Farmers are resilient. They have to be to endure weather disasters, physical challenges and fluctuating markets almost every season.

But sometimes those challenges reach crisis proportion — be it serious financial woes, a devastating fire, tornado damage, a farm accident, poor health or even death. Over recent weeks, our reporting team has met survivors of these crises, who share their stories and some of their lessons learned.

IOWA FALLS, Iowa — When Dwight Ellingson went in to see the doctor in late September, he had no idea it would mean missing his own harvest.

Ellingson, who farms in Iowa Falls, Iowa, skinned a knuckle a week before the end of September, just after starting harvest at his mother-in-law’s farm.

TOPEKA, Ill. — When Jerry Tibbs woke up almost six weeks after what was supposed to be a routine heart surgery, he had no feet. The Mason County goat farmer started the new year of 2013 with the realization that for the rest of his life, he would have to adjust to having both of his legs amputated below the knee.

Now, even on a cold November day such as this, you will likely see him wearing shorts. He doesn’t hide his artificial limbs, which bear the logo of his favorite tractor — Farmall.

BERGER, Mo. — On a rainy fall day, Danny Kuenzel had been hauling corn to St. Louis. The latest rain had kept him out of the field.

“We had six-tenths the other day,” he says.

MARINE, Ill. — Jerry Mills has taken some punches in life. But in the wee hours of May 4, 2014, he was hit with a real body blow.

“It’s the hardest I’ve been knocked down in 88 years,” said Mills, who grows apples and peaches on his Madison County, Ill., farm, about 25 miles northeast of St. Louis.

NOKOMIS, Ill. — It’s usually bad news to be woken at 4 a.m. Such was definitely the case on May 25, when Phil Borgic was startled by an urgent knock at the door of his rural Nokomis home.

“It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad,” he said he heard as soon as he opened the door.

GOLDFIELD, Iowa — Kevin Rasmussen remembers meeting his wife at the door on a Tuesday in 1998. She was in tears.

“I remember telling my wife, Lisa, it was going to get bad, and I didn’t want to see the books and told her to let me know when we were out of money,” he says. “She met me at the door crying, and told me there was no money. It had gotten pretty bad.”

GRINNELL, Iowa — Donna Winburn is not the same person she was before the farm crisis of the 1980s. She is a little bit older, but like everyone who went through that time, that’s not the real difference.

“The ’80s changed me,” Winburn says today. “I’m a different person.”