Friends help harvest fields in memory of farmer who died in September

CALEDONIA, Ill. -- For five days, a steady stream of combines and semis rolled in to harvest George Muck's 1,000-plus acres of beans and corn.

After the 68-year-old farmer died in a farming accident in September, his family was left with the enormous task of finishing his fields -- in addition to their own -- in northern Boone County.

When friends, business associates and family initially offered a hand, the Mucks politely declined.

But help came anyway.

Family, friends and even a few people the family didn't know well pitched in to make sure the job got done.

They used their own combines and transport vehicles. They gave their time when they had their own plots to harvest. And they came during the busiest time of year without being asked.

"You know, I called the brothers that own the grain elevator to let them know that we'd be having more grain drop-offs," George's son Dale Muck said in the Rockford Register Star. "And they just said 'We want to help too' so they came with a combine and hired help ... I was just surprised, I guess that everyone wanted to do so much."

George Muck, who retired as an executive at the Dean Foods Co. in 2001, continued farming simply because he loved it.

More than a dozen people gathered over the five day-harvest as a tribute to him.

"I got a call from Dale and I thought it was a bad connection, but it was just that he was all choked up," said Suzette Muck, Dale's wife. "He was standing on a hill watching all the semis roll in, 'My dad would have loved this' he told me ... He told me 'Dad would really get a kick out of this.'"