Larry Yockey . Big Yockey to his friends, had just finished seeding his 1,200 acres of wheat had he done countless years before. This year, he thought, was looking better than ever. Hopes for a strong season were ahead of him.
But he had been in a bit of pain earlier. A minor nuisance. Probably just a bit of the flu he can’t kick, he thought. But he went to the doctor to see.
After running some tests, the doctor discovered a spot on Larry’s back, and decided to check it out. A dreaded period of delay for anyone else for sure, but Larry went back to his farm, working.
Then as the ends of winter loomed, he received the news. Larry Yockey had stage four melanoma.
Though his initial treatments went well, they weren’t without cost. His body paid the price, with daily fatigue and bone decay.
And his cancer wasted no time. It spread rapidly. And with the treatments ongoing, this lead to almost debilitating affect throughout his body.
“The cancer has spread to my bones, so I have a broken hip and ribs,” he exclaimed.
And as the cancer grew, winter waned, and harvest was setting in. More worry came.
After more than 30 years of harvesting himself, Larry could not even climb into his combine, let alone steer it through a field.
“I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to harvest like I did in years past,” Yockey said.
Larry and his family begin to do the math on just what it would take to get through harvest.
Larry knew he needed help. He had to admit to his friend that harvest this year was just not something he could get done. A hard truth for such a man, in year past, had been able to do so much before.
His neighbors, always the helpful sort, had continually asked if he was going to be able to harvest on his own this year.
“I finally had to tell them, ‘No.’”
But as soon as he gave the word, a sigh of relief, as his friends and neighbors immediately offered their help. And over the next three months a group of 60 farmers from rural Washington began planning how they would harvest both their fields and those of their friend and neighbor Larry Yockey.
Larry’s daughter Amanda recounts the memory of getting a call from her dad. He said, “We don’t have to worry about harvest.”
“He was choked up, and I got choked up,” Amanda says.
His neighbor Mike Doyle said that not a single one of the crews ever hesitated to help Larry. Not a single question or sigh of stress. And by harvest time, the group had put together more than 18 combines and 20 grain trucks, determined to get what is usually more than 3 weeks work done in the span of only about 6 hours.
And before the sun had even set, the trucks had carried 74 loads of grain from Yockey’s field.
Even the main grain warehouse set aside receiving loads in from any other farm other than Larry Yockey’s for the day, just so it could all get done. And two volunteer fire department trucks maintained a safety watch the entire time. And a fertilizer company volunteered to keep all the dust down with their water trucks.
Larry even tried to lend a hand. He fired u his own combine, just in case. And he wanted to help, but Amanda remembers having to almost yell at him to sit down, knowing he needed to rest.
“One person I heard say, ‘Who’s yelling at Big Yockey? That’s Little Yockey,’” came the response.
Larry was completely amazed by the kindness and consideration put towards him.
“It’s just awe-inspiring to see how fast these fields are evaporating now,” Larry said. “Just gratitude. It’s not describable the gratitude I have for what’s going on.”
Larry is a well loved man in the community. He is a fourth generation farmer, nd farming has been part of his family for more than a century. He and his wife very house had been built by his grandfather in 1906.
“It was a way for everybody to pay him back for all he’d done for the community,” Doyle said.
Larry came back to farming himself in 1984, when he got a call from his father about needing help on the farm. He had attended college in western Washington, graduated, and had been working for Boeing near there.
“I like to hunt and fish and do outdoor activities, and I was spending half of my time driving to eastern Washington anyway, so I bought the equipment and the rest was history until the cancer shows up,” he said.
Larry personally thanked everyone involved as soon as he was able.
He is grateful for his doctor’s attention to detail as well.
“People don’t appreciate your GPs (general practicioners), and they are in short supply,” he said. “But they are invaluable out here in the rural areas…”
His daughter plans to take over the farm one day, but right now, Larry is back at it again, in the field working.
