Saturday, August 26, 2006
The Plains Trip, Leoti, Kansas (Day 1)

Two hundred twenty miles east and a bit south of Denver, and about the same distance west of Wichita, Kan., on Route 96, where land is dotted with grain elevators, sits the small farming town of Leoti. Named by Native Americans and pronounced Lee-oh-tah, this little town (population 1,440) boasts one of the largest cattle feed lots in the nation, the Hi Plains Motel (with a popular coffee shop on the second floor) and the county courthouse.

As the locals say, no one new comes into town without being noticed by everybody. Over dinner at the VFW Hall, they also told us that there aren't many 16-to-25 year olds living in Leoti. But we managed to find a few.

One of them, a 24-year-old farmer named Cole Carpenter, was happy to talk to us, and even spent some time showing us around. Tall, cowboy-handsome, with sunburned cheeks despite the tractor cap he never took off, Cole Carpenter was raised next to his maternal grandparents' farm several miles out of town. He first rode a tractor at age 3; and drove a tractor at age 10. "I've always loved farming; I never wanted to do anything else." His father had other interests, but for Cole, staying close to the land -- "to see something from start to finish, like your child" -- is his passion.

While most young men and women from this area have left and headed east, west, north or south to look for well-paying jobs, gregarious Cole Carpenter has followed his heart to his grandfather Dale Appl's 3,600-acre farm. "I know the reality; I know it won't be easy," Cole told me, standing inside a huge barn filled with farm equipment and furniture handed down by Appl ancestors, who are originally from Austria and homesteaded the land in the 1880s.

Mr. Appl -- who is 73 -- tells me Cole is a natural: "He can smell the crops like few people can. He's always been that way."

But he says that he's always told Cole to have a backup plan if he ever went into farming. As with medium-sized farms all over America, it's getting harder and harder to compete with big landowners. The grandfather, clad in pale blue overalls, says he hopes Cole will make it but knows it will be difficult, especially if there are many more years like this one with very little rain. "I don't remember it this dry in a lifetime," says Mr. Appl.

Cole describes some consulting work he could do, and a few other "backup" jobs he could get, thanks to his crop science degree from Fort Hays State University in Kansas. But he makes it plain that his priority is to stay in farming.

His wife of just one year, Bridgette, a blonde with delicate features, also loves to work the farm, as she grew up on one, too. But she and Cole have decided one of them needs a steady job, so she teaches English at the junior high school, and works on her father's farm in nearby Marienthal, Kan., during summers. I asked if Cole felt they were too young to get married, at 23 and 22, respectively, after which his grandmother informs me with a laugh that she and Cole's grandfather were 18 when they were married in the early 1950s.

If hard work were all that mattered, Cole would have no worries. He puts in long days and nights, and works second jobs whenever there's time to bring in extra money. But he points out that mother nature "always has the last say, no matter how hard you work."

"It's a gamble -- you bet on the best time and the best price to sell your crops, and that can make all the difference." But you want to believe he can keep the farm viable for decades to come: After all, although you'd never know it by looking at him, he's been an insulin-dependent diabetic since third grade.

Grandfather Appl retells a scary moment when his grandson almost went into a diabetic coma as a young boy. But Cole shrugs off questions about how hard it's been to take five shots a day, and to have to carefully watch what he eats. With a big smile, he tells me, "It's all I've ever known."

-- Judy Woodruff