A 19-year-old Mertztown woman helps run her grandfather’s farm while he battles cancer.
With approximately 600 acres over various locations and a herd of dairy cows, Mertztown farmer Bill Boyd needed help, but when he was diagnosed with cancer and needed chemotherapy, Boyd was desperate.
Although his daughters have roots in agriculture, they chose better paying jobs so it was a surprise for Boyd when his granddaughter joined him in the spring to help with the farming.
Boyd said it is hard to get help who already know how to handle the equipment.
Kelsey Nissley said she had worked on the farm since she was 5 years old and old enough to be in the barn helping.
“It didn’t matter if I was milking or not. I’d be in the barn petting the cows,” said Nissley.
“She always had a liking of the farm,” said Boyd. “Show her something and she knows how to do it. One time you have to show her and she picks it right up.”
“I enjoy working with the animals and the machines and it’s quiet and it’s easy, sometimes,” said Nissley.
Nissley worked on an organic vegetable farm, but when the season ended, she went to work for her pappy.
“Last year I also helped my grandfather and I realized how much I missed it,” said Nissley. “It was more of working out in the weather [organic farming] and here you’re in buildings, it’s dry, and I missed the animals.”
The biggest challenge for Nissley was getting everything done on time and then learning new things. She said there is always something new to learn, but the hardest thing was trying to fix things by herself.
“If something breaks, you got to be able to fix it especially if you’re mid-field. You can’t just say I stopped. You got to try and figure it out before you send it off to go get fixed,” said Nissley.
Nissley said it’s hard enough with just two people running the farm. Her pappy will be out in the fields harvesting and needs someone to run the grain back and forth and then someone will have to go back to milk so there is always a pause somewhere. She said it would take about a week without any breaks to harvest 150 acres of corn. The field that lay before us was going to be stored back in the grain bins and be ground down for feed.
“We got a double jeopardy this year, our crops are better now than we thought they would be, but everybody in 2014 had high prices for grain and all the inputs we bought doubled in price also so now we’re paying that double price for the inputs and our production is back down to where it was before 2014. Our price for our production is back down,” said Boyd. “Corn went up four or five times than what it had been. Fertilizer costs had doubled.”
Nissley said she learned a lot about how often you have to be at work. The operations sometimes could change depending on the weather.
“You can have a plan for tomorrow and then it rains and your plans are thrown out the window and you have to do something else,” said Nissley. “I found the operation here is not very strict. It’s pretty laid back and once you get in the busy season, there’s no stopping.
Nissley is mostly in charge of the cows and feeding the calves. She gets the barn clean and ready for when the cows come in for milking. She also gets to fix things as well as drive the tractors, till the soil, and mow the hay.
“Everyday is a challenge. Getting up everyday at the same time is a challenge. It’s exhausting. There’s days where you come home and you pass out because it’s just so exhausting to be doing what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t trade it,” said Nissley. “No way.”
Boyd, 64, hopes to retire in six years and said Kelsey has a lot of things to decide regarding her future.
“10 years from now, I’d probably be living at my grandparents house owning the farm. There’d be a few modifications. I’d probably raise my own calves, I wouldn’t sell them, and I’d probably have a few more animals here and there besides cows; probably goats maybe a pig or two,” said Nissley.
Nissley said if she has kids, she would probably point them in the direction of farming, but she would also want them to make their own choice.
Nissley smiled and said, “I’d say anybody can do it. It’s not just men. It’s kind of interesting driving the big tractors and getting all sorts of looks because I’m a woman driving a big tractor.”
Boyd said farming is just what he wanted to do with his life. He enjoys being his own boss. He said when the harvest goes to the stores and supermarkets and the shelves are loaded, to just appreciate where it came from.
