TURTLE LAKE (AP) - A nonprofit group that seeds crops for farmers has finished planting spring wheat here for a farmer whose wife recently had a heart transplant.

Farm Rescue, which is now in its second year, seeds crops for farmers who are sidelined by illness, injury or weather disasters. The group seeded spring wheat last week for Wes and Sharon Weible, who have been away from home much of the time since Sharon had heart transplant surgery in 2006, in Rochester, Minn.

It's the first time Farm Rescue has helped a family in which the wife is the family member who has suffered an illness or major surgery, said founder Bill Gross, a UPS pilot who grew up on a farm near the Stutsman County town of Cleveland.

The group has identified 12 farmers to help this spring - 10 in North Dakota and one each in South Dakota and Minnesota - and will keep two other slots open.

Farm Rescue began its 2007 planting season on April 12 on the Justin Metzger farm south of Eureka, S.D. The farmstead was destroyed by a tornado.

The Weibles, who live in Turtle Lake and farm northwest of the city, are happy to have the help this year from Farm Rescue.

"You have to stay in Rochester for treatments when you have a heart transplant," said Sharon Weible, who is a registered nurse at the Turtle Lake Community Hospital. The Weibles were in Rochester for three months, home about a month and then Sharon had to go back again because of problems with rejection in the plasma.

They've been going back and forth to Rochester weekly for Sharon's treatments.

Sharon Weible said she needed the heart transplant because "my heart was shot." She had cardiac myopathy, which causes the heart not to function, she said.

Weible said her husband applied for the help from the organization, at the urging of other farmers.

Wes Weible was worried about getting his planting done this spring, Sharon Weible said.

"I was happy for him," she said.

Farm Rescue volunteers Bill Krumwiede, Jack Limke, Warren Zakopyko, Gene Spichke and Gross ran equipment around the clock to get the planting done last week for the Weibles.

"It sure is great," Wes Weible said. "I just can't say enough about it."