Neighbors, friends and family help Bresnahan family after farm tragedy

by Kelli Boylen
freelance writer

“I respected my dad as a child, and then he earned my respect as an adult. But what I didn’t realize was how much respect Dad had from other members of this community,” said Sheila Halweg about her father, Neil Bresnahan of Waterville.
Neil, age 71, died as the result of a farm accident Thursday, September 20. By the end of the day that following Sunday - just three days after his death, neighbors, friends and family had harvested and bagged about 1,100 tons of corn silage from the family’s farm.
Neil farmed with his son, Sean, and the help of his wife, Sandy, near Waterville. Neil and Sandy also have three other children, Sheila (Dan) Halweg of Calmar, Shelly (John) Lydon of Waukon and Amanda Williamson of Rapid City, SD. They have eight grandchildren and Neil really enjoyed his time with them.
Sean and Neil had been having some problems this fall harvest with keeping some of the equipment going, but the timing actually ended up to be a positive in the family’s lives.
When they started harvest the beginning of September, they had to replace the gear box on their chopper. Once they found out it was going to be out of commission, Neil and Sandy headed the 10 hours west to visit their daughter, Amanda, and her sons, Brock, age nine, and Branden, age five, for several days. Neil even had the chance to attend Grandparents’ Day at the boys’ school.
Even though the chopper was back Friday, September 14, Neil decided that morning to attend Grandparents’ Day at the school of his granddaughter, Ainsly Lydon, in Waukon.
The Bresnahans chopped their grazing corn September 15 and 16, and Sunday they started having issues with their bagger. They borrowed a bagger from Gibbs Family Dairy, and when their chopper went down again September 18, Shawn Gibbs came over to help them finish.
They fixed the chopper and started back up Wednesday, September 19, only to have the corn head break. Sean, Neil and Dan worked until about 9 p.m. that night and almost had it fixed. Neil said they would finish in the morning when they had daylight.
Thursday morning, Neil and Sandy had breakfast, and then he headed to the shop. Sean loaded up some cows and bull calves to go to the sale barn and then went to find his dad. He called his mom to see where his dad was, and then went to the shop.
Sean found his dad pinned from the chest down under the corn head, which had tipped. He knew right away there was nothing that could be done.
They later figured out what had happened. The corn head was held up by a chain hooked to a bale fork on the bucket of a tractor. Overnight the hydraulics of the tractor had settled down enough to allow the chain to slip off.
Two local fire departments worked with airbags and other equipment to recover Neil. They transported him to the hospital and the family was able to say their good-byes there.
That very day others started helping out. Their veterinarian, Ryan Hammel of Waukon Vet Service, and other neighbors came out to see what could be done. Four calves had been born that morning. Hammel not only took care of them, he cleaned out a calf condo, bedded them and got the calves settled in.
A former employee, Steve Evanson, took the cows and calves to the sale barn for them.
Their two full-time employees took over what needed to be done with the animals.
Their closest neighbors, Rob and Nita Grangaard, drove five hours to meet Amanda and her boys so they didn’t have to make the long drive by themselves.
Friday, other family members, friends and neighbors showed up to do what they could. That same Friday, Sean Bresnahan spoke with Shawn Gibbs. The Bresnahans' corn was getting pretty dry and really needed to be chopped. Shawn, his brother, Chris, and Darrell Troendle started making phone calls.
Saturday, there was a John Deere chopper donated by Waukon Implement, the Gibbs' chopper, and a total of 15 wagons and tractors moving. They set up two baggers, one at the farm with the dairy cows, the other at the farm where Bresnahans keep their heifers.
The insurance adjustor even came out to assess the crop for drought damage Saturday so they didn’t have to leave a strip to be checked.
Shawn Gibbs said they had no problem finding enough people. In fact, as word spread, people were contacting him asking what they could do. “People didn’t care what they were asked to do, they just wanted to do something to help.”
He says he was worried they wouldn’t have enough people to keep going Sunday, they had plenty of help then, too. A total of about 35 to 40 people showed up that Saturday to help, and about 25 showed up the second day. The crew worked from 9 a.m. to dark Saturday, and about noon to five Sunday.
Several neighboring women coordinated the food for the harvest crew, and Nita Grangaard made sure everyone was fed. Food was served at both locations where they were bagging. They even kept track of who had stopped to eat and who hadn’t, and took food out to those who were not willing to stop what they were doing in the field.
While many were working to get the silage and earlage in, others worked on winterizing equipment that could be put away for the year and did some fixing on equipment.
The week after Neil died they were able to get all the earlage done with the help of family and friends.
“We can never repay everyone for all their work, kind words and graciousness they have shown us,” said Sean. “They did all this because they wanted to help, not because they want to be repaid. They all knew dad would have done the same thing for them.”
“We were just overwhelmed with the support,” says Sandy. “We live in the best place in the world.”
Sean says they still have people offering to help, and he admits he may take them up on that when the family's 105 acres of corn remaining are ready.
Sean says the farm is one man short now, and they really miss him for many reasons. Neil was the one who ran errands, did mechanical work, booked the feed and trucking. He was the one who researched what corn varieties to plant and what to use for spraying. “He took some of that information with him,” the family said. “We believe most of it is written down somewhere, we just need to figure out where it’s at.”
“What I miss the most is talking about what we're going to do on a given day, and talking about our plans,” said Sean.
Sheila added, “Our dad was the consultant. He was always saying, ‘What do you think about this?’”
Neil and Sandy were married in 1964 and moved back to her family farm in 1977. Their children were 12, 11, 10 and two when they moved, and for the first four years Neil continued to work as an insurance adjuster and Sandy and the kids would do the evening milking and chores. They were milking about 20 cows in a stanchion barn.
They built a freestall barn in 1981, and a double-8 parallel parlor in 1993. Sean joined the operation full-time in 1990, and at that time they were milking about 50 cows. They built a new freestall barn in 2008. They currently milk about 185 cows.