7 Slides
Luke Baugess has been around farming his entire 23-year-old life, but 2020 is the first year he will be planting for himself as a first-generation farmer. His introduction to growing crops was a bit of happenstance, not a family legacy. Through a friendship and mentorship, one farmer is semiretiring while Baugess takes on the risk, responsibilities and — he’s hoping — the rewards.
In the early 1990s, before Baugess was born, his grandmother dated self-made farmer Gregg Pontius of Lancaster, Ohio, who became close to the entire family. And, while the relationship faded, the friendship remained with her children and then grandchildren.
“As toddlers, he [Pontius] would take me and my brother, Levi, out to ride in the combine,” Baugess recalls.