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MURPHYSBORO — Lugging two flat totes filled with food, Alinda Heron made her way across a field littered with the remains of cut soybean plants, the red soil sinking at each foot step.

The totes were filled with baggies of sandwiches, carrots, chips, cream pies and other snacks for the crew that numbered two dozen, who had gathered at her family's farm Wednesday to help with the harvest.

It was bittersweet, this outpouring of support for her family. Until their lives changed, it might very well have been her 40-year-old brother, Ben, working with her father to start the harvest of the soybeans. Ben Arbeiter lost his life in a tragic accident with an antique tractor in the early morning hours of Aug. 6.

"It's one of the greatest days of my life to see how Ben's friends came together to (make this happen)," Ben's father, David, said, standing at the edge of one of the fields northeast of Murphysboro. "You don't see it on TV — this is the good news."

In the distance, plumes of a dusty red cloud hung in the air, the byproduct of the combine cutting the two-feet-high soybean plants, leaving behind the bare nubs of what once was. Plumes of dust were also kicked up in the air from the combines cutting the soybeans behind the family's house on Arbeiter Road.