@gmail.com On Dec 5, the Turning Point USA chapter at North Dakota State University hosted an event called BisonFest. This event featured Chloe Cole, a former trans kid, known for detransitioning and…

By Curtis W. Stofferahn, Ph.D.Curtis.stofferahn@email.und.edu In June, two events markedly contrasted the difference between two different visions of agriculture: precision agriculture and regenerative agriculture. The dedication…