Lane Unhjem's combine caught fire during harvest. Fighting it triggered a massive heart attack, and he was rushed to intensive care. Meanwhile, 60 neighbors showed up with 11 combines, 6 grain carts, and 15 semis. They brought in his entire 1,000-acre crop in just 7 hours. Unhjem later received a heart and kidney transplant, and went home 108 days after the fire.
60 Neighbors Saved His Farm While He Fought for His Life
Lane Unhjem was in the middle of harvest near Crosby, North Dakota, when one of his combines caught fire. He fought to put the flames out himself. The strain triggered a massive heart attack, and he went into cardiac arrest right there in the field.
A Fire in the Middle of Harvest
Unhjem, a 57-year-old farmer in Divide County, was airlifted to Trinity Health in Minot. His crop, about 1,000 acres of durum wheat and canola, was still standing in the field. Harvest season doesn't wait, and with Unhjem in intensive care, there was no one left to bring it in.
Sixty Neighbors, One Afternoon
A family friend, Jenna Binde, started making calls the same day Unhjem was flown out. She told CBS News she barely had to convince anyone. Within two hours, more than half the equipment and drivers she needed were already lined up.
On September 12, 2020, roughly 60 farmers from across the county showed up at the Unhjem farm. They brought 11 combines, 6 grain carts and 15 semi-trucks. Working in a rolling line across the fields, they cut, hauled and stored the entire crop, about 15,000 bushels of canola and 35,000 bushels of durum, in roughly seven hours.
Photographers Don Anderson and Rodney Olin captured the combines moving across the field in formation, images that spread across the country as the story made national news.
A Long Road Back
While his neighbors worked his fields, Unhjem's own condition worsened. His kidneys and liver began to fail from the shock of the heart attack and the CPR that followed, and he needed dialysis and was treated for pneumonia. He was later moved to a hospital in Minnesota for specialized care.
Doctors eventually placed him on the transplant list for both a new heart and a new kidney. In late November 2020, a donor match was found for both organs. Unhjem underwent heart transplant surgery one evening, and doctors performed his kidney transplant the following morning, Thanksgiving Day.
Coming Home
After 108 days in the hospital, Unhjem was released to continue his recovery at home with his family. The community wasn't finished helping either. A week after the harvest bee, another group of volunteers came back to bring in his soybeans, and neighbors later held a pancake breakfast and silent auction that raised thousands of dollars for the family.
"Everybody knows the Unhjems, and they're good people," Binde told reporters. "You help your neighbor out when they need it, and don't expect anything in return."
Frequently Asked Questions
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Verified Fact
Verified 2026-07-18 by fact-verifier
Source: CBS NewsShow verification details
Verified 2026-07-18 by fact-verifier. Primary source read in full: CBS News (cbsnews.com published 2020-09-21) - confirms verbatim: Lane Unhjem 57, Crosby ND/Divide County, combine fire triggered heart attack, airlifted to Trinity Medical Center Minot, organizer Jenna Binde (quotes match), Sept 12 2020, 60 volunteers/11 combines/6 grain carts/15 semi-trucks (this itself resolves the 11-vs-15-semis question - CBS states 15 directly, Fox Business 11 is the outlier), over seven hours, soybeans harvested a week later, photographer Don Anderson. 1,000 acres and durum/canola cross-confirmed via goodnewsnetwork.org, agupdate.com Harvest Hero follow-up, KFYR. Pancake breakfast/silent auction (about USD 20,000 per Minot Daily News) matches text is appropriately vague (thousands of dollars). Kidney/liver failure, dialysis, pneumonia confirmed via family GoFundMe dated updates Sept 9-16 2020. Heart transplant one evening + kidney transplant next morning on Thanksgiving Day (Nov 25 eve/Nov 26 2020), late Nov 2020, and 108 days hospitalized before release: CONFIRMED VERBATIM via Newsner quoting the familys own Nov 24 2020 GoFundMe update directly. No reversed-agency issues found. Numeric coherence: all figures (60/11/6/15/1000/7/108) are independent counts, no arithmetic reconciliation required, no coherence issue. Citation fidelity: source_url (CBS) verbatim-supports the headline harvest-bee event (the slug/title claim); the later transplant epilogue is a separate arc not covered by CBS (published before it happened) but independently corroborated via family GoFundMe/Facebook posts as reported by Newsner/agupdate/Faithpot, documented here for transparency - kept CBS as source_url as the most authoritative source for the actual headline event. CORRECTION MADE: article previously stated Unhjem was transferred to Minneapolis and that his kidneys/liver failed there - no accessible source names Minneapolis specifically (only Faithpot: a hospital in Minnesota), and the familys own dated GoFundMe updates show kidney/liver failure and dialysis began while still in Minot, not after a transfer. Corrected the sequence and dropped the unconfirmed city name. No other fields (text/social_text/social_caption/social_engagement_comment/social_link_comment/faqs) required changes. engine=1 and sub_beat=community-harvest-rescue confirmed correct (anonymous crowd-heroism, exceptional epilogue, not a recognizable name; distinguished from unrelated ritzville-60-farmers fact, different real event/person). No scheduled_posts existed at audit time; image_social/card/banner all NULL - no cascade actions required.
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