And Then There Was Dark

Crowds at the Homestead National Monument of America in Nebraska watch as the solar eclipse of 2017 entered totality.

From the darkened mid-morning sky in Oregon to the end of its pass over the United States on the South Carolina coast in mid-afternoon, the much-anticipated total solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017, mesmerized the country. It was also a memorable day for thousands of farmers, several AGCO^® dealers and their out-of-town visitors along the 70-mile-wide path of totality.

Jeff Raybould, who farms near St. Anthony, Idaho, says he gave his employees the day off to enjoy the event. “We didn’t make any big plans ourselves, because we were in the middle of potato harvest, but we did watch the totality,” he says, noting that a large influx of campers at nearby St. Anthony Sand Dunes enjoyed the rural experience.

Mitch Merz, of Merz Farm Equipment in Falls City, Nebraska, says he and his staff experienced total darkness for two minutes and 37 seconds, even if it was too cloudy to actually see the eclipse. “The forecast scared some people down the path to find sunshine,” he says, “but Falls City still had visitors from 40 states and 13 other countries!”

Lynn Anderson, a farmer and AGCO customer near St. Joseph, Missouri, says that while clouds blocked the view on his farm, family and friends enjoyed sharing MoonPies and Shatto Black Milk (a special-edition cookies-and-cream-flavored, black-tinted milk from a local dairy) as they watched it get dark. Meanwhile, Tim Brannon, owner of B & G Equipment, the AGCO dealer in Paris, Tennessee, reports that while he and his employees observed the near-total eclipse, his dog saw it as something else. “My old dog, Goldie, who has not missed a day of work in 12 years, witnessed the eclipse with us,” he explains. When the sky darkened midday, “she simply went to the pickup and waited for the tailgate to drop, as she does every evening at sunset.”