In September 2020, sixty neighbors drove onto a farm outside Crosby, North Dakota, bringing eleven combines with them. They came because Lane Unhjem, who was 57, could not bring in his own harvest.
Earlier that month one of Unhjem’s combines caught fire. He had a heart attack while working to put it out, and he was airlifted to Trinity Medical Center in Minot. His peas were already off. His durum wheat and his canola were still standing.
A close family friend named Jenna Binde set out to organize help. She and two local farmers started putting a harvest day together. Binde told CBS News she did not have to do much of the organizing.
Within two hours of him being flown out of Crosby, I had over half the equipment and people already lined up.
Farmers started calling and asking if they could help, she said. Locals who knew she was close to the Unhjems reached out to her, and she never had to call anyone herself.
On September 12, the sixty neighbors arrived with eleven combines, six grain carts and fifteen semis. Most were farmers or farm hands. Binde said anyone within ten miles counts as a neighbor where they live, and while most came from inside that ring, some drove farther because they were good friends with the Unhjems. They spent more than seven hours on the durum wheat and the canola.
Binde said it was a smooth day with no hiccups, which she had not expected from that many different operations working the same ground.
It did not stop there. About a week later another group came back for the soybeans. Another crew was lined up to move the hay bales. Another group put together a meal so everyone could sit down and eat together at the end of the work day.
When CBS News published this story on September 21, 2020, Lane Unhjem was still in the ICU in critical condition. That is where the reporting ends, so that is where we leave it. We do not know how it turned out for him.
What was already in place
Nothing had to be built for this to happen. The combines were already in the county. The people who knew how to run them were already in the county. The one thing that had to exist was a person everybody knew to call, and that was Binde, because she was close to the family.
The sixty neighbors who came that day still had their own fields standing. Binde said they put that behind them and made the Unhjems the priority for the day. She also said she did not think the whole thing was a big deal at first.
This is just what we do around here when someone in our community is in need of help.
That is the same shape as the story of the red dress at West Point: one person short a specific thing, and somebody close by who already had exactly that thing. The distance between the two is usually short. What is usually missing is the introduction, and closing that gap is the whole idea behind MeetaNeed.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by Caitlin O’Kane for CBS News, published September 21, 2020. Retold here with the details as that report gives them.
