Charles City FFA crew returns from recovery efforts in Nebraska

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

After a full weekend of hard work, mud, sweat and a few tears in Colfax County, Nebraska, members of the Charles City FFA had one regret.

There just wasn’t enough time to do more.

Ten Charles City FFA students and seven more from Rudd-Rockford Marble Rock left last Thursday evening for a farm near Schuyler to assist in recovery efforts with Drew Wolfe. Wolfe’s cattle and farming operation had been devastated by the recent flooding along the Missouri River, to the point many of his feedlots have been lost and cattle are still stranded.

When the floods came, Wolfe said there were only three hours to leave the farm. He could see his cattle running away from the Platte River that was rushing onto the property. Wolfe estimated that more than a third of his cattle were lost.

The group of volunteers stayed in Sioux City Thursday night, arrived in Schuyler early Friday morning, worked all day Friday and Saturday and returned home on Sunday.

“I was sad. I did not want to leave, because we had done so much for the farmer, but we felt like we could’ve done so much more if we had the time,” said Charles City FFA student Lynn Hoeft.

Charles City FFA advisor Bret Spurgin, along with Jim Lundberg and RRMR FFA advisor Hannah Hartman, led the crew of 17  FFA students and six adults to help provide flood relief. Together, with help from the family and some Schuyler FFA members, they cleared, tore out and rebuilt 4 to 5 miles of fencing that had been wrecked by the flooding.

“I think it would’ve been really cool if we could’ve gotten a full week down there, and helped even more,” said Charles City FFA member Lauren Connell.

Connell said the crew realized it was going to be a muddy couple days when they approached the farm on a gravel road and came to a point where it was too muddy to get the school vans through. They vacated the vans and rode in a pickup to the farm.

“All the fences were down. There was still standing water. There weren’t many cows,” said Connell.

“There was no real place to start, so we decided to clean fences to start and see where that takes us,” added Charles City FFA member Justin Heyer.

Kellen Hevican of KCHA radio, who is from Nebraska and is a friend of the Wolfe family, was with the work crew, as was Matt Hoeft of the Floyd County Cattlemen. The students said Hoeft provided the guidance they needed.

“He kind of taught us how to do it as we went,” said Connell. “He knew how to do it and led the way.”

The crew spent most of its time clearing debris from the fences, putting posts back into place, putting new fasteners on, and rolling and unrolling wire. There was one short break on Saturday, when the Schuyler soccer team and Schuyler 4H members brought the crew lunch.

“From a disaster of that scale, it honestly didn’t look like we did that much,” said Heyer. “We put a lot of hours in, but then when you stand back and look at it all, you realize it’s just a small portion of the work that still needs to be done.”

The students said the Wolfe family was grateful, and told them that the work that was done was going to save everybody else multiple hours of labor. As they were leaving, some family members were in tears.

“I felt fulfilled with the task we had done, but there’s still a lot more we could’ve done,” said Heyer. “If we would have gotten a couple more days of work, it would’ve been beneficial.”

Other Charles City students in the crew were Anna Krumwiede, Marissa Daniels, Bronson Forsyth, Joe Heidebrink, Max Deeter, Dan Laube and Jacob White. RRMR students were Jayden Jorgenson, Maggie Hain, Mac LaCoste, Dawson Schreiver, Sawyer Salisbury, Trey Norby and Nate Rankin.

The FFA members raised about $3,500 during a 2-hour radiothon last week and collected an additional $2,500 to offset trip costs.