This story is part of America @ 250: The Questions Before Us, a series from IPM News and the Illinois Student Newsroom.
CHAMPAIGN — A birthday is a time for celebration and reflection: Where have we been? Where are we right now? And where are we going?
IPM is celebrating America’s 250th birthday by inviting people from across east-central Illinois to share what they think are the most important questions facing Americans at this historic moment.
Bill Bozdech, his wife and two sons farm twenty-five hundred acres in Champaign, Douglas and Vermillion counties. His family immigrated to east central Illinois from Czechoslovakia in 1890.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
When I was in grade school, as a young child, I knew that I wanted to farm.
I was probably 6 or 7 years old. I was riding with my dad on the tractor, and we were plowing. And there’s just the smell of that earth when you plow that ground. It’s fresh and it’s old at the same time. And it’s just, it makes you feel whole. It makes you feel like the possibilities are endless and you can just grow and do anything you want.
I mean, you start out with black dirt, that’s nothing, and just in a few weeks, you’ve got this really nice stand of corn. And sometimes on summer nights when it’s real still, you can go out and you can hear it grow. You can hear that corn creaking.
My great grandfather came over in 1890 from Czechoslovakia, bought this home hundred & sixty. My grandfather also farmed it. My dad farmed it. I’ve farmed it. And my sons will be the fifth generation.
When you’re on the tractor alone, especially at night, you’re just in your own little world. It’s air conditioned. You’re comfortable. I sit out there and wonder, my gosh, how many times has someone been across this field that was related to me, and what were they doing and thinking while they were out here? I mean, I know what I think when I’m out there, it’s the next steps, the next year. What strategies can we use to improve our farm and to make it more viable for my sons to take over?
I’m 65 and it’s about time for me to get out, I think, and let new ideas, let the youth come in, just like I did for my dad, like he did for his dad.
I’ve always been an optimistic kind of person, and I always try to look on the bright side. Every year it’s full of promise when you start and then you just never know what’s going to happen. Every year is different.
On our farm, the cost of our supplies has increased greatly. And a lot of that was due to Covid. Now the war’s going on, the tariffs have bothered us a little bit. We need to have more open trade with several countries that could use our products. Kind of a cold war with China has really affected our soybean exports, and hopefully they’re going to come back to the market and also buy some corn.
The weather is uncontrollable and it affects our lives so much. And you never know what the day is going to bring. We make our plans and God laughs, and it’s twice as bad when you’re a farmer or twice as good, however you look at it.
You just have to face it with optimism or you’re going to be a very depressed individual.
You think back to February, when everything is gray and dark and, and cold and depressing and dreary, and then you know that in a couple of months, you’re going to be out there and you’re going to smell that soil, and you’re going to put those seeds in the ground, and it’s going to come up like it always does.
And I envy the faith that my ancestors had, faith in God, faith in values, faith in integrity, faith in trust.
And it’s a lifestyle that should be sustained.
So my main question is, “How does America move forward for the next, hopefully at least, 250 years?” And it has to be faith and family. When we put those two things together, everything else will fall into place.
This story was reported by University of Illinois Journalism Professor Charles “Stretch” Ledford. If you have an idea for the America @ 250 series or would like to be featured in an upcoming story, please contact Stretch at stretch@illinois.edu.