Windy with a few snow showers developing later in the day. High 37F. Winds NW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..
Windy with snow showers by midnight. Low 28F. Winds NNW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Higher wind gusts possible.
Gordon Siebring Sr., of George, and his daughter, Karen Siebring, have stayed in close contact with Gordon Siebring Jr., who is living and contributing to relief efforts in Ukraine. The area of Siebring’s farm in northern Ukraine has seen regular shelling by Russian forces since the beginning of the war.
Iowa farmer Gordon Siebring Jr., grandson of Gordon Siebring Sr. of George, owns and operates a 5,000-acre farm in northern Ukraine, where he has been living since March of 2020.
Gordon Siebring and his employees have started doing farm chores with a team of horses at his 5,0000-acre cash-cropping operation in northern Ukraine due to a nationwide fuel shortage. A recent trip for gas took five hours round trip, and fuel supplies continue to dwindle in the war-torn country.
Russian rocket fragment in Gordie Siebring's fields in northern Ukraine, near Chernobyl.
A 6,000-head hog operation near Siebring's farm in northern Ukraine was recently destroyed by Russian artillery fire. He took in a number of the surviving hogs.
Remains of a grain storage facility near Siebring's farm in northern Ukraine. The region has been subject to near-daily shelling by Russian forces
A butchered hog from a nearby farm, which was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Siebring has been contributing to relief efforts in the war-stricken country, which is facing nationwide food shortages.
A recent trip for fuel, to power farm equipment at the Siebring farm, took five hours round trip. Fuel shortages have led Siebring and his farm employees to begin farming with a team of horses.
A crater caused by Russian shelling in the Siebring farm fields in northern Ukraine.
A pastor in Poland, delivering relief items at the Poland-Ukraine border. Siebring has been been active in relief efforts since the beginning of the war, and he transports goods from the border to the interior of the country.
Gordon Siebring Sr., of George, and his daughter, Karen Siebring, have stayed in close contact with Gordon Siebring Jr., who is living and contributing to relief efforts in Ukraine. The area of Siebring’s farm in northern Ukraine has seen regular shelling by Russian forces since the beginning of the war.
REGIONAL—An Iowa farmer living in Ukraine is mobilizing communities in N’West Iowa to support relief efforts in the war-besieged country in Eastern Europe.
Ukrainians unable to flee the country — or who have chosen to stay and fight — are facing food and supply shortages as the war of Russian aggression enters its second month.
Gordon Siebring Jr., or “Gordie,” a 61-year-old Iowa native living in Ukraine, is the son of Gordon Siebring Sr., 89, of George. Gordon Sr., who was owner of Siebring Manufacturing Inc., in George until 2004, is partnering with Justice For All in Rock Valley to coordinate local efforts to gather food, clothing and hygiene items and fund their shipment overseas to Ukraine, where his son will oversee their distribution.
Meanwhile, Gordie Siebring, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Ukraine, is contributing to relief efforts already underway on the ground, where he owns and operates a 5,000-acre farming operation in the country’s northern region, just beyond the Chernobyl exclusion area, near the Belarus border.
Iowa farmer Gordon Siebring Jr., grandson of Gordon Siebring Sr. of George, owns and operates a 5,000-acre farm in northern Ukraine, where he has been living since March of 2020.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Siebring Jr. has made trips to and from the border of neighboring Poland, where Polish organizations and volunteers have been receiving incoming Ukrainian refugees and sending out loads of supplies for distribution in Ukraine.
The region in Ukraine where Siebring’s farm is located has yet to see troops on the ground, but Siebring and his Ukrainian neighbors have weathered regular shelling since the beginning of the Russian invasion in late February.
Russian rocket fragment in Gordie Siebring's fields in northern Ukraine, near Chernobyl.
“He hears bombs every day,” said Gordon Sr., who regularly connects with his son by text or phone call. Siebring Jr., like his Ukrainian neighbors, is armed and prepared to fight.
Since the early days of the war, Siebring’s fields have been cratered by explosions, leaving behind shrapnel, exploded Russian rockets and bomb fragments in the dark, early-spring furrows. Siebring and his Ukrainian employees also have come upon unexploded bombs in the fields, making fieldwork dangerous even when skies are quiet.
“It’s like farming in a land-mine zone, almost,” said Siebring’s sister, Karen Siebring, of Albuquerque, NM.
Gordon Siebring and his employees have started doing farm chores with a team of horses at his 5,0000-acre cash-cropping operation in northern Ukraine due to a nationwide fuel shortage. A recent trip for gas took five hours round trip, and fuel supplies continue to dwindle in the war-torn country.
The bombing appears to be indiscriminate in the predominantly agricultural region, calculated “to create terror” rather than take out specific targets, according to Karen. Like her father, she has stayed in close touch with her brother since the beginning of the war, through texts and phone calls, often waiting anxiously for him to respond.
“Every morning, I wake up, and I wonder if it’s been a quiet day, or not,” she said. “I kind of check in every day, and I get nervous if he doesn’t reply for a while.”
Along with staying in touch with family members, Siebring Jr. has been calling in to a daily talk radio program hosted by Simon Conway, which in broadcast of WHO-AM 1040 in Des Moines and reaches an audience of listeners across the Midwest. Every day or two, he is a guest of the program, reporting on conditions on the ground and sharing details about his experience as an Iowa farmer living in Ukraine.
Sometimes on the program, Siebring Jr. mentions the weather in the same breath as Russian airstrikes.
“We’ve had a high-wind day, and that makes it difficult for rocket fire and artillery fire, so we’re glad for the wind once in a while,” he said.
Turning his attention countrywide, however, he said, “Mariupol is in really dire straits.”
Remains of a grain storage facility near Siebring's farm in northern Ukraine. The region has been subject to near-daily shelling by Russian forces
Mariupol, in eastern Ukraine, is among the cities hardest hit by Russian forces.
After more than a month of conflict, war has become a part of daily life for Siebring Jr., and whether calling in to the radio program or talking with family members, he projects the calm of a person who has grown accustomed to life in a conflict zone.
“It’s good to hear his voice,” Karen said of her regular phone conversations with her brother. “He sounds regular, and that, I guess, is comforting in itself. He’s pretty chill about it.”
The threat of airstrikes is real, however, and Siebring Jr. has an acquaintance in a nearby town who lost an elderly neighbor when her home was hit by shelling. Bombs have exploded as close as 250 yards from his house, and recently, a 6,000-head hog confinement near his farm was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Siebring Jr. took in a number of the surviving hogs.
A 6,000-head hog operation near Siebring's farm in northern Ukraine was recently destroyed by Russian artillery fire. He took in a number of the surviving hogs.
As dire as circumstances continue to be, however, Siebring and his employees have persevered through fuel shortages and airstrikes to keep farming. They have even begun using a team of horses due to the scarcity of fuel — a recent trip for diesel took five hours round trip, according to Gordon Sr., and this year’s crop may ultimately be lost.
The food supply also is dwindling, and Siebring Jr. sees evidence of shortages on his grocery runs.
“The shelves are looking emptier,” he told Simon Conway after a recent trip to a grocery store in a village nearby. There continue to be staples available, however, like rice and buckwheat, he said.
Siebring Jr., who is fluent in Russian, has been traveling to Ukraine since the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when he was involved in efforts to educate Ukrainian farmers about modern farming techniques and technologies.
Over the last three decades, he has split his time between his Iowa farm in Albion, where his wife Kathy lives, and Ukraine, where he has been since March 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic.
Along with his farming operation in Ukraine, Siebring Jr. has for decades been a link between farms in Iowa and Ukraine, supplying Ukrainian farmers with equipment through the shipping business he owns. He buys used farm equipment stateside, and after it is disassembled at the farm in Albion, it is shipped to Ukraine, where it is reassembled and sold.
Over the decades, Gordon Sr. said the country has become “a second home” to his son, and in the early days of the invasion, Siebring had to choose whether to go or stay.
“When the war broke out,” Karen said, “Gordie was a couple hours south, unpacking a container, and he was really on the fence: ‘Do I go to Moldova? Do I leave the country?’ Ultimately, he decided to go back.”
Having left his farm in peace time, Siebring traveled back home through checkpoints with armed guards.
“Once he got back,” Karen said, “he was like, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’”
“They were surprised as all get out that he came back,” Gordon Sr. said.
Since the beginning of the war, millions of Ukrainians have fled to Poland and neighboring countries.
A recent trip for fuel, to power farm equipment at the Siebring farm, took five hours round trip. Fuel shortages have led Siebring and his farm employees to begin farming with a team of horses.
Gordon Sr. said his son’s reports home reflect the resilience and resolve of the Ukrainian army, which has more than held its own against the much larger Russian army. More than simply holding their ground, the Ukrainians have begun counterattacking in recent weeks, and along with incoming shells, Siebring Jr. regularly hears outgoing shells from locations nearby.
On Tuesday, Siebring Jr. told Simon Conway that it had been “pretty quiet,” but there had been shelling overnight, “a little bit of incoming — but more outgoing.”
“I guess that’s a good thing, right?” Conway asked his guest.
A crater caused by Russian shelling in the Siebring farm fields in northern Ukraine.
“That’s a good thing,” replied Siebring, who went on to indicate he had grown more optimistic about Ukraine’s prospects in recent days.
While there may be some cause for optimism, the outcome of the war remains uncertain, and recent promises by Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw troops from the capital city of Kyiv have been cast into doubt by the North Atlantic Treaty Association (NATO), which at press time said Russian forces appear not to be withdrawing but regrouping.
Along with the millions of Ukrainians who have been displaced by the war, and the thousands of soldiers and civilians who have been killed, Ukrainian cities in the east, especially, have suffered devastating destruction, and the country faces nationwide shortages.
Siebring’s family members in faraway Iowa are doing what they can to help. In central Iowa, his wife, Kathy, has amassed a shed full of donated goods, and in the N’West corner of Iowa, Gordon Sr. is directing those who want to contribute to bring donated items to Justice For All in Rock Valley.
“We’re out here loading things in wagons,” he said of his George farmstead, where the influx of goods has become too much for him to take in and sort on his own.
In Ukraine, Siebring Jr. is preparing for the arrival of the 40-foot shipping container from Iowa, which will carry relief items rather than the usual farm equipment. The container will be unloaded in Bremerhaven, Germany, and go overland to Ukraine. How far the container makes it into the country will depend on the state of the war.
A butchered hog from a nearby farm, which was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Siebring has been contributing to relief efforts in the war-stricken country, which is facing nationwide food shortages.
“If it’s still pretty hot and heavy, the truck driver will take it as far as western Ukraine,” Siebring Jr. told Simon Conway on Tuesday, “and then we’ll meet the container there with other vehicles and take it from there. Hopefully, it will come all the way to our place — we’ll just have to see the state of things at that time.”
In Iowa, helping with relief efforts has provided a way for Gordon Sr. to keep his hands occupied while he awaits the outcome of the war.
“I have said to myself, ‘Lord, protect him, but if you take him, we’ll be proud.’ I don’t know how else to approach it,” he said. “We pray all our lives for people to come to know Christ and serve him. We see Gordie serving him.”
Donations of clothing, first-aid items, nonperishable food, hygiene products, repair tools and any other humanitarian aid products may be taken to Justice For All at 1335 Valley Drive in Rock Valley. Donations should be boxed and ready to ship and clearly marked “Ukraine.”
Financial donations are especially needed and will go toward the cost of shipment of a 40-foot shipping container to Ukraine. Donations may be made to Security Savings Bank in George and should be designated for “Ukrainian relief” or “shipping container to Ukraine.” It costs around $10,000 to ship a container to Ukraine, and if enough funds come in, the Siebrings hope to ship two containers to help with relief efforts.
A pastor in Poland, delivering relief items at the Poland-Ukraine border. Siebring has been been active in relief efforts since the beginning of the war, and he transports goods from the border to the interior of the country.
GEORGE—Thursday wasn’t the first time Gov. Kim Reynolds got a lift up to the bucket truck manufacturer in rural Lyon County.
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