Helena Agri- Enterprise

A Therapist Everyday

For the season, we had, to say the least, a therapist every day was the norm. We thought about adding a sign of when therapy sessions would start. Being in sales is not easy, especially with the year we had. This internship was a good one to learn from, no day is the same,  and not every conversation is the same.

There would be days that we won’t be running, and those were the days the customers were lined up waiting to talk to my boss. I got the experience to listen in on their complaints. I didn’t focus on the issue, but more about how Samantha handled the situation and took care of the customer. Running my business, I already knew that was a key component if you want to be successful, but it was helpful to listen in and be able to carry those tools in my back pocket for future references.

With no day being the same, and always talking about preventing plant, it was hard to not feel for the farmers. Samantha said even the farmers that never hesitate to know what they want to do were just beside themselves. How do you keep running? What are our fields going to be like in the next 5-10 years? Will we still be pulling ourselves out of this hole? Lots and lots of nitrogen were removed with all that water during spring that in Vermillion County it’s scarce we see any corn stalks that are still dark green at the bottom. Most stalks are yellow as can be with lots of nitrogen loss.

After the crazy few weeks were over and we got the chance to plant. Then we put on the post and didn’t get one raindrop for the whole summer. So fungicide season came and after the spring we had they didn’t know what to do. Do they spend the money? Do they cut the fungicide and add a different blend?

This year was a learning experience, it wasn’t the typical learning year, but I feel like it was the best. I got to intern during one of the toughest years and experience it and have it in my pocket for a resource for years to come. Every year is going to be hard, but just like in our sales meeting, there were 15 employees at Helena Agri-Enterprise that have been with the company for 35+ years and not one of them has experienced this bad of a year. Even though no one wanted this year, it was a good learning experience for me.