Bringing a Ray of Hope to Farmers in Crisis

Listen to the podcast

Meet Bill Gross

In this episode, I sit down with recent Daily Point of Light Award recipient Bill Gross. He grew up on a North Dakota farm and went on to found the nonprofit organization Farm Rescue, which provides planting, harvesting, haying and livestock feeding services at no cost to farm and ranch families who have been affected by a major illness, injury or natural disaster.

Farm Rescue will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2025, and so far, the group of volunteers has helped more than 1,100 farm and ranch families in nine states. Gross remembers the first family Farm Rescue helped: a young farmer in western North Dakota had just lost his hand in a grain auger. He and his wife had a two-month-old baby at home, and it was time to plant the crops. “We came in and planted the crop for that farm family,” Gross says. 

Links

• Learn more about Farm Rescue, including how you can volunteer, donate, or apply for assistance.
• Read about the Daily Points of Light Award presented to Bill Gross and learn more about the program.
• Subscribe to 15 Minutes With a Farmer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Please note: This transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 minutes with a farmer podcast from successful farming. I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guest today is recent Daily Point of Light Award recipient Bill Gross. He grew up on a North Dakota farm and went on to found the nonprofit organization Farm Rescue, which provides planting, harvesting, haying and livestock feeding services at no cost to farm and ranch families who have been affected by a major illness, injury or natural disaster.

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise and life lessons.

Bill Gross: I grew up in central North Dakota. It was a cattle plus agricultural farm. The youngest of five children. you know, through my upbringing, I witnessed many hardships and challenges that farmers and ranchers had. It’s a dangerous occupation and it’s hard work also.

Lisa Foust Prater: So when you grew up and went off to college and what were your plans and career like after you left the farm?

Bill Gross: Well, my folks had some financial challenges through the 1980s, like a lot of farm families did. And my parents were not in any position to help any of the children take over the farm or get going on the farm. A lot of it was mortgaged and they encouraged all the children to go on to seek higher education, which we did. And, and that’s what I did. I went on to take training to become a pilot and I’ve been flying for UPS Airlines for over 30 years as a Boeing 747 captain around the world. But you know, my heart never left the farming community and I’ve always had a strong passion for the rural way of life.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right, you know, it is one of those things that really never leaves you. And I would imagine as you’re flying across the country and around the world and looking down and seeing farmland that it sort of, you know, takes you back and makes you think about your roots.

Bill Gross: Well, it does, you know, it certainly does. And that is basically how Farm Rescue started. You know, I used to go on mission trips through the church overseas to help people over there, everything in Croatia and Romania and so on, and did a variety of things. But I felt, you know, there’s people right here at home that need help. And, and also, like you said, you know, flying at 30, 40,000 feet across the United States and looking down and seeing all the patchwork of farms and such, and I always wondered, I wonder how those farmers or ranchers are doing, because I know the challenges my own family experienced. 

And so one day as I was going across the ocean, I fly long haul flights also, I think we were going between Australia and the United States and talking to my co-pilot. He said, what are you going to do when you retire? And I was only in my 30s, in my late 30s at the time. I said, I’m going to get myself a big John Deere tractor and planter, and I’m going to go and start in my own home state of North Dakota in the western part and pull in early in the morning at 6 a.m. at a farm that looks like it’s having a tough time. And I would get out and say, you know, put some fuel and seed and fertilizer in the planter and I’ll plant a few hundred acres for you free of charge.

And the co-pilots laughed at that and they thought it was kind of a crazy idea. And I said, is it really? You know, I’ve been flying for almost 40 years total for my career, traveling to virtually every country in the world. And I said, you know, when I retire, I don’t want to travel anymore. Kind of the opposite of most people. I want to help people. I want to return to my roots. I want to farm. Because I didn’t get that chance to farm on my own, you know, outside from my parents and such. 

So I came up with this idea called Farm Rescue. And I thought I would do it when I would retire when I was 60 years old, but a friend of mine encouraged me. said, why wait till you’re 60? You know, you may not be medically be able to do it. And he said, besides, he said, you know, think of all the people that could be helped between, you know, in your thirties till 60. And he encouraged me to start a nonprofit, which I did. The Farm Rescue is a formal 501 C3, a public charity nonprofit.

I thought, you know, how would this work? You know, and I thought, well, you know, there would be people that are like minded in businesses that would most likely donate some funds to help. And also that there would be volunteers, you know, be it retired farmers, be it people like myself that grew up on a family farm, but weren’t able to stay on the farm that they would have a passion for coming back and helping. And, you know, I thought, well, you know, the media has would help also because, know, it’s a human interest story. We’re doing good, they would help raise, I was sure that they would help raise awareness of our good, compassionate, altruistic mission. And that is what has happened at Farm Rescue.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so great. So how did you get from having a conversation in the cockpit of a plane to actually making it happen? You took that leap. Like, what was that like?

Bill Gross: Yeah, well, you know, I, like I said, a lot of us, you know, throughout life, we come up with ideas, but we come up all of us. It’s human nature reasons why we can’t do it. We don’t have time for it. We don’t have money for it. You know, there’s other demands in our life, but I thought, you know, I was single at the time. I thought I can do this. And I thought there are other like-minded people. Surely there are. And so I, I filed for the nonprofit status. We got our 501 C3 and then the first year in 2005 is when we started at least fundraising and so on and raising awareness at farm shows. in 2006, we started assisting farm families on April 11th. And I had a handful of volunteers, just five of them, including myself and just a small amount of donations and so on. And I had gotten one tractor, a John Deere tractor and one planter to use for free. And that first year we helped 10 farm families and they were, they were all, you know, very deserving cases. 

The first one was a young farmer in his thirties, where just two weeks earlier. He, got his hand cut off in a grain auger in western North Dakota and he had a little two month old baby and he had to plant his crop and, and such. So that was our first case. We came in and we planted the crop for that farm family. And the next one was another person got caught in a combine and such. We helped 10 farm families that year. And everyone just loved the mission of Farm Rescue that we were coming to these farm families that needed help in their darkest hour.

And also the sponsors could see that their money was being used wisely, that there was an actual impact for a family. And the volunteers loved it. And so they said, hey, let’s you know, let’s keep doing this. The volunteers started to, started to come in more and more and the donations and, and the applications and the applications for assistance grew also. 

And so every year since then we’re coming up on almost 20 years, next year will be 20 years that we’ve grown geographically and also the number of farm families we helped to now we’ve helped more than 1100 farm families in a nine state region. It’s amazing.

Lisa Foust Prater: That is just incredible, you know, and to think about those individual families and just what it means to them that when you’re going through some sort of crisis, a health crisis, a death, an illness, or some sort of disaster, and just the last thing you have the mental capacity to think about is how you’re gonna get the crop in or, you know, how you’re gonna harvest, how you’re gonna deal with your livestock, whatever it is. And just to have you guys come in and just be like, it’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna help you take care of it. You can focus on getting better or taking care of your family or whatever it is. That just what a relief to just get that boost and just that help. I mean, not only from a business perspective, but just what a boost to their mental health and just sort of restoring your faith in humanity to just that, you know, it’s going to be okay.

Bill Gross: Well, you’re right, Lisa. I mean, there’s so many aspects to this of what Farm Rescue does. Farm families, some of the comments they have made over the years of these, know, 1,100 plus farm families, they say that Farm Rescue and its, know, good Samaritan volunteers, which they often refer to them as angels in blue, we wear a blue type shirts and such. They say they come in and they’ve taken the burden off their shoulders and, and ease their worries that everything’s going to be okay.

I mean, we’ve had grown men cry and wives and stuff, and of course, and we’ve helped in all sorts of situations where the children have been injured or ill or they’re in the hospital and they want to be with their little children. I remember we helped one where I think it was as little as a four-year-old boy had cancer and other ones, they wanted to be with their children at the time. So we came in and harvested and such.

And all kinds of things happen in farming. We’ve had where they’ve lost limbs or a heart attack or breast cancer or brain tumors, everything, broken necks, broken backs, anything can happen, of course. And we’ve helped in all those cases, the family farm continue. And so it helps them, not only that family, but it helps maybe their children can continue the farm then, right? Or maybe their children can go on to higher education that they didn’t have to take on more debt. It’s good for the community, for the economic well-being of that small town in America and such. 

There’s so many aspects to this. the volunteers, a lot of them come back year after year. We have volunteers that have come back for some of them almost 20 years actually in a row. So that tells us we’re doing something right also that our people who financially support us are often repeat at year after year. The volunteers come back and farmers recommend us to other farmers and ranchers. say, hey, why don’t you, if something happens, they say, why don’t you call farm rescue? You know, they’re a good organization. So all that is, is positive feedback that we’re, doing a good thing and we’re doing it right. 

And I add one other thing, Lisa is that we don’t treat people as a charity case. We come in, people deserve respect. We do it the way they want it done, the way that farmer or the way that rancher wants it done, not the way we want it done, the way they want their farm done or their livestock fed. That is a high priority for us. So that’s how we do it.

Lisa Foust Prater: And people can learn more about Farm Rescue at farmrescue.org. That’s the best place for folks to go to read stories and learn how to volunteer or how to donate, right?

Bill Gross: That’s correct and there’s a lot of videos, there’s testimonials on there, you can watch actual farm families that were interviewed on what happened to them and what we did and see our volunteers in action and equipment and so on and also you can donate on there and you can see sponsor videos also the companies and places that support our cause and why do they support Farm Rescue and what they have seen as a benefit in their community.

Lisa Foust Prater: So Bill, I understand that you were recently presented with a Daily Point of Light Award, which was founded by President Bush to recognize people helping others through service. Tell me about that.

Bill Gross: That was a great honor for myself and for our organization. And it’s helping us to the publicity with that award, the Daily Point of Light Award that it raises awareness, like we said, for the volunteers to come forward, because that’s what that award is. That award is for people who have done good things in their community and have volunteered and helped other people. You can be nominated for that award. And I was and received it. And I’m just thrilled about it as representing our organization, Farm Rescue.

Lisa Foust Prater: I love that. That is so great. And those awards are so amazing. It’s so nice to have good news. There’s so much bad news in the world, it seems like. And those Point of Light Awards are just such a ray of sunshine and good news in the world. And it’s so much fun to look at those and see the folks that are doing good things in the world and just just seeing the good that’s happening. It’s so refreshing. So congratulations.

Bill Gross: That’s right. I tell people to I tell people that you know make it a way of life when people say you have any advice for for other people bill and I say well if you have an idea to do something don’t procrastinate and and go ahead and and start it and find like-minded people to do it and Make volunteerism and helping others a way of life not just a occasional thing make it a make it a daily thing. If everyone made it a truly made it a habit of providing service in a volunteer fashion in your community, it would make a huge difference in our world. And so I just encourage people to make volunteerism and service to others truly a daily thing. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Foust Prater: Well, Bill, you all are doing such fantastic work. I have just been so honored to talk to some of the folks that you have worked with and they have just been amazing to share their stories with me and just be so forthright in sharing everything that happened to them and I’m so excited to keep following you and sharing all the good work that you’re doing so thank you for all the help that you’re bringing to these farmers and ranchers. I know they appreciate it and we sure appreciate it too.

Bill Gross: Thank you, Lisa. Have a good day.

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Visit farmrescue.org to learn more about Farm Rescue and visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm. Join me next week for another episode of 15 minutes with a farmer.