Transcripts

MARK STEIL: The aftermath of a major hailstorm is a time-warping scene. In the worst-hit areas of Southwest Minnesota, like this part of Lincoln County, the avalanche of ice pushed the calendar ahead three months in 15 minutes. Cornfields are a golden brown, soybeans a just harvested stubble. Some trees have lost all of their leaves. What's wrong with this autumn-like scene is that it's still mid-summer. A few miles away, fields are a lush green.

The corn here, 10 miles northwest of Lake Benton, is hacked off at the 3-foot level. What were waist-high soybeans are now 6-inch stubs. Trees have been stripped of their leaves. Some branches show patches of bony white. The hail has pounded off the bark, revealing the inner wood. While the countryside has the hazy brown look of autumn, the air is the giveaway that this is not fall. It has the faint odor of decaying vegetation produced by the tons of plant matter destroyed in the storm.

JIM NICHOLS: Yeah, you lose it all in about 20 minutes. And most farmers, it's a quick way to lose $30,000 to $50,000.

MARK STEIL: The storm played no favorites. The title Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner did not help this man, Jim Nichols.

JIM NICHOLS: This was a nice bean field, and it's just stubs. Nothing will ever grow here. I should go out and disk it under, but I guess maybe we all hope for a miracle. Maybe it'll come back. But you can see that the plants are even dead. Most of them are broke off. But look at the ground. Again, it looks like a herd of horses got out and trampled everything, just huge holes in the ground where the chunks hit.

MARK STEIL: Nichols farms about 500 acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat in Lincoln County. His acres were on the southern edge of the worst-hit area. He says he's lucky to have the outside income his state job brings in. He says he will be able to stay in farming, though crop damage was extensive at his farm.

JIM NICHOLS: And the minute you can't see it, the pain kind of goes away a little bit. It's like this wheat field right here in front of my house. I went out in the combine. I didn't get anything. I got like two bushels to the acre. But I don't have to look at it anymore. It really doesn't-- it looks about now like it did before, but at least I know I went out there and harvested it. You just do that so you don't have to look at it.

[HAMMERING]

MARK STEIL: About five miles north of the Nichols farm, storm repair work is still going on at the Gackstetter farm. Today, it's a new steel roof on a farm building. A visit to the Gackstetter farm gives the term softball-sized hail concrete meaning. For most people, hail is a summertime curiosity, something which looks like popcorn exploding from the ground. Softball-sized hail is a destructive force. Here, it fell 50,000 feet, propelled by tornado-like winds, before it smashed trees, windows, roofs, and crops.

It covered the ground like a 2-inch snowfall. In the hours after the storm, an ice fog covered the landscape, hanging about 8 feet off the ground, where the hail-chilled air met summertime heat. Mike Gackstetter helps his dad run the farm.

MIKE GACKSTETTER: I guess this hailstorm could not have hit at a worse time, when economy has been depressed, the farming economy. And when you take one blow on top of another one, what are you going to do? If you didn't have insurance, you're basically wiped out for this year. Harvest only took about 15 minutes. So we saved fuel. So you got to look at the bright side.

MARK STEIL: On the Gackstetter farm, the field corn now is spiky stubs. Prized apple trees have lost most of their bark. Even the hardier trees on the farm could not weather the hail.

MIKE GACKSTETTER: You can see the walnut trees that were about 15 foot tall. These are about eight, nine years old. And they are broken off to basically about 8-foot high. You can see the bark is stripped completely off. And these, of course, won't live.

MARK STEIL: In the nearby town of Lake Benton, Farmers State Bank president Lynn Meier says Lincoln County, one of the state's poorest counties, faces more tough times because of the hailstorm.

LYNN MEIER: A large portion of the area has been completely wiped out, 100% lost crop.

MARK STEIL: Meier may well be one of the most popular bank presidents in Minnesota right now. Last winter, in a letter to potential borrowers, he wrote that hail insurance would be required for any farmer borrowing money from his bank. There was some grumbling at the time, but now one insurance adjuster working the area says some farmers that were hit by the storm are ready to give the bank president a kiss. Many farmers did not carry crop insurance, and for them, there is only the hope that emergency federal low interest loans will be made available. Predictions vary, but everyone agrees some farmers will be forced out of business by the hail storm.

For this part of Lincoln County, fall has come early. Their crops destroyed, farmers have plenty of time to get ready for next year. While some will leave farming, most probably will stay in agriculture. As one farmer puts it, we will survive because what we live for is the next spring planting. This is Mark Steil in Worthington.