The sunshine is bright on the eastern-facing front porch of a quaint rural Aurora farmhouse. Laura Wilson sits with her ice water, a laptop and her trusting and dusty companion, Scotty the farm cat. He’s blind in one eye but still a good mouser.

Laura, though young, prides herself on being an upstanding community member, a wife, a daughter – and a fifth-generation Nebraska farmer. A unique set of circumstances led her to internet fame, where she works tirelessly to educate her 430,000 YouTube subscribers around the world about Nebraska farm life.

The 22-year-old wakes up between 5 and 7 a.m., sometimes getting in a workout before sitting down to log in. Breakfast usually consists of a blueberry bagel and strawberry cream cheese. Checking emails is one of her first to-dos, correspondence like potential sponsorships and questions from fans around the world.

After that she moves from the front porch into her home, shared with husband, Grant, and gets ready for the day by picking out a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Next, Laura enters the bathroom, putting on only a light layer of makeup, before moving to gather beverages and snacks in a small cooler and picking a pair of sturdy, but stylish, Blundstone work shoes. “If I look good, I feel good,” Laura said with a laugh.

Grant is already off discing a field at the southern edge of Hamilton County, though he was sure to leave Laura with a peck before jumping into his work. Such is the life for a married couple, both working the land. The pair works together on the farm as often as they are apart. On this day they’ll see each other later, no doubt. Dinner together while watching a show is usually how the day ends.

Though she has a goal to take a
few loads of corn to the local co-op today, everything else in the middle is up in the air. As any Nebraska farmer knows, it’s impossible to plan too far ahead in this line of work. “I’m in a constant state of evolution around here,” she said. “But I like to at least pretend that there is some sort of schedule or routine to my life.” She represents a typical “get it done” attitude penned by Nebraska farmers. This independence, found commonly on Nebraska farms, is something her YouTube followers admire.

Out the door, down the steps and across the yard, the young farmer pushes her belongings into a white Peterbilt semi-truck, complete with grain trailer. The massive metal hood of the beast is propped open; Laura knows she’ll have to lower it, but she has other plans first.

Under the crunch of gravel, the social media content creator moves to position a thin tripod, sets up her shot, and mounts her camera and microphone to record. She runs through her scene once before hitting record.

“I still get nervous,” Laura admitted after she finished her shot. “Even after this long.”

The young Hamilton County native started her YouTube channel three years ago – a year after she committed to farming full-time – though becoming a celebrity was an accident. What started as posting short clips from the seat of a combine or tractor for her cousins in Texas (who were bored during COVID) turned into a week guest-tweeting for a much wider audience from the “AgOfTheWorld” account on Twitter in April 2020.

Laura grew the Twitter account’s fanbase from 13,000 to more than 27,600 when she signed off a week later. Her personal Twitter, @laurafarms_, was flooded with direct messages and feedback. “Some of them were marriage proposals,” she said. “But I also got a lot of crazy awesome feedback from people all over the world.”

Laura posted her first video, one that had gone viral on Twitter, to YouTube on April 25, 2020. The vertical video clip featured the young farmer sitting in the cab of a tractor, walking her viewers through the operational bits to accomplish planting seed corn. She recalled looking at it a few days after it was posted. The video at that point was just shy of 1 million views. It’s currently cresting at 1.2 million, though some of her more popular videos are well over 2 million.

The videos on the Nebraska farmer’s YouTube channel, Laura Farms, look a little bit different in present day. Her first few postings reflect innocent inexperience, with vertical framing and short, truncated clips. Today, Laura’s videos are much longer (usually coming in at about 20 minutes) and feature thought-out landscape and point-of-view shots, as well as extra videography. This “B-roll,” like scenes of her pulling her tractor through the frame, pull it all together.

Back in her driveway in rural Aurora, Laura has already filmed a quick intro to her video, explaining what viewers could expect to see for the day – hauling corn. After figuring out how to lower the hood on her semi, Laura, who had been all but lifted off the ground during the process, climbed back in the truck, moved the seat forward with a definite click and was off toward the co-op (but not without pausing quickly out of frame to retrieve her recording equipment). This was only the second time she’d ever dropped off a load by herself, too, so focus quickly took over. Her usual smiley face was still positive, but this time also determined. All in all, she made hauling approximately 83,000 pounds (of semi and a full load of corn) look easy.

While driving, Laura took a few moments to note farmsteads passing by, including that of the Wilson family. Grant’s grandma still helps on the farm by doing paperwork at 86-years-young. His parents have their own farmstead, where Laura frequents to fill up the grain trailer with corn stored in a bin. The whole family works together to keep Wilson Farms, and by proxy Laura Farms, running. It’s a family unit.

Shortly later, Laura shifts gears and straightens up in her seat momentarily. A note of seriousness takes over her and she scans what she can see of the horizon on the crest of the hill. “We call this the Lord’s bridge,” she said. Was there a legend behind that? Had someone died here?

“No, no,” she clarified with a laugh. “Grant and I came up with that. It’s just really narrow. I think two semis could fit on it if they were pressed, scraping together, side by side.” She revs up, needing momentum to cross the bridge, and says a silent prayer. It’s all clear.

Throughout Laura’s time on YouTube and the farm, things like making it over the bridge alone and successfully hauling corn to the ethanol plant haven’t always gone so smoothly. Though she has a rough estimate for the day, there are times, like on April 7, 2021, that all that goes out the window to help those in need – even when they’re supposed to be the ones helping themselves.

She started the day by moving cattle with her father, Cale, but that was short-lived. The next scene in her vlog (a video “blog” of her daily events) changed to Laura in a pickup alongside Grant. It was later revealed Laura’s dad, Cale, had discovered a quickly spreading fire in the dry foliage in the river near her family home. The riverbank itself, however, was the real cause for concern.

After attempts to free the smaller of the responding firetrucks that had gotten stuck in the riverbed mud with their own pickup were unsuccessful, Laura and Grant returned home to call in the big guns. And Laura was behind the wheel of one – a John Deere 8530 tractor. “We’re just going to pull the firetrucks out and help them with the fire,” Laura exclaimed to her invisible audience. “Laura and Grant to the rescue!”

They may have missed their plans for a Good Friday church service, but it’s all in a day’s work for a Nebraska farmer. Stewards of the land, like the Wilsons and beyond, readily give up plans and other duties at the drop of a hat to help a neighbor. Laura has shown this trait and shares the Nebraska spirit with all those who interact with her online content. This is who she wants to be at the end of the day: a neighbor, a friend and a farmer first.

 

October 2020 was a bad month for the Remple family in rural Henderson. Their combine, grain cart and semi had burned during a bad fire, and the heat of harvest season was on. Much longer and the crop would likely be too wet or frozen to harvest.

Laura, Grant, Cale and Grandpa Curt dropped what they were doing to help more than a dozen other farmers wrap up the Remples’ harvest. The young farmer and YouTube sensation also quickly decided to put together a charity T-shirt drive through one of her sponsors. All the proceeds from shirt sales went directly to the Remple family. “It was inspiring and comforting to know that there are good people willing to pitch in in this world,” Laura said. “The Good Life still exists in rural Nebraska.”

Back in the present day, just over an hour after Laura had started her journey to deliver corn to the ethanol plant, she was pulling into Grant’s dad’s farm to reload the trailer with grain. She looked across the cab before piling her long chestnut curls on top of her head (secured with a claw clip) and pulling the hood of her hoodie up and over her head. The drawstrings were pulled tight and tied. Laura resembled something of a Nebraska Eskimo, for reference, but there was “no way” she was going to get corn dust in her hair if she didn’t have to. “That stuff takes literally forever to get out,” she said. “Trust me.”

Another task completed solo and even more hard work completed for the day by the young farmer. She remembered to capture bits for her YouTube fans but was always ultimately focused on the task at hand.

Cale, who operates a farm of his own in rural Marquette, has seen his daughter blossom since starting her farming journey – first with him and then on her own. “She says ‘yes’ to new challenges and tries them on, tries them out – right, wrong or indifferent,” he said. His daughter’s willingness to give back at the drop of a hat is “just her,” he added.

As a Nebraskan, one must form a resiliency to outside forces, like weather. Laura handles this like a champ. “She hardly ever gets down or stays down,” he said, expressing his pride. “It’s always a new morning, even though there might have been or will be challenges.”

She shows no fear.

“If you do that long enough, anything else that comes up in life that is uncontrollable you can handle,” he said. “You’ve seen worse. This is just a Tuesday in Nebraska.”

Laura’s video from her day of filming, “A Girl and Her Big Rig,” posted April 23, 2023. In the first three days online, it earned more than 215,000 views and 1,100 comments. “Is everyone so impressed with her or is it just me?” one fan commented. “I love everything she does, and she can be really proud of herself!” Another viewer, a retired truck driver from Canada, was also among commenters.

“I am super impressed with your driving ability and how you caught on so quickly,” he wrote. “The next level is to reverse without looking through the window behind you, that’s cheating!”

Other fans with experience give Laura tips and tricks of the trade, like not worrying too much about “cold engine coolant leaks” or grinding gears. According to video comments, viewers from places as far as the United Kingdom and close as Minnesota liken watching Laura’s content to “sitting down with an old friend.” She’s easygoing, doesn’t give up and has a positive attitude toward the profession, comments add.

Laura ends her day by kicking off her boots, right alongside Grant’s, and flopping down on a couch in the living room. The sunset’s rich golds and reds melt into the rural Nebraska horizon, bringing warmth in through the tall picture windows in the couple’s dining room. She’s signed off her video for the day but still must edit others for posting.

“I’m just educating the general public on a girl and her husband’s farm life in Nebraska,” she said. “There’s a lot of reasons why I farm, but if you boil everything down, farming is my job. It’s my life.”