TRUMBULL, Neb. — A powerful June storm left a trail of destruction across farms south of Trumbull last weekend, toppling grain bins, overturning irrigation pivots and severely damaging crops during one of the most critical months of the growing season.
For West Fork Farms’ Doug Saathoff, the storm transformed a grain handling system that had served the operation for years into a tangled pile of twisted steel.
“We had a big, big storm come rolling through Saturday evening about 8 o’clock, 8:30,” Saathoff said. “We had a lot of hail. And of course we had wind or a tiny tornado or something happened here. Just took all of our grain bins out and a lot of pivots got flipped in the area.”
Saathoff estimates the hail reached nearly golf ball size, while winds exceeded 80 mph. Large piles of hail remained around the farmstead the following day.
The storm destroyed a grain handling system the farm had owned.
“Our pit is right here where we always dumped. And I went into this wet bin, and from there we transferred. We had six other bins sitting here that we could transfer,” Saathoff said. “It wasn’t a perfect system… but we’ve made some improvements along the way, and it worked for us. And it was nice to have. Made harvest kind of go faster.”
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The damage extended well beyond the grain bins.
“Crops are pretty rough. Pretty big area that it hit,” Saathoff said. “A lot of soybeans. There’s fields you can’t tell what was even planted just there. But we had corn was almost chest high, and now it’s just down to the ground in some areas.”
The storm also hit a large seed corn production area. Saathoff said the company he grows seed corn for had about 40 quarter-sections damaged and will determine whether fields will be replanted or abandoned.
For his own acres, Saathoff expects many soybean fields will need to be replanted, while he hopes much of the corn can recover enough to produce a crop.
The emotional toll, however, has been the hardest part.
“It breaks your heart really,” Saathoff said. “I’ll admit I started crying as I was coming up the road that first because it worked. It was a nice setup and now it’s all gone.”
Despite the widespread damage, Saathoff said many neighboring farmers are facing similar challenges.
“I’m not the only one,” he said. “There’s a lot of farmers in this area that have a lot of destruction and a lot of devastated crops, so they just keep on keeping on.”