Ever since he was a boy growing up on his family’s farm near Souris, North Dakota, Jeff Skarphol knew that it was the life for him.

“That’s where I liked being – driving tractor and four-wheeler, checking the crops,” Jeff said.

But unlike many who go directly into full-time farming as soon as possible, after Jeff finished up high school, his family encouraged him to go out into the world to learn other perspectives and gain experience in other fields, granting him the flexibility to decide for himself if farming was truly his calling.

“I appreciate that they encouraged me to try something else for a while,” Jeff said. “I think they saw some situations where farm kids were guilted into staying because Dad needed help, which isn’t good for anyone. They didn’t want that for me. They always said that if I wanted to farm, the opportunity would be there.” It wasn’t too difficult to discover an alternative potential career. In fact, Jeff gravitated toward something else he’d had exposure to from a young age – piloting aircraft. His father, Dennis, is also a pilot, and although he’d gone through a dry spell for many of his son’s formative years, around the time Jeff was looking to graduate high school, Dennis started flying again.

“When Dad got back into flying during my senior year, I learned to fly, too,” Jeff said. “That’s when I got interested in aviation as an off-farm job.”

So, after finishing high school, he went to college for aviation at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Following completion of the program, Jeff secured a job as an air traffic controller in Dallas, Texas, where he worked for 15 years. However, he couldn’t keep away from the farm, leveraging his ownership of a Mooney M20M Bravo to make quick trips back to the Canadian border to help out.

For the first couple of years, Jeff didn’t have a lot of free time to get back, but he gradually returned more and more, often spending 3 to 4 months out of the year – during planting, harvest, and most other weekends – helping out on the farm. While a typical commute from Dallas to extreme northcentral North Dakota is about 1250 miles and 20 non-stop road hours by car, his plane cut that down to a more manageable 4.5 hours.

“Aviation was a big part of being able to work in Texas as a controller and have pretty significant involvement on the farm,” Jeff said. “There were a lot of times where I’d have my weekend, get in the plane after my shift, come home and work for two or three days, and go back to my job in Texas on Monday again.”

Eventually, the time came for Jeff to make a decision. His father was starting to think about retirement and looking for more help in the operation. So, in 2021, Jeff made the decision to return home to Souris to farm full time – something deep down, he’d always known he would do. “When I took that job, my intention was to spend 10 to 15 years off the farm and when the timing was right, I would come back full time,” Jeff said. “It was towards the high end of what I’d planned, but I came back after about 15 years, and I’m happy to have the opportunity. This place is where my heart is at, and farming is what I truly enjoy doing. It gets in your blood. I take a lot of pride in the chance to be a fourth-generation farmer with the opportunity to steward the land that’s been entrusted to us.”

The Skarphols farm thousands of acres, primarily raising small grains like oats, wheat, and canola, but they’re willing to give just about anything marketable a shot, such as corn, soybeans, sunflowers, and edible beans, which have recently become a much larger part of the farm. The operation needs this sort of flexibility to manage risk and adapt to geographical limitations – Jeff’s great-grandfather homesteaded right along the Canadian border. Since everything is dryland, the number one challenges are droughts and unexpectedly short seasons.

“We are remote, and we have a short growing season up here,” Jeff said. “Two years ago, we froze on Labor Day. So, our growing season was three weeks shorter in the fall, on top of our spring being late because our temps were cool. So, the weather is a constant challenge.”

The risks and unpredictable nature of farming is a bit of a far cry from the more rigid rules and structures that come with working in air traffic control.

“To come back here and deal with a whole different set of challenges is an adjustment,” Jeff said. “As an air traffic controller, I’d give instruction and something would happen. I come up here and have to trust the Lord that it’ll rain and the sun will shine so we can raise a crop every year.”

That said, there are some similarities. As a former controller, Jeff is used to working very closely and in tight quarters with others while coordinating with pilots in his airspace. On the farm, that sense of togetherness and teamwork holds true. While there are one-person operations out there, most farms are a collection of people working together with a similar goal, and usually, they work in collaboration with partners from outside the business to find success.

“I have a great team that’s just a little more spread out now across more acreage, whether that’s Dad or Mom in a combine making the next pass, an employee in a truck in town, a landlord that’s many miles from the field, or my Hefty retailer 45 miles away, we are all part of a team that makes our farm successful,” Jeff said.

The Skarphols rely in part on the agronomy team from the Hefty Seed Company store in Mohall, North Dakota to help guide their operation. For the past 10 years, they’ve worked with agronomists like Charlie Adams and Wyatt Thompson who have the experience and knowledge of their acres to make sound recommendations, as well as the supply and service required to meet those needs.

“Charlie and Wyatt are both very knowledgeable and very helpful, and they’re always willing to come alongside us,” Jeff said. “I have only very good things to say about the team in Mohall. If I have a question or need something quickly, they’re very responsive. They have a vested interest in my success, and they go above and beyond to make sure that we’re successful.”

In addition to finding support from his local agronomists, Jeff also appreciates the efforts Brian and Darren make to provide the information farmers need to make the best decisions on their acres. While out in the tractor cab, he regularly tunes into the Ag PhD Radio Show on SiriusXM 147, but he also tries to catch the Ag PhD TV show, livestream Ag PhD informational events, and meet with Brian and Darren in person at local Hefty field days in Mohall.

“It’s nice that they come out throughout the year to meet their customers and talk to us directly,” Jeff said. “I appreciate that because Brian and Darren are both farmers, their focus is on ROI, and they’ve always been very considerate of what things cost. Unlike some of the other retailers out there who only want to push a product, Brian and Darren want us to be profitable and efficient so we can raise a good crop while being safe for the environment. Obviously, the more dollars they get from us, the more they make, too – but they’ve found the more successful their clients are, the more successful they will be.”

In particular, one message Jeff takes to heart from the Heftys is to always try new things on the farm, and he’s constantly conducting trials and test plots to improve his practical on-farm knowledge, such as comparing row spacing, varieties, populations, fertilizers, fungicides, seed treatments, equipment, and more. All this research reinforces his ever-present drive that keeps the Skarphol farm moving forward: to always improve all aspects of his family’s operation while taking good care of the land he loves – the land that is the final destination of his return flight home.

“Overall, I have a lot to be thankful for,” Jeff said. “The opportunity to go out and have a great career as a controller and then come back and take on the family farm when the time was right is something for which I’ll be forever grateful.”