Suffering often arrives on quiet feet and dwells behind closed doors. In October 2013, in a surreal span of mere hours, the script flipped on every facet of young Matt Hulsizer’s life. With a crop in the field, the Illinois farmer, 26, faced a maelstrom of potential bankruptcy, loans, lies, and the lifeless body of his father—death by suicide.
Intent on salvaging the operation from the brink of complete collapse, Hulsizer made a conscious choice to expose the skeletons of his family’s past. No more secrets or isolation.
Three years later, on a perpendicular track of pain, Hulsizer’s farming brother-in-law, Andrew Bowman, 26, watched his father succumb to the ravages of cancer, after a long, inevitable goodbye. Projecting steel, Bowman wore a stoic mask in public. In private, he was crushed—struggling with clinical depression.
Pressure. Inner demons. Weight. Expectations.
In tandem, Hulsizer and Bowman bounced to farming’s center stage as young bucks in charge of multi-generational businesses. Emotionally spent and wary of the financial pitfalls ahead, the farming duo sought solace in each other’s counsel: The two operations became one.
Sorrow tastes the same on any tongue, but for farming families already prone to seclusion by the physical boundaries of rural life and the insular nature of turnrows and tree lines, turmoil often leads to pronounced isolation, i.e., pain is bottled and more easily hidden from the world.
The consequences of denial or withdrawal are extreme, according to Hulsizer.
“We tell our story and pray it helps someone,” he says. “There is help out there for any farmer who thinks they’re alone. Never, never be afraid to tell someone and never be afraid to walk away because life is worth infinitely more than some dirt and tractors.”
A Deadly Daisy Chain
Home to some of the best farm soil on the planet, northwest Illinois’ Knox County is Hulsizer’s long-time stomping ground. Composed of coal black dirt atop flat to rolling high ground perched between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, his fields are in the geographic middle of the Corn Belt, not too far north or too far south—just right. In a nutshell, a superb spot to grow crops.
A fifth-generation farmer, Hulsizer, 34, grew up on a hog operation that expanded into row crops in the early 2000s. He attended college and majored in agriculture business with a minor in crop science, followed by the serendipitous meeting of his future wife, Liz, during crop scouting. The pair were married at 25 and 24. To outside eyes, Hulsizer’s life ticked all the standard benchmarks. However, beneath the pleasant surface, a fuse steadily burned.
“My family had a history of mental health issues and psychological abuse going back way past my dad, David, and leading directly up to him,” Hulsizer says. “There was a chain of dysfunction that was long-lasting with no resolution. I look back now and it’s all simple to see, but hindsight is easy.”
Rewind to 2009. Heavy, incessant fall rain. More rain. Wet fields. Grain harvest in December. Corn at 26% moisture. Field work jammed. Anhydrous and hog manure application backed and stacked. All told, the fall of 2009 was a loss of control for David.
“He couldn’t handle the fact,” Hulsizer explains. “My dad was geared to control everything—dominate and demand every little detail. But 2009 pushed things beyond his control and he wasn’t going to admit trouble to anyone. He secretly quit paying on two life insurance policies and it’s evident that although he was already in a downward spiral, things were speeding up.”
Following the slog of 2009, market salvation beckoned in 2010, but David was in too deep. Over the next four years, grain prices reached lofty peaks: 2010 – $6.29; 2011 – $7.87; 2012 – $8.31; 2013 – $7.40. In grim irony, the commodity climb played a significant role in David’s demise.
The dizzying jump in 2012 corn prices is particularly memorable, according to Hulsizer. “My dad had already marketed two years out and sold $3.50 to $4, when he could have got almost $8 right out of the field. Then fertilizer prices rose big-time, and he was paying $1,100 for anhydrous with $4 corn.”
A daisy chain of mistakes, along with the looming specter of exposure, triggered David to build walls of isolation ever higher. And blame? It all flowed downhill, Hulsizer notes.
“Dad chose to blame everyone else and he refused when we told him to get help. His solution was to work harder, but he was running from reality and it caught up. People that don’t farm maybe don’t understand what can really bring down a farmer—pride.”
River Over a Rock
On Oct. 12, 2013, in the heart of combining season, Hulsizer stirred on an early Saturday morning after a previous evening cutting soybeans until roughly 10 p.m. He answered the call of cattle chores, well aware his father was mired in a typically cross mood.
After feeding livestock, Hulsizer hopped into a loaded semi, drove to nearby bins, and began dumping soybeans with a particularly sluggish auger. Significantly, before leaving the farm with the trailer of grain, Hulsizer removed the air filter from the combine, intending to blow out the filter with an air compressor at the bin site.
Minutes after the soybean dump began, David called Hulsizer’s cell, aiming to crank the combine and cut beans—sans filter. The phone call rapidly moved from declarative to inquisitive to accusatory. David exploded: “He said I didn’t wake up early enough that morning to get things lined up,” Hulsizer recalls. “There was no way to make him see truth. Basically, I walked away from a fight and he cut beans alone that day.”
Toward evening, David made the final pass of his lifetime, left the fields, entered the house, and exited life by his own hand. River over a rock.
Beneath a cascading flood of reality, Hulsizer sucked in the grim details of the suicide, accompanied his father’s body to the funeral home, and was back in the harvest rows an hour later. Grief was no option for a farmer with a crop in the field and an operation to pull back from the precipice of complete collapse.
Yet, David’s suicide spiral plunged to new depths: The truth of the operation’s demise was about to spill.
Hidden Ghosts
Hulsizer had always been told the family farmland and equipment were paid off. Not so. Not even close.
Two days after David’s suicide, the bank came calling: checking account overdrawn by $4,800. One by one, the financial bricks of a false front fell away, revealing David’s shell game. “It was day after day,” Hulsizer says, “of finding the ghosts he’d hidden away.”
“Liz and I had no time to grieve. We had livestock work all day and were picking corn till 2 a.m. for almost two months. The only time my new wife and I saw each other was when we climbed into bed each night—we were splitting duties between livestock and crops. Friends and neighbors showed up, and I remember one 200-acre field that had five combines, six grain carts, and 11 semis. And then there were a couple other fields picked by neighbors. I never would have got through this without my wife, family, friends and neighbors.”
The cold numbers dictated two options: File bankruptcy or sell every piece of machinery and farm-related stitch. Matt and Liz chose the latter. Come December, he rolled all equipment off the farm and prepared to claw his way out of a deep hole of dysfunction.
What fueled his father’s collapse? Business failure, shame at dropping the ball on previous generations, or long-simmering familial dysfunction? “All of those, plus pride,” Hulsizer says. “A lot of it was just not staying within his means. It may look like the other guys are all doing good farming and you’re struggling alone, but that’s not true. Sometimes it’s as simple as, ‘Chrome doesn’t get you home.’ The truth is we all face the same things, but you can’t see the other guy’s problems below the surface.”
Indeed. Every farm has its own ghosts.
Case in point: Hulsizer’s brother-in-law, Andrew Bowman, was about to run the gauntlet. Two farmers; two sets of mental struggles; two heavyweight losses; two intersecting paths of life—one bond.
Burying Business
In 1875, Civil War veteran John Wesley (J.W.) Bowman began walking west from Pennsylvania, seeking farmland and a fresh start. He passed fertile tracts in Ohio and Indiana, and spotted tempting stretches of cut timber in Indiana, but marched on, convinced better ground was around the bend. He was correct.
Two years after setting out, and presumably multiple resolings of his boots, J.W. drove a stake of permanence in Knox County, Illinois, in 1877. Almost 150 years beyond J.W.’s long haul, his great-great-grandson, Andrew Bowman, who works the same soils in Knox County.
Bowman grew up under the wing of his father, Lynn, and was encouraged to learn the nuances of agriculture, but he was never pushed toward farming. At an early age, in addition to fieldwork, Bowman was taught management skills, supply chain flow, and necessity of hedging, all while minding pennies toward profit.
An agriculture producer who never carried operating debt, Lynn recognized the dangers of teaching industry without a heavy dose of numbers and partnership lessons. Many an agriculture producer has left behind hardworking children lacking in managerial skills, and often in such instances, upon the death of the patriarch, the business structure is buried in the casket alongside the farmer.
Conversely, Bowman was shaped as a business manager and financial planner, in lieu of a future day when the wheel would pass from father to son. However, even considering the preparation established by the forward-thinking Lynn, the day came early.
The Same Coin
In 2000, age 47, despite no health vices, Lynn endured renal failure and a kidney transplant. He approached the ordeal as a matter of course; an adjustment; a hurdle of life. However, in 2007, Lynn was diagnosed with multiple myeloma diagnosis—cancer of the plasma cells, an especially pernicious disease of the blood.
Lynn knew. Bowman knew. The entire family knew. The clock was running on a near-inevitable outcome. Doctor estimated Lynn had two or three years to live.
On Sept. 11, 2016, at 63, nine years after diagnosis, well beyond the two- to three-year prognostication, Lynn succumbed to cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Each year of the nine was a blessing, but Lynn’s departure left Bowman on the mat, rudderless in the moment.
At 30, even though supported by his wife, Karlie, Bowman was reeling. “I’d lost two weeks of the season and now my dad was gone. No amount of preparation readies you for the loss of a mentor, colleague, friend, anchor, and father. I jumped into harvest without him, but I was on shaky ground because I had my own mental health issues.”
“It was surreal. It was like watching it all happen like it was someone else’s life, but it was mine.
Underlying everything, I’d been dealing with undiagnosed depression for a long time. I had to fight my inner demons and depression before things got worse. I got a Christian counselor and began to sort things out, from my own problems to my father’s death. Maybe someone thinks they can handle all the pressures of farming, and then handle all the pressures of life, without showing any cracks. That’s a dangerous road to go down if you insist on being alone.”
Bowman was not alone. Despite divergent family dynamics, Bowman and Hulsizer were two sides of the same coin.
Brothers in Farms
Departing from the Mayo Clinic on a five-hour drive back to Illinois, Bowman was comforted by the presence of his brother-in-law, Matt Hulsizer.
“We stopped to get gas going home, and I recognized the hurt in Andrew,” Hulsizer says. “Andrew was the best man in my wedding, and he’d already been there for me when my dad died. Now, I was going to do the same for him, but I also could see what we needed to do on our farms. I said, ‘I’ve been through this and you don’t want to be alone. I think we should start farming together.”
Bowman agreed. Brothers in farms.
Hulsizer had a 24-row, 30” planter and Bowman owned a 16/32 split-row planter. Each farmer had a combine. (They sold the combines and bought a single update.) The acreage was a 50-50 split, as was fieldwork.
“I remember Matt saying, ‘We’re making old men out of ourselves,’ and we both knew we should work together instead,” Bowman recalls. “We had plenty of hiccups when we joined our operations together, but not relational hiccups. We had to get our assets in sync. We had to nail down the division of labor. It was new and there were growing pains, but behind all that, Matt is my best friend. I think the world of him and farming together was the right thing.”
Working in tandem with family requires humility, according to Bowman, but also necessitates blunt discussion: A spade is a spade. “We have different skills, and we both recognize each other’s superiority, but we communicate and can cover. We’re both fine with the other’s domain as long as we explain everything and are accountable.”
Bowman is strategic; Hulsizer is tactical. Bowman assesses the long-term; Hulsizer measures the immediate. “We have no formal agreement and no contract, but we may do a contract as we scale,” Bowman explains. “For anyone considering any type of family farming, I’d advise them to rely on the need to know all numbers, because real transparency equals accountability.”
However, the No. 1 requirement for farming alongside family, cites Bowman, is a common outlook or lifestyle. “You can’t have a workaholic beside a vacation guy. You can’t be a condo-in-Florida type of person if your partner is a simple-house-on-the-farm person. Why? Your lifestyles will overlap in all ways.”
Hulsizer echoes the sentiments: “We don’t look over each other’s shoulders, because the trust has to be there from the start. The killer for any family-type operation is pride, and so we leave it at the door. I can’t afford to ever forget that that I’m not always right.”
OK
Only a few years beyond the passing of David and Lynn, the farm stage remains the same, but the actors have changed. Both Hulsizer and Bowman are keenly aware: Their stories of loss and struggle share a common thread with many farmers grappling with the weight of family history and vagaries of the market, compounded by the stresses of life.
Any business or industry can foster loneliness—but not to the hazardous degree of farming, where solo existence in a cab can be the norm for extended periods. Hulsizer and Bowman are constant sounding boards: “We don’t even have to talk,” Bowman says. “When we do, we can throw in humor or be blunt, but everyone needs to speak with someone else who identifies.”
“Asking for help is not weakness,” Bowman emphasizes. “Instead, by asking for help you are making an investment in your greatest asset. No amount of capital can surpass the human capital between your ears. Your head and heart are what makes your farm thrive. Protect them because your farm can’t be right unless you are at your best.”
“It’s OK not be OK,” Hulsizer concurs. “There’s so much help out there like Farm Family Resource Initiative with someone to listen at any hour of the day. Everything starts with a good relationship with the Lord and flows from that.”
“No matter what, it’s OK to walk away, no matter how many years or generations your family has been on a piece of land,” Hulsizer adds. “Never bury yourself or your family for some dirt.”
To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
How a Texas Farmer Killed Agriculture’s Debt Dragon
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs
Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer
Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields
Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?
Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack
Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior
Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig
Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer
Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice
Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History
In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer
Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows
