Don Harpster: an inspiring farmer

I remember the first time I met Don Harpster.

He stood so straight and tall, and as he held out his hand to me, I started to introduce myself.

“I know who you are,” he said with a welcoming smile. “My wife and I fight over reading your column first!”

That was a long time ago.

I was managing editor for a regional newspaper, busy in the office all day, then covering many evening and weekend agricultural events, and felt my battery needed re-charged much of the time.

Sitting down with Don and Marilyn Harpster for a short visit proved to do just that while lifting my spirits enormously.

My sister had married into the Harpster family, and my nephew Todd is their great-nephew.

Farm boy

Don told me he had been born a farm boy, through and through.

One of seven children born in nine years on an Ashland County farm, he learned early on that family working hard together builds a foundation within, one which life simply cannot erase.

The father of those children, John Harpster, long ago purchased the farm where my sister now lives, and paid in full for it before finding the courage to propose to Helen, a sweet neighbor girl.

Born over the next nine years were: Gerald (Mose), Marge, Don, Bob, Russ, and twins Carlton John (Pug) and Jean.

Those years of making a living through farming were challenging, with some years seeming impossible.

Farming, fishing, family and church were John Harpster’s loves, and helped keep the family thriving through the crush of the Great Depression.

Legacy

In looking back over his long life, Don recently told Todd’s wife, Carrie, it makes him proud that Todd is keeping the legacy going.

Todd is farming the land that Don’s father, John, took great pride in establishing a lifetime ago.

Don said it makes him happy to see Todd involving his young children as much as possible in hopes of igniting that same drive and desire for farming.

Todd and his brother Scott grew up in the same home as Don and his siblings.

The farm sits along a busy state route, and though it was much less traveled when Don was a boy, he recalls the night a big blizzard shut them in.

A man was attempting to pass by their place, when the blizzard proved otherwise. The five older kids agreed to share a room with the twin babies, a boy and girl, so that this stranded traveler could have a room to himself.

“I’ve had a great life,” Don says with conviction. “I can’t tell you how much it means to see the legacy farm continue on as a farm.”

The first

He recalls such things as his father being the first in the community to own the very first tractor with rubber tires, and how neighbors came to see it.

“And I believe Dad had the first combine in Ashland County,” Don told Carrie.

Don speaks of playing in the woods so long ago with his brothers and the neighbor boys, passing through it on their way to help with a chore somewhere.

“Is the spring still running in Stone’s woods?” he asked, almost as though he was re-living a walk in his memory and had just come upon it.

“Yes, it is still running,” Todd’s wife said with a smile.

Mose

When Mose met the girl he would marry in 1948, Beulah had a dear friend named Marilyn who was clearly a gem.

Don asked for a date, and the two would later marry for a lifetime, raising a family while farming and running a highly successful livestock marketplace for hogs.

Mose and Beulah began dairy and crop farming on land that John Harpster had worked. Mose died when he was only 48 of a massive coronary while on his tractor.

Beulah and her three sons decided to carry on, the Holstein herd and acreage to support it continuing to grow.

Todd, the oldest son of Mose and Beulah’s oldest son, David, married Carrie in 2008 and the couple is busy raising three children, their second son named Johnny, a nod of tribute to the honorable man who started the family farms, as well as to his youngest son, Carlton John.

Keep on

“Farm efficiently, and things will turn around. Hang on. Don’t give up,” Don advised.

“We’ve been through cycles like this before, and I can tell you from this place in my life, the farm life is a great life and it is worth fighting for.”

This gentleman lifted my spirits back in the mid-1980s when farmers were struggling against incredibly high interest rates combined with skyrocketing fuel prices.

All these years later, at age 90, he still knows how to inspire the farmer in all of us.