HASTINGS, Mich. (WOOD) — With the harvest season underway, one West Michigan farmer is educating kids about a side of farming many people don’t see with a new children’s book.
Kathryn Christie, a fifth-generation farmer on the Endley’s Charolais Farms in Hastings published her debut book, a rhyming children’s story called The Hibernating Combine. She describes it as a behind the scenes look at what farmers do after the harvest and how they take care of their equipment.
“Many kids that live in a rural community see the combines but don’t actually know about what happens afterwards,” she said.
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Kathryn Christie holding her new children’s book, The Hibernating Combine. (Sept. 21, 2025)
Christie is a certified agriculture literacy educator. Her business, An Earful of Agriculture, works to promote agriculture literacy, educate the future generation of farmers and advocate for agriculture.
“I think it’s important for people to know where their food comes from but also the care that the farmers have for their equipment and the land and for the people they’re feeding,” she said.
The story follows a farmer and a child, finishing the harvest and putting the combine to bed. The combine, which her book was written about, is a large agricultural machine that harvests grain crops. It takes in the entire plant and internally separates the grains. On their farm, it harvests corn, soybean and wheat.
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“If you’re driving through the rural countryside, you’re going to see the combines out in the field … but what happens once that harvest is done? What do farmers do when they’re not in the field?” she said.
She says she feels super fortunate to be a fifth-generation farmer and she hopes the book helps children, even in rural communities, see farming in a new way.
“Even though we live in a rural county, our kids don’t have an agricultural connection,” said Christie. “There’s so much more to agriculture than just food.”
The characters in the book are her father and son and the illustrations feature parts of their 2,000-acre farm, including their Charolais cattle, a family legacy.
“In 1955, my great grandpa and my great great grandpa brought the first Charolais to Michigan,” she said. “We are the oldest Charolais farm east of the Mississippi … so the Charolais cattle are our ancestry. It’s near and dear to my heart, they’re very special.”
Her passion for agriculture started early. She has been involved in 4-H since she was 5 and FFA since she was in 7th grade.
Publishing the book in early September was a long-awaited moment for Christie. She started the process of writing it four years ago.
“It’s been an incredibly long journey but it’s been a labor of love,” she said. “I believed in my story and that’s how I began my publishing journey.”
The book is exclusively sold on An Ear Full of Agriculture website.
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