Community harvests crop of late farmer
By Katherine Garcia
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TABOR, Iowa (KCCI) — Harvest season is always hard. It takes around-the-clock work and tons of experience. But, for the Vanatta family, this time is even harder.
Thirty-nine-year-old Cole Vanatta died in a tragic tree-trimming accident on his family’s farm in mid-September. His brother-in-law, Dan Morse, said it’s been a rough couple of months for his family. Leaving behind his loving wife and three children.
“It’s still pretty fresh for everybody,” Morse said. “There’s still a lot of healing going on.”
Cole also leaves behind his family’s farm of 150 years. With so many acres of crop left untouched for the season, 50 farmers from surrounding small towns decided to help out. The group is harvesting nearly 1,000 acres of land over the course of a weekend.
“We’re going to bin a little bit of the corn, bin some beans,” said organizer, Clint Blackburn. “We’ve got a lot of moving parts coming today.”
Cole’s wife, Shannon Vanatta, said with so much at stake, these farmers are literally lifting tons from her shoulders.
“They kind of just pick up, where I don’t know where to go with it, and they just said ‘I got this,'” Vanatta said. “And they took over and it’s been great.”
Equipped with four-grain baggers, 15 combine harvesters and roughly 25 auger wagons, dozens of farmers weave the big machines in and out of the fields like a dance. It’s a testament to who Cole was.
“Cole was a good man,” Blackburn said. “Cole was someone who gave the shirt off his back to anyone.”
For Shannon, this time of year will always be hard, but she knows she has a big community to back her up.
“I’ll never be able to repay people for what they’re doing today, but I’ll try,” Vanatta said.
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