The Associated Press / April 21, 2001 / By SHARON COHEN, Associated Press Writer
ENDERLIN, N.D. - He sat at the kitchen table and read slowly down a long list of numbers. He saw a river of debt - and a drowning farmer.
He barely knew the woman at his side. But he soon knew every detail about her finances. She owed the vet. And the seed salesman. Even worse, Lynn Cavett faced foreclosure on her farm.
Cavett had invited the man over, hoping he could help her and her son, Tim, keep their farm. Some months, there wasn't money for the phone or electricity. But she refused to give up.
"Maybe I'm stupid or stubborn," she says, "but I was determined to find a way to fix things or find somebody to help me fix them."
That somebody was Levon Nelson, the man at her table now. He had a reassuring voice, a mind for math and a reputation for digging farmers out of trouble. He ate some waffles, crunched some numbers and asked Lynn Cavett some questions.
How about selling land?
Or the grain elevator?
Then the big one: "Do you really want to hang on?"
Yes, she did. Her seven children - all of them grown - hauled grain, mended fences and fed cattle on this windswept prairie.
"This is our home," replied the woman with the long silver hair. "I want to make this work."
So Nelson went to work, making calls. Incredibly fast - within three weeks - he raised tens of thousands of dollars. Even more incredible: Much of it came from people the Cavetts had never met.
Neighbors and generous strangers are at the heart of a small, but extraordinary program that recruits local folks to loan farmers money to help them stay on the land.
It's called Partners in Progress.
Partners' loans have ranged from hundreds of dollars to nearly a half million. The program recently raised nearly $168,000 to pay off some of the Cavetts' loans.
For Lynn Cavett, it seemed a miracle.
But now that she mulls it over, it reminds her of something far more mundane: potluck. Not with three-bean casseroles or rhubarb pies, but cash.
"Everybody pitches in and does whatever they can, they bring it to the table and you have a banquet. It saves your farm," she says.
"And it saves your life."
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Farming is a risky business, especially in North Dakota.
Snow comes as late as April, frost as early as September. With 60-below wind chills and 100-degree heat, seed weevils and army worms, floods and droughts, low crop prices and high blood pressure - it's enough to push farmers over the edge.
And it has.
One-fourth of North Dakota's farms have disappeared in the last 20 years. About 30,300 remain.
At 59, Levon Nelson is a fifth-generation farmer who works the same fields his Norwegian ancestors homesteaded in 1872; he has been at it since he was a 7-year-old driving his grandpa's tractor.
About a decade ago, Nelson was working as a financial consultant when some farmers facing foreclosure turned to him for help. With three decades of banking and farming under his belt, he was a natural.
Nelson began talking up their troubles over coffee and Danish pastry at a Wednesday prayer breakfast with nine men at a Lutheran church basement in the town of Mayville.
Nelson helped one farmer reduce his debts but he needed $75,000 for planting - and no bank would go near someone who still owed nearly $1 million.
Nelson approached the farmer's lender. Their talks turned into a delicate minuet.
No, no, no, the lender said. Yes, yes, yes, Nelson replied.
They were getting nowhere.
"Then I said, 'Will a million dollars in net worth be enough?' " Nelson recalls.
Two days later, five men from Mayville marched into the bank office. "We said, 'We're here to cosign the $75,000 loan,' " Nelson says. "All he could do was swallow and give us the papers."
And so they began. In 1995, they incorporated.
Partners in Progress has built a network of people to provide a quick fix of $10,000 to $15,000 to help struggling farmers.
The group - which includes farmers, a pastor, an auctioneer and a retired insurance agent - also recruits people to cosign loans and mortgages and buy farmers' land and lease it back for a modest sum.
So far, Partners has loaned $3 million to nearly 75 farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota. It also has counseled about 200 more there as well as Montana, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
Every loan has been repaid, except one for $5,000 to a farmer who died of cancer.
Loans have ranged from $900 to $486,000. Most are short-term, unsecured and interest-free.
And there's no red tape: These deals are sealed with a piece of paper - a photocopy of the check that includes a handwritten pledge to repay.
This is farm aid with a handshake.
"It's all based on a person's honor," says Theresia Gillie, a Minnesota farmer whose family received a $10,000 loan.
"It's the way business should be done," Nelson declares.
But most business isn't conducted this way. Just ask those on the receiving end.
"I was shocked," Gillie says. "When you're hitting a brick wall year after year, and then Levon comes in and says, 'I can get you $10,000' ... You kind of wonder: Is it REAL? It is."
Make no mistake, Nelson isn't tossing dollars from a passing tractor.
He gets acquainted with farmers and their finances. He compiles lists: everything they own, everything they owe. He asks how they got into the mess. He suggests how they can get out.
"There are some who see the light and choose to quit," he says. "We never tell them to quit. But we never tell them to keep on."
Nelson develops four or five rescue plans. They might involve selling land or changing crops. About 10 percent of the farmers have rejected the advice - and received no money.
More than 90 percent of those helped have made it. And Nelson loves to recall deals that clicked.
There was the businessman who agreed to make a $486,000 loan, asked the farmer's name, then moaned, "Oh, noooo, he sued me."
Nelson got the two together. The loan was made. And they shook hands.
A deeply devout man, Nelson credits divine help for so many complex financial deals falling in place at the last minute.
Sometimes it's not money that's needed.
Nelson talked one farmer out of suicide, rushing to his house 90 minutes away, calling every half hour, first telling him to go outside and count his cattle, then go back and count his machinery.
"I knew he took pride in what he did," he says. "It was the best way I could think of getting him to put his gun away."
Though few farmers get that desperate, Nelson says most have seen hard times and the seeds of empathy often blossom into generosity.
Nelson has made 19 loans in recent years, totaling about $100,000.
"I don't ask anybody to put in one dollar unless I'm willing to do it myself," he says.
Enoch Thorsgard is willing, too.
Still spry at age 84 and dapper in a maroon Western shirt with faux pearl snaps and bolo tie, Thorsgard knows the value of a well-timed loan.
In 1940, a lender ponied up $30 so he could buy a marriage license and, he says with a twinkle in his eye, a $5 ring.
For decades, he says, farming was so profitable, "I thought any dumbbell who can't make a living - let him starve to death!"
Then came the farm crisis of the 1980s. The successful cattle farmer and Dale Carnegie disciple (he gives $1,000 to each grandchild who reads the Carnegie book "How to Win Friends and Influence People") was losing $1,000 a day.
"The Lord has a way of teaching us a lesson," he says. "When I was hurting, I realized the problems that people get."
He has answered Nelson's call for cash about a dozen times, usually in the $5,000-$20,000 range.
"After he tells me the story, I always realize it's legitimate and I trust him," Thorsgard says. "It's hard for me to say no."
He helped Arnie Woodbury, a North Dakota farmer who had sold him a bull 20 years earlier.
Woodbury had expanded his cattle business at the wrong time and the ruddy-faced farmer, once worth a $1 million, was broke.
"It would have been easier if I just got a job and quit," he says, eyeing his grazing herd on a chilly day. "But I wasn't going to give up everything I had worked for 30 years."
Family members bought part of his land and Thorsgard signed a $100,000 mortgage for the rest. Woodbury makes monthly payments - and hasn't missed one.
Woodbury is now president of Partners and crossed the bridge from borrower to lender (on a small scale).
While strangers often write the checks, Nelson also encourages farmers to seek out friends and neighbors.
When Ken Hove, a Minnesota farmer needed $40,000 fast, Nelson studied his assets, then his debts. He stopped at $2,600 he owed a hardware store owner.
"What kind of fella is he?" Nelson asked.
"Top-notch," Hove replied. A friend, too.
"Go ask him for $10,000," Nelson urged.
"Geez, I OWE the guy money," Hove protested. "I can't ask him for money."
Nelson persisted and Hove relented. He took the merchant to dinner. And he asked.
"How much do you need and when do you need it?" the man replied.
Hove got $10,000. "I don't know how in the world I did that," he says, amazed at his own courage.
It rarely is that easy.
Nelson appeals to seed dealers and grain elevator owners for a little patience and a lot of flexibility.
"You know the old saying that money talks? Well, when you don't have any, you do a lot of talking," he says with a deep laugh.
But no one, he adds, wants to be the bad guy, and bankers are willing to cooperate, and realize some money is better than nothing.
Mike Bannach, a banker at the Bremer Bank, which handles the group's accounts, credits Nelson's common sense, business savvy and preparation for Partners' success.
"By time they come into the door," he says, "they've gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb."
Private money accounts for about 90 percent of Partners' loans.
Grants and a foundation loan have provided the rest and Bremer Bank recently gave the group $200,000 in low-interest loans.
Bannach says that despite the group's track record, farming is so unpredictable, sooner or later, there likely will be losses.
Nelson doesn't worry.
"You end up going with a hunch and a gut feeling," he says. "There are no regrets. If it doesn't work out, we know we did our best."
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Spring has come to the Cavett farm.
Ten calves have been born, the clay soil is thawing and mother and son - the only ones remaining on the land - are up before dawn.
For 24-year-old Tim, who has endured nearly two-dozen operations for a nearly fatal stomach problem, the loan was a tremendous relief.
The night after they received it, he says, "it was the first time I was able to sleep in three years."
The Cavetts have sold some land but have 800 acres to raise cattle and pigs.
They know more financial pressures are ahead.
"Just getting out of bed in the morning, I know I owe so many dollars," Lynn Cavett says. "But I feel comfortable."
This summer, she hopes to have a picnic to express her gratitude to those who bailed her out.
"I want to say thank you, thank you," she says. "But it doesn't seem like it's enough. It's just two words."
"I told Levon, I have to rethink my attitude," she adds. "I never questioned God, ever. But I had a lot of doubts about mankind. I can tell you, I don't have that anymore.":
