They would have been there in 2012 when the drought hit. They would have been there in 2017 when Beth got sick. Martin had avoided those payments by buying used equipment and running it longer than it was supposed to last. The 2366 had given him 16 years. It hadn’t been fast. It hadn’t been modern, but it had been paid for.
And in farming, what you don’t owe matters more than what you own. Dennis Kohler still lives in Broken Bow. He’s 71 now. He doesn’t farm anymore. When people ask him about the years he spent running new equipment, he says it was exciting while it lasted. Tom Worth, the farmer who went bankrupt in 2014, still drives truck in Omaha. He’s 66.
He hasn’t been back to Broken Bow since the auction. Greg Yates retired from the dealership in North Platt in 2023. He’s 68. He doesn’t talk about the Broken Bow years. The 2007 KIH7D10 that Greg tried to sell Martin in September 2006 is still running somewhere. It’s changed hands four times.
The current owner bought it in 2021 for $63,000 with 4,200 separator hours. Martin Hesser doesn’t know where it is and he’s never thought to ask. He just knows that on September 7th, 2006, he had 72 hours to decide and he used all of them to say
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