The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few — that’s the dilemma David and Dawnna Berndt found themselves in when a leg injury left David unable to operate his combine.

Yet the farm chores got done, thanks to a nonprofit called Farm Rescue that swooped in with some soybean Samaritans.

“So it was on July 30,” Dawnna said. “I get up at 6 a.m., and I see that I have three missed calls from him (David). And I go, ‘Well, that’s weird.’ So I call him back and he says, ‘I’m hurt.’ And that’s all he said — and so I come downstairs, and he’s at the bottom of the stairs … He’d been carrying an armload of water jugs down the stairs in the dark, on his way out the door, and he missed a step or two — and so there he landed.”

With help from their son Josh, Dawnna was able to move David to a car and drive him to a hospital.

“As soon as we got to the hospital and said he can’t lift his legs, the doctor knew it was something with his quad tendons. He had ruptured both quad tendons on his legs — right above his knee,” Dawnna said. “So on Tuesday he got in, on Wednesday he had surgery, and he was there for two weeks in Brookings — and then two weeks at the Encompass Rehab Hospital in Sioux Falls.”

Dawnna is familiar to many as the friendly face who has — for the last 24 years — sold vegetables at Berndt Family Produce stands in Brookings and Watertown. But the Berndts grow more than just tomatoes, pumpkins and sweet corn; and David’s injury prevented them from harvesting their soybean crop. David said his physical therapist hasn’t provided a prognosis on when he can climb back behind the wheel of his tractor, but assures him he is making progress.

“I’ve not been in a tractor for ten weeks,” David said. “I’ve really improved in the last two weeks. I did away with my walker finally.”

The Berndts managed to cut, rake and bale hay with help from their sons Josh and Jacob, David’s brothers, and a group of supportive neighbors — but those helpful volunteers are now busy with their own soybean harvests, leaving the Berndts in a lurch.

“They’re (Farm Rescue) doing all our combining — the soybean combining,” Dawnna said. “Farm Rescue is a group out of North Dakota, and they help farmers with medical or environmental issues, you know like … injury to the farmer rescues, or tornadoes and winds. There was a fire that took out a farmer’s entire fleet of equipment, and they were able to go and get his crop in and out.”

Since 2005, Farm Rescue has helped producers struggling with illness, injury or natural disaster get their planting, haying, harvesting, hauling or livestock feeding chores taken care of. David and Dawnna applied for help, and Farm Rescue deployed two of their roughly 1,000 volunteers — a retired Pennsylvania farmer and his nephew from Texas — to the Berndt farm south of White.

“There is no way we would be able to do — I mean we would be underwater drowning if we didn’t have these volunteers helping us. We just couldn’t do it,” Dawnna said. “I said, ‘why did you do this?’ And they said there’s a verse in the Bible that says, ‘If not me, then who? If not now, then when?’ And you know, it makes sense — they just wanted to help. They knew people were underwater so to speak and they just need help. The biggest challenge is getting the farmer to accept the help.”

She said it’s hard for Midwesterners to ask for assistance.

“I think we all are too proud to ask for help because we’re in South Dakota and we’re hard workers. ‘We got this!’ There’s that mentality — until you don’t,” Dawnna said. “And then I would say, you know, they (Farm Rescue) want to volunteer. They want to help out. This isn’t putting anybody out. It’s not inconveniencing them; this is what they want to do.”

Throughout their summer of suffering, the Berndts took comfort in the outpouring of help from not only Farm Rescue but also their children, their extended family, their neighbors and the employees who help Dawnna run the Berndt Family Produce stands.

“The amazing thing was to me was that the girls I had trained — they had been with me for a few years — and so I trained everybody to know everything about the business, so they can pick up where I left off if I had to, and they were just able to fly,” Dawnna said. “In the Bible, King David had his three mighty men that he depended on a lot — well, these are my three mighty women, and then I got two more after that. They took it by the horns, they said you go do you and we will take care of this. This doesn’t need you; your husband needs you — now go!”

Even with the soybeans now harvested, there’s always more farm work that needs doing.

“This isn’t where he (David) wants to be. He wants to be back in the dirt,” Dawnna said. “For a hundred-percent recovery though, it’s going to be a year. But he’s hoping to get into the combine … I don’t know when that’s going to happen.”

She encourages producers to learn more about Farm Rescue through the website farmrescue.org — and she encourages non-farmers to consider donating, to help ensure Farm Rescue is still around to help producers next season.

“Farmers just fight so hard to get their crops going. We just hope and pray that if there’s an opportunity to give, that people will donate to a really good organization that really does help the farmer,” Dawnna said. “Sometimes you don’t know even going into harvest if you’re going to get paid. Are you going to be able to cover the expenses that you got this year? You don’t know! And I think with Farm Rescue it’s the same thing — are you going to be able to cover the expenses to help people? They don’t know either, but they’re praying there will be enough people that will donate to bless the organization and the future farmers that need it.”

Dawnna and David are grateful to everyone — family, friends, neighbors and two strangers from Pennsylvania and Texas — who gave toil, tears and sweat to help during their hour of need; and she has faith next year will bring better days.

“Laughter and grandkids are the best medicine,” Dawnna said. “When Farm Rescue showed up, I decided this year I’m learning God provides — that’s all the time, and that’s Farm Rescue … God is providing, God will provide, God has provided. If He’s done it in the past, He’ll do it again. You know, we try to laugh a lot because otherwise you tend to cry, and there’s just no time for that. So let’s just laugh — and I’m not trying to stuff my feelings or whatever — we’re just trying to love what we’re doing.”

— Contact Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.