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David
“I am 17 years of age and this is my 2nd year doing potato harvest. I drive a big 18 wheeler Kenworth truck. The best part of this job is loading my truck. I like fields that are challenging, what makes them challenging is the huge hills and side hills. When I get to the field the first thing I do is deflate my tires to 35 pounds that allows me to get more traction so I can climb huge hills. Once my truck is full I put my tarp over manually which means I have to go to the back of the trailer and crank my tarp 8 times,…
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Classroom
“Some of my students are at harvest right now so everyone else is working on elective courses or computer work. I teach 6th through 12th grades and I have 15 students. Kids that are younger than 15 years old have German class in the morning and German class in the afternoon, in addition to the regular studies. So they are in school from 8am to 5pm, 5 days a week. When they start school at three years old, that‘s when they start to learn English. Until then they speak High German. They learn manners, alphabets, some bible verses and songs in kindergarten. The portable classroom is Kindergarten through 5th grade…
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Bud Gross
“When I am not working harvest and driving this truck, I am working in the Dairy Barn. That’s my main job. Spring time, I’m driving truck. Fall time, I’m driving truck but the rest of the time I’m in the barn. My Dad is head of the Dairy and I do the maintenance, trim hooves, feed cows or just whatever needs to be done. I have a beautiful wife and three girls. My favorite thing to do is drive truck during harvest, 16 to 18 hour days.” #agriculture #hutteriancolony
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Bernice
“This is my ride when I am working harvest. I do have a funny story…one summer my friend and I were supposed to be working in the garden. My Mom is the Gardner so we were in there by ourselves to transplant other plants into rows. We were so tired of doing it that we just didn’t want to do it anymore so we took the plants and dumped them in the corn patch and we said that there weren’t any more. Another time we took the ladies to the garden with the pickup. We pretended that it wouldn’t start and we made them push the pickup all the way…
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Amanda Gross
“We work hard in the kitchen; we have a lot of people depending on us. During harvest I am at the kitchen at 4 o’clock in the morning. We get ready to make breakfast for the harvest crew. They eat breakfast at 5:30. We set up a buffet line so they get their breakfast. They also make their lunch boxes. After breakfast we clean up a little bit, then at seven we make breakfast for the ladies and the children. We then get ready for the afternoon meal, that’s just for the ladies and kids. In between that time we get everything ready for dinner. We start making 80 to-go…
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Sean Miller
“I was a week over 21 years old when I went to boot camp. I was a truck driver in the Army, became a master driver and trainer. I was deployed to Iraq. I was there a year when I suffered a traumatic back and brain injury from a Humvee incident. We crashed into the back of another 5 ton Humvee in our convoy. The dust came up and we couldn’t see. We hit the back end and I went through the windshield. Because of that injury I am now unemployable. I’ve always loved to cook so I decided to go to online school and become a chef. I…
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Pat Hanford
“Somehow, when I was 8 years old I got it in my head that I was gonna start a boy’s home. That is my long term goal, that’s what keeps me movin’. If not I’d be sittin’ on a beach in Mexico or dead. Years ago I worked for a place where people were stealing from the company, I could see that was a dead end so I quit. I bounced from there to work in a feedlot for a dairy and that was how I was gonna finance the boy’s home. I wasn’t going to ask for the money from the government, I was gonna earn it. Life happened,…
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Mike
“I was born in the hospital at Elmendorf AFB when my dad was in the Army. I grew up on a farm; there were 5 kids in my family. We grew alfalfa and we had horses and animals. I showed sheep and cattle at the fair growing up. I had the grand champion heifer in 1963 and 1964. In 1966 I was reserve champion. I showed sheep at the same time. The one I remember the most was a 93 pound lamb that I sold for 39-1/2 cents per pound, ended up with $36. But boy I was rich. After high school I went into the Marine Corps where I…
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Mel Ziebel
“I went into the service when I was 17 years old; my Dad had to sign a waiver for me to join. Spending my 18th birthday in a fox hole, my superior officer put a gas can on a stick and sang happy birthday to me and gassed the entire platoon. What more could a girl want, right? I was active for two years and inactive reserve for 6 years, only traveling to South Carolina for basic and Georgia for AIT. Then I was stationed pretty much back home at Fort Lewis in Washington. My duties were Record Telecommunications. It was my job to transfer information and messages from one…
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Daniel Chism
“I had to put myself out there for other Veterans. We were losing a lot of guys to suicide and drinking. About 5 years ago, I went through a dark spot myself and that’s when I had to get involved in the VFW. I had to put myself out there and open up. I was helping those who served and helping myself at the same time. It has been therapeutic for me. The VFW needed officers so I became the chaplain. I did a 22 mile walk for Veteran Suicide Awareness. That was hard. I carried an American flag and had a friend shadow me in his jeep. I had…
Illuminating the values of country living
