By Doug Rapp*Photos by Kelly Overton
Bobby Dale Hinkle can laugh about it now, but there wasn’t much funny about the summer of 2008. Heavy rains peaked with the June 9 flood that devastated their farmland and ruined their house north of Plainville.
“It has been a trying year,” Hinkle said, laughing at the understatement. “But we made it.”
Hinkle’s wife, Dottie, remembers the day of the flood well.
“It was unbelievable,” she said. “It tore the roads out...there was a lot of destruction. It’s a harsh river.”
Dottie, 59, said they’d never had flooding problems before at their old house, right off of SR 57 north of Plainville and a short distance from the railroad tracks and the west fork of the White River.
“You could see the water gradually coming,” she remembered. “You just didn’t know how far it was going to come.”
The water eventually was up to her hips, she said.
“It was like in the movies, the door flung open and the water rushed in.”
The Hinkles set up sandbags throughout the day, helped by friends. They were able to get some personal items out but they lost most of their furniture.
Bobby, 61, stayed at the house through the night, operating pumps to drain the water from the house while Dottie stayed with their daughter Renee Judy, 39, vice principal at North Daviess Elementary. The Hinkles have another daughter, Yvonne Keene, 38.
It soon became apparent the house was beyond saving. The Hinkles continued staying at Renee’s house in Plainville in order to get organized and figure out what to do next.
“We were in total shock,” Bobby said. “We just needed time to get our heads together.”
Farm operation couldn’t stop
While they recovered from the flood, Bobby said he had to keep farming. In addition to the 600 acres they own, the Hinkles farm another 1,800 acres in northern Daviess County and Greene County. Hinkle was named one of the state’s River Friendly Farmers by the Daviess County Soil and Water Conservation District dinner in February.
“It (farming) took precedence over everything,” he said. “It was so late (in the growing season) I had to keep going with it.”
Hinkle said he ended up re-planting corn and soybeans on some ground up to four times due to the flooding and rains. He recalled one field he’d planted three times. He had just parked his tractor in a nearby tool shed after the third re-planting and when he came back out two inches of rainwater covered the field.
“I came home that night and I was so frustrated I couldn’t see,” he said. “I told her (Dottie) ‘I’m done.’ I said, ‘I ain’t beating a dead horse anymore.’”
“I lost 1,800 acres to start with. I replanted that 1,800 and lost 900 of that. I replanted that 900 and lost part of it. Replanted again and lost it.”
In addition to having to re-plant his crops, Hinkle had to deal with the remnants of floodwater.
“The first flood left a big, big mess,” he said, referring to flooding a few weeks before June 9. “We got it halfway cleaned up and just about the time we got it cleaned up, here came the major one.”
The second flood — the big one on June 9 — piled debris on fields. Bobby Dale said he had to use a forklift on a tractor to move it.
“I don’t know how many wagonloads of trash and stuff we had to pick up,” he said. “I started to think I’d never get done last year.”
Finding a place to live
In the meantime, the Hinkles had decided to build a new house. They bought a camper to live in until the house is completed sometime in March. One of their daughter’s neighbors, Connie Williams, let them put the camper on a patch of land on Virginia Lane outside Plainville.
“The camper’s worked out pretty well,” Bobby Dale said, looking around the interior of the camper. “It was already furnished, all we had to do was get a coffee pot, food and some pots and pans.”
Dottie said the camper was a good option for temporary housing.
“We knew we were going to build another home,” she said. “We didn’t want to get an apartment and have to buy stuff for it.”
“We didn’t know how long we would be in here,” Bobby continued. “So I couldn’t buy a little one (camper)...we didn’t know how the crops were going to turn out...we were just...”
Dottie finished his sentence: “We just didn’t know. We just knew we had to have a place to live.”
Their new house is being built two miles north of Plainville on SR 57. It will be similar to their old house, they said, with the same square footage but more porches.
Despite the physical destruction the Hinkles weathered last year, they said it wasn’t as bad financially.
“The price of what we did raise was good and combined with the crop insurance, it turned out to be a decent year financially,” Bobby Dale said.
Hinkle also said the nearly 800 acres he farms in Greene County turned out good.
The Hinkles also have their own trucking company. They have nine trucks now, but Bobby Dale said they’re in the process of downsizing the company. The company, which has hauled coal, rock, feed and lime, also employs the Hinkles’ nephew and future son-in-law.
How they got started
Bobby Dale has been farming since the mid-‘60s. His parents, Billy Dale and Virginia Hinkle, started farming in 1961.
“I graduated in 1965 and I saw that I didn’t need a part of farming at all, so I went to work for John Deere and I worked there for about a year and I saw I didn’t want that at all, either,” he said. “I couldn’t handle somebody chewing me out everyday,” he recalled with a laugh.
Then he bought a combine. A neighbor let him harvest his corn, and with the money from that Hinkle paid for his combine. He said he slowly started farming after that.
After marrying Dottie in 1967, Bobby Dale said they farmed but had other jobs as well. They’ve been farming exclusively since 1990.
“It’s a learning process,” he said. “You learn a little more every year.”
The Hinkles have certainly learned a lot this year, but they remain humbled by the experience.
“Of course, we weren’t the only ones that went through the flood,” said Dottie.
Bobby Dale agreed.
“We’re so much more fortunate than a lot of people out here.”
