It was only a sonogram from his pregnant wife’s first doctor’s visit, but it lifted Howard Love’s spirit as few other things could. For within those shadowy and blurred lines, Love could see his future as a first-time father. Would it be a son? A daughter? Howard Love would never know. On March 5, 2005 — just two days after his wife Stephanie brought the sonogram home — the 37-year-old farmer died of complications from a heart attack.Elijah Howard Love came into this world almost seven months later, wearing nothing but his father’s smile and his mother’s eyes, and surrounded by members of a Calhoun County Farmers Federation that takes to heart the biblical mandate to “Love thy neighbor.” “You’ve never seen so many people in the hospital when a little boy was born,” said Stephanie, who described Elijah’s birth as something of a “miracle” in itself. “The whole Farmers Federation and everybody else were up there. As soon as I had him, there were 15 people in my room waiting to see this baby.”As much a federation of Good Samaritans as farmers, the tight-knit Calhoun group springs into action whenever and wherever needed, whether it’s tending chickens, defoliating fields or picking cotton. “This past year has been rough,” said Marshall Prickett, president of the Calhoun Farmers Federation, referring to a series of unfortunate events that hit the group. “But it’s a good group of people, and they believe in helping each other out. That’s the way it should be.”In the days following his first heart attack — and for weeks on end after his death — Love’s friends in the Federation joined together to watch over his expectant widow, 10-year-old stepdaughter Kelsey, and the two chicken houses he left behind.For six weeks, Federation members like Prickett, his son Mark, Bryan Hammonds, Johnny Bryant, Lenn Costner, Tony Ginn and countless others pitched in to help Love’s family keep the two 500-foot broiler houses running smoothly. They unloaded a batch of baby chicks at midnight. They walked the houses morning, afternoon and night. They repaired feeders, picked up dead birds. Whatever was needed, they did.”It was amazing. Just taking a bunch of people who don’t know me, and they’re there for me, day or night,” said Stephanie Love, who had married Howard only 15 months earlier. “No matter what they had going on, they were there. You didn’t even have to call — they just showed up. They knew they were needed. They pulled together and helped each other. Didn’t ask for anything in return. You know farmers — they’ve got their own things going on — but nobody said, ‘I’ve got to leave.’ Nobody said, ‘I ain’t got time.’ They just showed up. You don’t realize how many friends you’ve got until something like that happens. I’m 33, and I always thought I had friends. Now I know I do.”It was a response that makes members like Costner proud of their membership in such an organization. “The Farmers Federation people were there,” said Costner, referring to the army of volunteers who showed up to help Stephanie Love grow those chickens. “Everybody jumped in. Everybody helped. It’s a good organization. It’s a good bunch of people. They’re together. If you need help, they’re together. They’re there.”They were also there last September when Keith Bryant, the Federation’s first vice president, tore a muscle loose from his elbow while putting in a standpipe at a construction site. “It was just a plastic pipe, but when I picked it up, that muscle popped like a .22 rifle. You talk about hurtin’!” Bryant said. “The doctor said I would’ve been a lot better off if I’d broken my arm.”Just 10 days after surgery, Bryant used a stepladder to climb into his cotton picker. With his arm in a cast and resting it on a pile of pillows inside his picker, Bryant faced one tough job.”I was out of action for about nine days,” he said. “I should’ve stayed out a whole lot longer, but I didn’t have anybody to run that picker. You can’t just find some general laborer and say, ‘I want you to run this tractor.’ And you don’t want to put anybody on a piece of equipment that costs $250,000 to $300,000 either without a little bit of experience because they may tear up more in five minutes than you can fix in a week.”Then, without even having to ask for help, along came Marshall and Mark Prickett rolling up in their cotton picker. “I was tickled to death when I saw them coming with their picker,” said Bryant. “They helped us for two and a half days and then they had to go start on theirs. I didn’t have to ask for help — they just came. They were just neighbors being neighbors.”Wendell Wilson, another Federation member, who had helped Bryant by defoliating about 100 acres of cotton, was himself injured just days later while helping out yet another fellow member, Doug Trantham. Trantham looked on helplessly as Wilson’s high-boy tumbled head first into a sinkhole. Rupturing a disc in his neck and temporarily knocking him unconscious, the high-boy bounced out of the sinkhole almost as quickly as it went in.”It was a big sinkhole, probably six-foot in diameter,” said Wilson. “I really don’t know how deep it was. It came out of the hole by itself somehow — I really don’t know how. I remember going into it. I had checked my speed to slow down a little bit, and the machine was wide open again just before I stopped. I guess I hit the controls when I jammed my neck.” The surgery that followed sidelined Wilson for most of October and November at a time when he still had crops to spray and harvest. But again, in stepped Marshall and Mark Prickett, Joel Prickett, Bryant and his father Johnny and Trantham. And again, problem solved.”Our Federation is pretty much like family,” said Wilson. “We may not always act like it, but everybody takes care of everybody else. There’s never been any question that whenever somebody has a tragedy, we’ve all teamed up to help.””It just shows what a good grassroots organization we have,” said Keith Bryant. “You can’t get any better than family and friends and belief in God. We just do the best we can after that.”Marshall Prickett says that spirit of humble servitude wasn’t lost on Howard Love, either. “Howard was like that,” he said. “Howard would’ve helped, too.”