101-Year-Old Farm Girl Thrives in New Community

June Reed spent more than seven decades doing everything herself on a South Dakota farm, from trapping gophers to mowing acres of land well into her 90s. At 101, she's proving that independence doesn't end when you change your address.

Reed's farmhouse in Brookings County had no electricity or indoor bathroom when her father bought it in 1946. She raised three children there, lived alone for 65 years after her husband passed, and handled the three-and-a-half-hour mowing job by herself until October 2022.

"I used to help with putting up hay, drove horses, raked with two horses. I've done a lot of stuff," Reed says from her new home at Good Samaritan Sioux Falls Village, where she moved at age 98.

The decision came after she fell in the pasture one day. "That was a tough one," she says about getting back up on her own.

Reed worried that leaving the farm meant giving up her independence. Many people arriving at senior communities share that fear, according to senior living specialist Barbara Trefz.

But Reed discovered the opposite. She chose to skip the cleaning service so she could keep getting exercise. She crochets, sews, and fills her calendar with activities, especially when musicians visit to play the old songs she loves.

Her two-bedroom apartment gives her space when this small-town girl needs quiet time. When she wants company, neighbors are just down the hall instead of a mile up the road.

Sunny's Take

Reed treats her neighbors to ice cream cones on her birthday, which always gets cheers. On her living room wall hang two large framed paintings: one of the farm she called home for 75 years, and another of her childhood home just down the road.

She still has stories about farm life that make her new neighbors give her blank looks. "They don't know what goes on out on the farm," she says with a smile.

At 101, June Reed proves that the heart of independence isn't where you live but how you choose to live wherever you are.