The Koth family has been farming for three generations, and Noah, the oldest and only son, will likely carry on in his father Don’s footsteps and take on the family farm someday. There’s so much to know about farming and so much to do on the farm, yet Noah already knows it all at the age of 16.
“There’s always something to do,” Noah says as he drives around the farm. “And it’s always something different.”
The knowledge farmers collect and retain in order to successfully do what they do is unimaginable. Growing up on the farm makes learning it all that much easier. Farming is second nature to Noah; it’s so natural to him. It also helps that all the surrounding farms in the area, as well as the Koths, all help each other out.
Farming is extremely important in Huron County and to the families that do it. Huron County even has a truck show every year, welcoming thousands of farmers and truck enthusiasts to show off their trucks and equipment. This year, due to COVID-19, the truck show was cancelled, however, a truck caravan through Huron County was planned instead to keep up the tradition. Noah and Don are excited to take two of their trucks through the parade together.
If the Koths aren’t farming, they’re doing something else around the farm or for the family. The farm sits on either side of Noah’s grandma’s house. She loves when they come to visit, she loves to talk with any of them and enjoys their company.
“If any one of us has a day off, we always take turns cutting Grandma’s lawn and all around the farm,” Noah says. “Everybody does a little bit of something.”
The Koth family not only looks out for each other, but also everyone they know. If somebody somewhere needs something done, the Koths are more than willing to help out. There doesn’t have to be a reward or a favor due back to them, they’re doing it out of the kindness in their hearts. For the Koths, farming is where the heart is.
Zeke Shepherd, one of the Koth’s farm hands, pulls up onto the farm in the early hours of the morning and parks in front of the barn in Kinde, Michigan, toting this plate on the front of his truck on August 25, 2020. The Koth family, Don, Kelli, and their three children: Noah, 16, Sara, 14, and Dana, 12, all work on the farm and have two hired farm hands, Kenny and Zeke.
Noah Koth, 16, the oldest and only son in the Koth family, helps Kenny Koth, cousin and farm hand of the Koth’s, with the gravity box.
Don Koth drives the sugar beet harvester down the rows, harvesting the beets. Don inherited the farm from his father, who inherited the farm from his father. Noah truly loves what he does on the farm and is likely to follow in his dad’s footsteps and take on the family farm one day.
Kelli Koth, Noah’s mother, drives not even a minute down the road from their house to get to the farm to drop off Noah’s lunch. Lunch has to be quick most days in order for everyone to get right back to work.
It’s just the beginning of sugar beet season. “It’s really nice to have the early dig, but then again, if you dig it all early, the beets still have another third to grow, so my we’ll get more money out of the late dig because the beets will be bigger and hopefully have more sugar in them,” Noah says. Rob Clark, director of communications and community relations at Michigan Sugar Co., stated Huron County is the company’s No. 1 producer of sugar beets, with 360 shareholders who grow more than 54,000 acres.
Noah Koth, 16, helps Kenny Koth, who’s inside the box, sweep the grain out of the gravity box. A gravity box, or slant wagon, is an angled hopper style wagon that utilizes gravity to make the unloading process easier for farmers. The Koth’s farm 3,000 acres, which is approximately over 3,000 football fields. Huron County, the “fingernail” of the Thumb, is the No. 1 farming county in the state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Noah and Kenny trade tractors before grabbing their lunches and taking a brief break to eat. Communication is key on the farm. There’s a radio in every tractor and truck so each of them can easily communicate back and forth if there’s ever a problem or even if they just saw a buck pass through the rows.
Noah takes a look at the cover crop that is growing and finds a beet starting to sprout. The cover crop’s root is like an anchor, so when all the water and dirt washes into the ditch, the cover crops don’t erode or wash away.
The Koth family gathers together for a steak dinner after a day of farming, school, practices, and activities. There’s always something going on in each of the Koth’s lives, however, they always come together at the end of the day to spend time with one another as a family.