Feeling the ground through his heavy-duty boots, Toby Tormaschy thinks it is good to be back. He takes in the scene—all the sights and smells inherent. He collects himself and pours himself into the tasks at hand. Time can’t pass slowly enough as he’s at the farm. He relishes everything, taking nothing for
granted. He’ll be back later in the week, and multiple times during the next. It is one step closer to home. “It’s been a long, tough journey,” he remembers a couple of days before he was discharged from his inpatient rehabilitation at QLI, but he smiles—“I am confident.”
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Toby’s real pride and joy is his family—wife Heidi, and their four daughters. But farming is in his blood and a close second. Being raised on a farm, Toby went off to college fully anticipating a pursuit of how to continue that legacy. The intricacies in managing and operating hundreds, if not thousands of acres might be enough to make some individuals check out—find another profession. But this work excites Toby. “I’ve got a good work ethic,” says Toby. “I’m just so used to waking up every day, going out, and doing whatever needed to be done.”
Over the years he and his wife developed a renowned dairy farm in Richardson, North Dakota. “It’s something I’ve grown to appreciate—the opportunity to be a spouse, to be somebody that the kids look up to. I’m just trying to be a good father, good husband, to be the person that everybody when they see you, is happy you’re there.”
In 2024, after noticing where the regional markets had shifted, the time came to start transitioning the farm from dairy to cash crops. It was a process too, one that would test Toby—a farm doesn’t start anew overnight—whole hosts of practical concerns and logistics needed to be addressed. One of them was building up a grain bin for storage. The massive silos were a requirement. Toby found an individual in Minnesota looking to part with one and organized transportation back to North Dakota. As it was coming together, the bin partially collapsed, knocking Toby from his ladder to the ground ten feet below. He sustained a traumatic brain injury as a result of the fall.
“I don’t even remember a whole month after my injury.” As awareness set in, so did the reality of what faced him. “It was a struggle,” he admits. His injury removed him from his life, both in the livelihood of farming, and the chances to be around the family table for dinner—the days that he cherished dearly.
At this stage of his journey, questions started to swirl—what could come back? If he couldn’t do things he used to, who would he be? “My whole life I had known prepping for work and then doing it. Then to not be able to, and shift towards recovery, was very difficult.” But, he recognizes, of the utmost importance.
The nature of Toby’s injury meant that executive functioning, particularly problem-solving skills, was impaired. This was a blow to his confidence and sense of perfectionism.
The team started small—speech pathologist Zoey Bertsch collaborated with Toby to problem solve and practically work on executive functioning skills—going out to a hardware store, getting supplies to help
tend a modest collection of plants in the house. Further, the two of them would begin to utilize programs such as ChatGPT and draft a wide range of scenarios that could face him back home on the farm. “Toby is a reflective and deep thinker,” notes Zoey, “and with farming being so crucial to his life it was important to start diving into that passion practically.”
Midway through his QLI program, Zoey and Toby did a home visit trip—in the return to his North Dakota farm, they could further see where the barriers were—“Toby could describe in detail all the ins and outs of dairy farming,” Zoey remembers. But with the transition to cash crops that was made shortly before his injury, what was ingrained wasn’t necessarily applicable anymore. It was clear to the team that while progress was undoubtedly being made—Toby needed a safe and immersive environment with guidance and support to greatly further the recovery he’d been making, before returning home and starting to handle pieces of the large operation once more.
“If you have an individual like a farmer, and center them in a four-walled environment—the opposite of what they have been exposed to for most of their life, that can be detrimental in itself,” muses QLI service coordinator Steph Handlos. Since 2022, Steph, along with her husband Joel, have welcomed several similar clients to their farm to enhance their programs with applicable hands-on tasks and 
experience. For some, it could be as simple as walking in an uneven environment to master a stable gait and balance. With others, it’s extended interaction caring for horses. In Toby’s case, it’s all of the above and then some and an intersection of every facet of his programming.
“What replicates what he would be doing at home, and how the Handlos farm could assist him in that?” asked the team. These days at the farm, which grew with great frequency, often three times per week, challenged Toby in ways that the clinical setting never could. It offered an environment for physical growth, through tasks like collecting animal feed, and distributing it to the animals. He operated the Gator with occupational therapist and driving specialist Madie Otte to clean and then remove trash, which served to evaluate his progress and safety while driving. Whatever tasks were ahead of Toby for the day would be planned for and communicated ahead of time. These, often in a text form that he could engage with and refer to, would be the tools for direction and guidance.
“All that exposure to the farm I’ve been able to get has been wonderful,” Toby reflects. “It has helped me build the confidence to know that I can do many things I need to when I get home. When I first arrived at QLI, I was nowhere near the person that I used to be. Over time, physically, mentally, I’ve been getting better.” Every aspect of his program found its fulcrum here—the physical therapy like the tasks—the cleaning, collecting, and delivering materials, the occupational therapy in the fine coordinative skills of repair, the speech and cognitive functioning with the planning around tasks, and later understanding and communicating how he would drive vehicles like tractors—problem-solving new methods for operating this heavy equipment safely. The team’s structure and intention shone through in finding the right way to bisect ability and deficit. For all his life, Toby set out to complete every task—priding himself on swift action and stellar results. “These difficult times have made me appreciate the way things were going for me before my injury.”
When traveling to the Handlos farm, he was responsible for planning and coordinating the tasks for the day. Just as with any other variable day he might face back home, there were times he could roll through everything on the list and other days when he wouldn’t. Of course, that did not mean that Toby was less able, or that there would always be a gap in ability. It’s part of finding the perspective, knowing how far he has come in just a few months. He has the proof that the work which gave him purpose and passion is very much possible again, and waiting for him in North Dakota—back working on his farm, back to the warm embrace of his family.
