Farmfutures

When digging the burial plot for Kevin Goodman’s urn was going to cost $500, his son Christian — as any farmer would do — said he’d dig the hole.

And when Christian, farming neighbor Duane Mann and friend Max Upah dug the prescribed measurements, they determined the hole too shallow. So, they dug it a foot deeper — again, as a farmer would do.

At the burial site, Christian retrieved a cup of dirt from his truck and poured it into the hole. The urn with his dad’s ashes was placed down on that special dirt.

“That dirt was from the pitcher’s mound at Iowa State,” Christian said. “From now on, my dad is always on the mound.”

Fitting for the Iowa farmer who once was a walk-on pitcher for the Iowa State University Cyclones.

Problem is, Kevin’s last pitch was a curveball that his family still has to put into play: He ended his life Jan. 7.

And the stakes are still the same — carrying the farm into its fourth generation, which also was the greatest challenge of Kevin’s lifetime.

Sell the farm?

The path for the Goodman family farm changed when Alice, Kevin’s mother, died in November 2020, two years after her husband, Don, died from complications of Lewy body dementia. Her will forgave family loans and divvied up farm ownership equally.

“Grandpa didn’t have a good transition plan for Dad either,” said Gary, one of Kevin’s brothers. “Mom said to Dad at some point: ‘Why do you want to make this easy for Kevin? Your dad didn’t do it for you. You had to buy your two sisters out. Make him buy out his siblings.’ ”

Gary is angry. And that started with the first farm corporation meeting after Alice died. With one farmer among the five children, the plan proposed to the farm corporation was this: Continue farming for five years and then sell everything. Kevin and Gary had opposed that.

Within four months, the family was only speaking through their individual lawyers. Two years later, a majority of the corporation’s shareholders — Kevin’s siblings — voted that cattle couldn’t be run on the property. Kevin and Christian were running about 1,000 head of feeder cattle, and the family was operating a farm-to-table beef business.

After that, the corporation bought out two of the non-farming siblings, putting a farm with a low loan percentage into deep debt. In 2024, a third sibling filed for a settlement. That lawsuit is pending.

“I’m the only one still on my brother’s side,” Gary said, referring to his surviving siblings.

Kevin’s wife, Dana, and her three children are also aligned with Gary. They talked about their experience to help other farm families better navigate farm succession.

“There was no reason that it had to go this way,” Dana said. “This definitely could have been set up in a way that everyone could have been happy right now. And it could have made sense.”

Crucial communication

The Goodmans look back on two generations of hard, silent work managing a feeder herd and row crops.

Ranchers often joke about forgiving what’s said while working cattle. But it’s the silence that resonates. In this family, the silence started with Clarence Goodman, Kevin’s grandfather, who started the farm.

“Communication from generation to generation was never good,” Dana said. “They never got to have those crucial conversations in a safe space. That needs to be done. And sometimes it’s personalities. It’s that generation of how they were raised, the dynamics of a family.”

So, that’s lesson No. 1. It’s also Christian’s single regret. He wonders whether being willing to walk away from the farm could have helped him save his dad.

“From the moment they read Grandma’s will, I thought, ‘This is not going to end well,’ ” Christian said. “Maybe if I just left, maybe I could have made him realize: Let’s just pull the pin on this thing. But I couldn’t leave my dad hanging.”

Bring in expertise

Kevin knew the farm needed an infusion of corporate knowledge and cash. In the tradition of a farming community that survived the Depression, he turned last year to a childhood neighbor who owned several farms in the Haverhill, Iowa, area.

Kyle Oetker was all in. Kevin’s parents once helped his family, and Oetker rattled off the stories of family after family helping a farming neighbor through three generations in the community.

“I was OK with making an investment that didn’t generate income because I knew the annual principal on the loans would be paid at the bank,” Oetker said.

With a successful career as a controller for equipment manufacturers and now a manager at Horsch, Oetker was leasing land to Kevin and knew him and his abilities.

“I knew his yields were wonderful. And he had succession: He had a son that wanted to farm,” Oetker said. “For me, he had the whole package. In his case, the ownership of his home farm was really what created the issues.”

Oetker, Gary and Dana, as representatives of her husband’s estate, see opportunity for the farm to succeed beyond the current lawsuit.

“The main reason that I was investing is I didn’t want the farmland to be sold,” Oetker said. “We’ll keep going. We’ll keep the train on the track here.”

Whether the Goodman farm will continue as a family business is a fading question mark, but still debatable.

Kevin and Dana’s son Brennan, a veterinarian, challenges the notion. “I don’t think the farm is going to be part of our legacy,” he said. “It’s not going to be passed on beyond us.”

His farming brother disagrees. “I think we have a better chance at structuring this thing correctly than what we have ever had before,” Christian said. “Given the personnel involved now, I mean, there’s a chance to at least hold the asset together. And that’s the main thing, really, even if none of us actually go out there and farm.”

Kevin Goodman’s legacy

The mission for Dana is for people to remember the man she knew and loved. “I want people to still talk about him, like we did today,” she said of Kevin.

Dan Runner of Runner Seed shared that sentiment.

“Kevin’s the type of guy where his legacy needs to be continued on,” Runner said. “People need to know who he is. People need to learn from what he’s been through.”

Dana often speaks of her husband of 39 years as though he’s still next to her: “Don’t shy away from him. He’s worthy. … He made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives.”

Among Kevin’s impact on his community was coaching softball and baseball. With that in mind, the family asked funeral attendees to bring baseballs and gear for donation to local youth programs. They collected about 1,000 baseballs and a small mountain of gear.

Also, excess funds from a GoFundMe account set up to help with mental health bills and funeral expenses eventually will go to a baseball scholarship in Kevin Goodman’s name.

“What’s really driving me is I just want to continue to make my dad proud and live in a manner that is respectful of the life that he lived,” Christian said. “To some extent, you look at this and you say, ‘Man, this guy, he went through so much pain and suffering, and he still lived such a good life.’ I don’t want it to be for nothing.

“My dad’s legacy is not how his life ended. It’s how he lived it.”

Focus on mental health: A farmer’s final days

On his last days on earth, Kevin Goodman took care of his family and the farm.

“Kevin worked up to the last day,” said family friend Kyle Oetker. “He paid all of his landlords. He really had his ducks in a row.”

But tying up financial loose ends is not a warning sign to a family when the farmer is known for paying his bills. The warning sign came Dec. 22 when Kevin first attempted suicide. His family urged him to check into a mental health facility. Because such care wasn’t covered by insurance, he declined.

For a farmer suffering from a mental health crisis because he’s worried about bills, the cost of getting help adds to the burden. And so, the farmer goes back to what he knows — working on the farm.

“That needs to change,” said Dan Runner of Runner Seed. “It’s OK to be vulnerable.”

Long before his father’s suicide, Christian Goodman learned to do just that. “You need to know when it’s OK to reach out and you need to know where your limitations are and where your knowledge ends and who to contact when you reach the end of what you know.”

Christian’s first mental health counseling experience arose from a case of the “yips,” a sudden, severe loss of fine motor skills, which affect his ability to throw
the baseball back to the pitcher. It worked.

He’s been in counseling for a couple challenges since then and returned to therapy to manage the stress of the family farm transition and losing his father. Late last year, Christian even connected his father with a counselor. And Kevin’s wife, Dana, recently joined a grief therapy group.

“I’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” Christian said. “I’ve done things wrong. … I think it’s just part of life. You’re learning. And I was fortunate that I got myself in front of a counselor when I was young. ”A call for help can be made to an organization by friends, family and neighbors of the farmer who needs help.”

“As you can imagine, the farmers themselves aren’t too keen on signing up — pretty proud folks,” said Ben Smith, operations manager at Farm Rescue. “That’s the main thing: just trying to get everybody in the agribusiness who knows these families to contact us.”

Resources

Here are some mental health resources and farm assistance programs for farmers and ranchers:

Farm Aid. Call the hotline at 800-FARM-AID Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.

AgriStress. Call or text 833-897-2474 at any time in Colorado, Connecticut, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association. Call its 24-hour national helpline at 800-662-4357 or TTY at 800-487-4889. Or visit samhsa.gov.

Avera Health. Call its farm and rural stress hotline at 800-691-4336.

Farm Rescue. For operational assistance, call 701-252-2017, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central time. Email info@farmrescue.org, or send mail to P.O. Box 28, Horace, ND 58047.

Farm Rescue offers statewide services in North Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Missouri. The organization has volunteers available in nearly every state.