The Bank Gave Me 90 Days to Save My Family’s Iowa Farm. The Woman at the Auction Wasn’t There to Buy It

My name is Dale Hutchins. I’m 61 years old, and I farm corn and soybeans on 640 acres outside Nevada, Iowa.

My great-grandfather broke this ground with horses in 1902.

For a while last year, I was sure I’d be the Hutchins who lost it.

It didn’t happen all at once. Farms don’t fail all at once. They bleed.

First came the drought. Two summers in a row, the corn burned up in July. Crop insurance covered some of it, but not all.

Then corn prices dropped to the lowest I’d seen in fifteen years.

Then the combine broke, and I took out an equipment loan to replace it, because you can’t farm 640 acres with a combine that won’t run.

And through all of it, my operating loan at the bank kept growing.

I’m divorced. Have been for twelve years. My ex-wife lives in Des Moines, and my daughter is a nurse in Minneapolis. I didn’t tell either of them how bad it was.

That’s the thing about farmers. We’d rather lose everything quietly than ask for help out loud.

In March, the letter came.

The bank was calling the note. I had ninety days to pay the full balance or they would begin foreclosure proceedings. The land, the house, the equipment, everything.