Plowing Is Hard...Very Hard

            Harvest seemed like it would never end; so much so that I never even had a chance to blog about it. Frankly, it happened like this: harvest came in like a lion, and the sucker left the exact same way. It ended on my birthday, and really, that it all I remember about it. Harvest was not nice to me, so I was not nice to it and therefore, did not write about it.

            In the interim, we went to the fair, sold the piggies, L and then came back home to dig out from under the smell of swine on our boots and grease on The Boss’s jeans. The kiddos went back to school and I settled myself in for a long winter’s nap. Yeah, right! Do you know me?

            As most of you know, last Spring was my first attempt at driving a tractor. From getting her stuck, to killing it and free-wheeling backward down a steep hill, to peeing in a coffee cup. If you’ve read my blog, you know that it was an “experience” to say the least. But I found out that I loved working with The Boss. I loved being in the tractor alone. I loved singing country music at the top of my lungs simply because it seems like the type of music a person should listen to in a tractor. Yee-haw! In addition, this season, thankfully, I got a newer tractor. Her name is Rosie and I love, love, love her! She shifts on her own without grinding gears, she is smooth, she has power and digital readouts and everything a modern numbskull like myself needs to not kill myself on a hill. Yea! So when The Boss asked me to plow, I said, “Hell, Yeah!”

            “You sure?” he said. “I know you are super busy all the time, and plowing is hard.”

            “I’m totally sure!”

            I recalled that learning to harrow and cultivate were difficult at first, and therefore I assumed that plowing would be too. However, I recalled that I liked plowing – at least I did when I used to ride with The Boss before. What I like about plowing is that the plow takes a field of golden straw and turns it under to make a distinct line of brown and black dirt clods. In essence, there is no mistaking where your line is, like there is with harrowing or cultivating. Now, to digress, if you are a farmer, or The Boss, you are probably saying to yourself, “Oh, there IS a distinct line when you are harrowing and cultivating too.” But, no, there isn’t. It’s just like when they say that everyone knows what a 5/8” socket is just by looking at it. No. No, they don’t.

            Anyway, my point is that because there is an obvious line, I figured it would be easy to follow. Not so. You see, with plowing, you have to drive with your head turned almost zombie-like backward the whole time, in order to watch the plow line, all the while reminding your hand not to turn the wrong way. In other words, this is pretty much opposite of what you were taught in driver’s-ed and it’s hard.

Not only is plowing hard, but the ground was rock hard too. It has not rained here in forever – like before harvest forever! That left the ground so hard in fact that every time I got the plow going I would break something. First it was the bolt which holds one of the plow blades on. So, I had to drive the Boss’s tractor while he drove my out of the field to the service truck to fix it. Then, as he was bringing my tractor back to me, I broke the plow blade completely off of his. Switch, out he goes again. This continued on and on, back and forth, right up until one moment when I turned a corner and I felt the tractor sigh and lunge forward, only to look back – like I should have been – and see the whole entire plow, with hydrolic hoses splayed and bleeding like intestines, sitting about 20 feet back be itself on the gold and black ground.

            Plowing is hard.  Very hard. Well, after many reapplications of deoderant, and well as the first desires I’ve had for a smoke in years, we finished one field and The Boss said, “Let’s give this up until it rains.” Thank ya Jesus!

            I think I’m out of the woods – until he tells me that I have to drive my tractor home. On the road. With actual people watching, and cars driving by. Cars with mommies and children and people who are trusting that those others on the road are only there because they feel competent to be there.

            “You can do this!” he says.

            And so I do. I mean, after all, who else is going to do it. So I drive, scared out of my pants, wobbling from the yellow line to the ditch, to the yellow line, and back to the ditch. It was scary. Really scary. Worse than I imagined. But finally we got to our road. Our sweet, wonderful, washboard, dusty, dirty road that I always hate to drive my car on but I now LOVE to drive the tractor on. We get back and I pull up next to The Boss and step out to let my tractor cool down.

            “Well?” I said. “I did it!”

            “Yeah,” he said, walking back to my plow. “But you hit something.”

            “No,” I said, racing down the ladder. “Do, I didn’t!”

            “You did,” he said. “Didn’t you feel it?” 

            “No,” I said. “I didn’t hit anything. I promise.”

            “Then where is that plow blade?” he asked, pointing to the severed arm of one of the plows?”

            I don’t know folks. Might be time to rethink my day job.