Wheat Harvest 2013

For a typical farm wife harvest begins weeks before the first bulk tank of wheat has been filled by the farmer. It starts with intense menu planning, days of grocery shopping, “spring” house cleaning and yard work, a few pre-harvest parts runs, at least one day – if not more- of cookie baking, and possibly a round of early school shopping. That being said, I bet there are a county full of farm wives out there telling me that this list is NOT EVEN CLOSE to what they really have to do to get ready. I am sure they are right, but that is because in the year 2013, I am not a typical farm wife. In fact, I pale in comparison to any of the farm ladies who have come before me.

That is not to say that harvest doesn’t start weeks before the first dump for me too, because it surely does. I grocery shop for days like everyone else, I do some meal planning, and of course, parts runs; but it really starts for me on that first day when I see all of the “Help” pulling into the driveway.

Three days ago, my mother-in-law once again set up her camper at the base of our yard. It is the same spot where she has parked it on for the last two years; down by the old garden, beneath the maple tree and the lilac bushes where the afternoon shade makes the hot days of cooking our meals just a little more bearable. That night she cooked our first harvest meal of spicy sausages and beans with green salad and a little pie for dessert. Once again, we were all immersed in the reality of the life that we were about to live for the next three weeks.

The next morning, my husband took his first full lunch box to the door and then turned around to kiss me good-bye. My heart fluttered, not only from the kiss (which as you all know will be non-existent in about a week!) but also from the realization that we were really – all of us - going to do this again!

Within a couple of hours, our reliable truck driver Lonny pulled up in his familiar burgundy colored pick-up, the one I remember him buying right after our first harvest together. I have not seen it, or him, in a year, and yet as he got out and flashed that always-friendly crooked smile, I felt as if it had only been a week. I think Lonny felt that way as well.

He was followed quickly in by Marsha, one of our other truck drivers, who pulled up in her blue SUV and the same cute little camper she has parked on our lawn in the same spot for the past two years. It made me almost tear up when I thought about the fact that Marsha didn’t even have to ask where to park. She simply turned around and backed onto the lawn where her extension cord can reach and she won’t have to walk too far in the dark after a shower and dinner.  That is Marsha’s spot. We all know that.

But this year, it really started for me, as well as for my mother-in-law, when we watched my boys Brett and Dustin, ages 16 and 15, head out for the day with the rest of the field workers. Brett is 16, and drove combine for us last year. This year, our operation has changed, and Brett has been promoted to truck driver. This is not an easy task, but one that we all know Brett is totally capable of. Dustin is our new tractor driver. He pulls the bank-out wagon to the trucks and fills them so that the drivers can take the grain to the elevator. Dustin’s first night home he said he earned a few grey hairs. I believe that of both of my boys, but they have sure made life easier on me!

I have yet to make a parts run. I have yet to feel overwhelmed. What I do feel is intense gratitude for all of these people, and an amazing amount of pride in my family and friends for all that they do to help us get our product to market. Farm life constantly changes, and as a result, farm wives lives constantly change as well, but as any good farmer will tell you: Enjoy it now, because the moment things start getting good, you can count on them turning to shit again.

That, as well as a farm wife rolling her eyes when The Farmer is not looking, is something that will I am more than certain will never change.  

One Minute Inside A Woman Tractor Driver's Brain

...When a lady harrows a field, as opposed to a gentleman, the field starts to look like it has been flag-striped by a spray plane from all the random toilet paper laying at specific intervals in the field...and I wonder if it's cool or strange for people to see a tube of lipstick, bottle of hand sanitizer, and Kombucha bottle in the side window of my tractor as a drive down the highway...

The Answer - Finally - To Why Farmers Never Drive Faster Than 45 MPH

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When I was 13 years old my mother announced to my sister and I that she was going to marry a grass farmer. Really? After learning that the man actually farmed grass – and not grass – my older sister and I nervously settled into the idea of moving out of our small town and onto his farm.

Now, my new step-father was sweet, in fact, right along with my grandfather whom you read about earlier, my step-father is just about the sweetest man on the planet. And, nervous as my sis and I were about moving to a new home, I can only now imagine how this man must have felt when he brought his full-sized van over to help us pack up and move our things to the new rooms that he and his father had painstakingly designed for us as a surprise at his house.

As sis and I hauled boxes full of clothes, garbage bags over-flowing with stuffed animals, pillows, blankets, closets full of shoes, books and recently signed yearbooks, cheerleading paraphernalia, typewriters, chests full of make-up, trees full of hoop earrings and bling necklaces, and caddies full of Aquanet hairspray, Vidal Sasoon Mousse, and all other forms of teenage-girl-dom, out of the old house and into his van, my dear step-father continued to smile and stuff things in, all the while attempting to regale us with some strange but entertaining new form of comedy we later came to know as “The North Dakotan Jokes.”

Once the bumper of the van was scraping the pavement like a low-rider car that has just given up its suspension, we hit the road with my step-dad and I taking the lead in the van and my mother and sister following in our car.

Now, let me tell you that up until this point this man in the driver seat had never had a child in his life. Not one. And, now, within weeks of meeting us for the first time, this crazy fool agreed – albeit somewhat naively – to become the father of two 1980’s teenage girls. Hello, Mother? What a good saleswomen you must have been!

So, as my step-dad drove slowly away from our old house in apparent careful pursuit of our new home he pushed in the new Gloria Estefan tape into the tape deck, looked over at me and smiled as if he wanted to show me that although he was a farmer, he could still be cool. Since I had expected country, or some form of weather-droning talk radio, I instantly smiled back and had to agree – he was kinda cool, or at least should be given the credit since he was trying so hard!

Feeling better about the situation, I sat back and as we drove down the pavement and out of my little town, we both started humming along to the fairly fresh Latin beat of The Rhythm is Gonna Get You. It was only when we got out of town and onto the highway that I realized that though this man was nice, apparently cool, and accommodating, there was something terribly wrong with his driving.

The thing is folks, my mom and I had driven the distance between our small town and where I knew his home to be many times. His farm was just “this side” of the big city which we had to roll to almost weekly to buy groceries. That city was just under and hour away. The tape Let It Loose is just over 38 minutes long. But, by the time that the tape wound to its conclusion, we were not even a third of the way there. I kid you not! We had barely hit the entrance sign to the next village! While mom must have warned him about us, and how to impress a teenage girl, she had failed at warning us about him – or farmers in general.

As Gloria started singing Rhythm again, I looked over at the driver. He looked over at me. We smiled, and then we once again looked out our prospective windows. That was when I noticed that the telephone poles on the side of the road were passing by much slower than I had ever seen them pass by before. I looked out the front window at the yellow lines and started counting them, like I often did to stave off boredom as my mom drove to the city for groceries. Holy hell! I thought my mom drove like an old foggie! Not so! She was a speed demon compared to this guy!

I grinned again, and tried to look over at the speedometer, but being a large dusty old van that was so packed with girl junk that my father had to suffer the pain of sitting practically squished up against the steering wheel, I could not gauge anything except the fact that it was going to be the dawn of a new day before we ever got to his house! 

Finally, I stole a chance to look over at him when he was looking the other way, and that was when I saw what the problem was. You see, it was the beginning of June. School had just let out of me, so I was ready to run with the wind like a wild horse, but to him it was time to slow down and inspect the crops.

As he crawled down the road, weaving back and forth over the yellow dividing line as if it had no business being there, I watched him glance thoughtfully from side to side at two fields of thick green wheat that had just headed out and were blowing green and silver in the warm breeze.

The thing is that these were not his crops. Heck, I wasn’t even sure at that point if he had ever farmed wheat. After all, he was a “grass” farmer – again, not that kind. But still, he slowed, and slowed, and slowed again until we actually had cars – although not my mother’s car – passing us on the highway.

The crappy thing about this is that we live on the Palouse, and the Palouse is known for it’s vast miles of farmland. Therefore, I knew that no matter what, for the next 50 miles we were bound to be driving by fields, and they would of course have to be inspect. So, I laid my head back, closed my eyes and listened again to Gloria threatening me with her Rhythm until we finally got to our new home and I could give my mom a good stern talking to about what in the hell she had gotten us into!

However, as sweet as he was trying to be, I never said a word to him, but I will tell you that for the rest of the years that I spent on my father’s farm, I did just about anything NOT to have to ride shotgun with my father! Over the years, I did learn that he had a sense of humor and could take a joke about just about anything – unfortunately, he never understood the problem that I had with his driving. Frankly, it was just not funny when I joked about that.

Sadly, when I married The Boss it was the same story. Drive slow, inspect crops, even if they aren’t your own, swerve over the yellow line, smile, smirk, shake your head, inspect some more…

It got to the point with the Boss that I would just reach over and place my foot over the top of his and force him to go a little faster – something I wouldn’t not have dared done to my elder; but, the Boss is younger than me so I wasn’t about to suffer through that with him. I had hoped that this farmer could be trained!

Not so! Farmers cannot be trained to drive over 45 - ever. They will inspect the weeds on the freeway on the side of the road in Spokane if they happen to be carrying Round-up and might be able to sneak over to the side of the road undetected long enough to spray them!

They just can’t drive any faster. And they shouldn’t, because no matter what else is going on in the world, farmers are spending their days inspecting and weaving and gauging and thinking and planning, and well, driving their spouses and daughters completely insane! Now I understand why my great-grandmother’s drove their husbands everywhere once the farmer retired. I thought it was due to my grandfather’s diminishing sight – not so! It was so that they could actually see their grandchildren before they had grown up and had families of their own!

However, sadly, I - yes me - the girl who is not from a three generation farm family - gets it now. After driving a tractor all day in their field at a top speed of 7 MPH, and then flagging equipment down the road and a racing 12 MPH, and then of course having this crazy desire to look at other farmers harrow marks in order to compare their straight lines (which they can drive in a field!) to my own, I now find myself driving at a top speed of 45 with my son in the passenger seat rolling his eyes and asking me, “Are we there yet?”

And just like my father, I don’t answer.

Instead, as I scan the green around me, I calmly tell him about how we really need to get a move on (of course, I am referring to getting a "move on"  in the field, not the road) because Farmer John has already sprayed his wheat. I am now notorious for slowing down to see if the peas or lentils have popped their little heads through the soil, and I’m constantly finding myself going 35 looking out across the waving fields of green barley that appear as if some patriotic old ladies have just draped a large waving green and silver flag over the whole entire place. I even find myself driving at a comfortable 45 on the freeway when everyone else is going 60+! UGGH! What have I become? 

More and more, as I am driving down the road, I notice my son grab the steering wheel, roll his eyes, and slowly pull me back onto my side of the road, while rudely reminding me that if I don’t watch where I am going I am going to get us all killed.

Geez, kids these days. Don't they have no respect for their elders?

For Those Women Just Learning To Wrestle Sheep

Since yesterday was uneventful, I decided to bring back an oldie but a goodie. This was one of the two most talked about posts that I ever put on my blog and if you haven't read it you should. It explains a lot about me. (Originally posted September 2, 2011)

           The next day, intent in re-sinking my feet in the mud after the Spokane experience, and working out some of my aggression at the Dear Farmer (we will call him DF for short, just because I like the look of it!) I forced the kids through many lessons with sheep and pigs. The forecast called for the mercury to hit 100 today, so it seemed more therapeutic than crazy to put everyone through their paces simply because I was breathing and snorting like a bull over yesterday. The only thing keeping me from grabbing a bulldozer and plowing through the wheat field where DF was working was the fact that Brett had his first high school football game tonight. I could not wait for that! I think I’ve been waiting for this day since that kid took his first breath.

            He, on the other hand, apparently had not. As he sat over his breakfast, pushing eggs apart as if he were setting up the Nighthawks first play against Pomeroy I decided to continue my uncanny ability to tick off the men in my house by once again opening my mouth when I shouldn’t.

            “What’s yer problem?” I said looking down at him.

            “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head and gritting his teeth in a manner completely juxtaposed to the word used. “I’m just not playing. That’s all.”

            Okay, let’s just leave that one alone. You don’t want to know what I said to him anymore than what he said back. Let’s just say it ended with his bedroom door slamming and my front door slamming. I was done with him for a while. Now, onto the next victim.

            Now, I’m not sexist. When I’m hurt or angry, I like to share the love with everyone. As one of my ex-bosses once told me: when Amy has a good day, everyone has a good day, but when Amy has a bad day…. I was mad at him for a week over that little observation.  Since then, I have come to understand he was right. However, Summer and I had plans to wash her sheep this morning. It had to be done. There was no getting out of it since her 4-H leader was coming to sheer them the next day in preparation for the fair. In addition to that, Summer had been feeling intimidated by the sheep for some time now, so I knew that I had to change my attitude – or at least suppress it in order to get this done, because there is one other rule that is true about me as well. If Amy falls apart, everyone falls apart, and I was not about to let that happen to a scared insecure little girl.

            Therefore,  at 9:00AM, I walked a very reluctant Summer down to the barn to wash her sheep, Dude and Diva. Dude, the male, is about 125 pounds, and Diva, the female, is about 105.

            Now, I love pigs, as you can tell from the name of my blog, but sheep have been a different story. Pigs love you, they want to play with you, please you. They loved to be scratched under the jowls, and when you come to the barn they somehow manage to get their enormous bodies up out of their self-made mud hole and start running around before you even have time to pull out the first marshmallow treat. When you hop the fence, they fight to be close to you, they nip at your heals, and stretch their heads up to you when you pet them. They practically bark like dogs! Now, I’ve heard many rumors about pigs killing their owners and leaving no evidence left that they had done so, but with our pigs, I just can’t imagine. I love pigs!!

            Now, sheep on the other hand are a different story.  Sheep owners of course would disagree wholeheartedly, but in the three months since we’ve had these beasts it has taken everything I have to get close to them. They do not like us. They do not take marshmallow treats, which is just beyond my realm of understanding, and frankly when I look in their eyes they look back as if they would certainly eat me for dinner, given the chance.

            Now, the idea here, in case you have never caught a sheep like myself, is to catch them, hook their lead ropes on their halters, and then take them outside their poop-filled pasture, onto the nice warm grass, and wash them with a hose, baby shampoo, and a potato scrubber. Not to mention, that at some point in time, I will have to take scissors and cut the poopy dreadlocks from their bums. Regardless of the stigma of how dirty and smelly pigs can be, I have NEVER had to do that with a pig. 

            I try to hold onto my good attitude about this and attempt to stay in character as the person “in charge,” simply because I know full well that if I lose it, Summer will give up and walk away completely.

            Unfortunately, I think I should have meditated harder on my attitude, because immediately, things turn bad, as I predict they would. All it took was Summer unlatching the chain from the fence and the little devils start freaking out as if we are here to butcher them right now! I take a deep breath and coax Summer in the fence instructing her on speaking slowly, softly, almost lovingly. I can see little brother Jack climbing up the fence to get a box seat for the main event, as he does every day.

            “Let me do it, Mom,” he says. “I can get them.”

            “No Jack,” I croon. “They are scared. Not this time.”

            I step lightly and end up slipping sideways on a pile of dung. I curse softly about the pigs never leaving crap and realize that Summer has heard me.

            “Sorry,” I say, side stepping away from Summer so that we can box them in the corner. Immediately, the sheep turn and run, slamming their heads into the fence behind them. I take a deep breath as Summer rolls her eyes and gives me the “why-even-bother” look. I suppress the urge to tell her that she wanted to be different than her bothers. She wanted these stupid sheep.

            “Come on,” I say to Diva. “Come here, sweetie.”

             But, sheep are not like pigs, and no amount of coaxing is going to work here. They hate me, and I hate them. The façade of my liking them is shattering and we are now face to face with the reality of what is about to happen.

            A half hour later, I am sweating, the pigs are oinking like crazy from the pen behind me, Summer is almost in tears, and little bother Jack is whooping it up from atop the fence as if we are trying to herd cattle instead of ply a couple of angry sheep out of the fence.

            “Fine,” I say, throwing down the lead rope and gritting my teeth. “Fine. I’ve had enough. Summer, Do it.”

            “Do what?”

            She has a suddenly look of fear in her eyes.

            “Send her over,” I say, glaring hard at Diva. “Send her to me. I’m gonna catch her.”

            “You’re going to what-”

            “Do it!”

            Now, dear reader, you are really going to have to use your imagination on this one. There is a barn door up against my left arm and a gate up against my right. My feet are also braced against both. The idea is that she will run to me and then I will grab her around the neck with both arms and hold her tight. When I catch her – off-guard – she will freeze as these stupid animals always do and then I will call Summer over to put the lead rope on her and lead her out. Seems easy, right?

            I thought of my son, in his football uniform, standing across the line of scrimmage from his opponent, and crouched down into a catching position between barn door and gate. There is not even a hair’s width of room for her to get through. Summer slowly walks up behind Diva and I lean forward. Diva is staring at me, but I can see that she is monitoring Summer as well out of the corner of her bulging eye.

            “Push her button,” I say, referring to squeezing her tail and getting her to run forward.

            “You sure,” Summer asks.

            “Push it!”

            Summer does as she is told and Diva bolts for me.

            Now, I have always felt like I know what the pigs are thinking. I am NOT, nor will I ever profess to be, an animal person. Just ask anyone and they will tell you my rule: if you can’t eat it, it can’t be on this farm.  It’s a known fact that I am not a fan of taking care of poopy animals, but around here, it is also a well-known, and surprising fact that if there is a problem with the pigs that cannot be solved, I can usually solve it. I am not scared of them, they seem to like me as much as I like them, and somehow I seems to know their language without them even speaking. I’m like a pig-whisperer.

            Apparently, I should  have worked on that relationship more with the sheep before assuming that IT was a complete monotone idiot, and that it would just run into my arms and I would catch it.

            It only took me about 2 seconds, much less time than it takes for a bull rider to realize that he had made a big mistake, to learn the language of the sheep and realize that this animal was not as stupid as I had given it credit for. At some point between the button-pushing and reaching my arms, that sheep made an executive decision and I heard what it was thinking loud and clear.

            “I’m going to jump her!” It thought.

            For a moment I could see the truth about what was going to happen and I knew that there was nothing I could do.  And, for some reason that I cannot fathom, I was still hanging onto the stubborn notion that things might still go my way and my plan might work. It amazes me that you can think all of that in two seconds!

            All I remember are hoofs at my face, a warm body hitting my mid section, a gate rattling open, and the feel of two cinder blocks slamming into my back. It was then that I looked into the sheep’s eyes, just before it ran up and over the rest of me, and I realized that it was not only very smart, but very, very scared.

            The sheep was gone before I could even roll off the cinder blocks and frankly, I wished it would have kept on running. I could not breath, I could not move, and both of my children were staring stone-faced at me.

            Now, sometimes when people fall down, they will lay there for a moment and access the damage only to find out that they have had the wind knocked out of them and things were not as bad as they thought. That has happened to me on more than one occasion and I am always pleasantly surprised – especially after becoming a farm wife - to learn how much battering my body can actually take.

            I laid there for a moment, mentally scanning my body and attempting to breath, only to discover to my surprise that I really could not breath and I really could not move. Pain not withstanding, I went from amazement, to understanding, to downright fear as I heard my daughter say, “Amy, you okay?”

            I moved my head to the side and attempted to say, yes, but not much came out but a croak of air.

            This was strange. I realized that I might actually be hurt an the only thing I could even think about was the list of crap I had to do today and the football game I wanted to go to.

            I could see Diva out of the corner of my eye, she was huffing and puffing ans staring stone faced back at me. Poor thing, I thought, as I rolled off the cinder blocks. My second thought was that she was going to taste really good on my bar-b-que later that fall.

            No, just kidding. It turns out that for the second time in my nine plus years here, I was actually, truly hurt. Now, when I was working for the man, years ago, I would have relished an injury like this to put me on sick leave and get me out of that air-conditioned office and onto some much needed downtime. Since being here, working on the farm, raising kids, and writing, I have never once wanted downtime. I loathe it. I don’t want to miss a day of this, and I wouldn’t have time to anyway. After all, Alice doesn’t live here, so there is no one else to get my chores done, and these chores don’t wait for Monday. Peoples lives and bellies depend of what I do; therefore, as I rolled over and tried to get up, I started scanning my mental list in my head for what I could put off and what I couldn’t.

            By the time I got up, Summer had already sent Jack to the house to get the angry football player, and possibly an ambulance.

            It turns out I cracked a rib and bruised my lung and kidney. I didn’t tell my DF of course. Cranky as he was, it was none of his business. I was not about to end this silent treatment over something as little as internal injuries. No way. There was a point to be made here, and I was not about to let it go. I have a self-impossed rule on my farm, as my sister does on hers. If Caroline Ingall could do it, so can we!

            So, cracked rib, bruised lung, and bruised kidney, I showed my girl how it’s done on a farm and we caught that damn sheep and we washed them both. I even cut their butt-locks! That afternoon I dropped Brett off with his team and took the other boys over to wash the pigs. I never cried like a girl. I never called the ambulance or my husband. If Caroline Ingalls could cut into her own leg to let out an infection with a hot knife and the bible without Charles’s help, then by-goodness I could certainly continue my chores with internal injuries!

            That night, I carefully…very, very carefully went to Brett’s first football game. Wave was still on the combine, so Wave’s family came to the game as well. It only took one look from his mother, and expert in accessing my stubbornness, to figure out that I was in fact truly injured this time. I argued against it, but being equally as stubborn as I, she informed me that she WAS moving in tomorrow until the fair was over. No if’s, and’s or butts about it. And for the first time all year, I didn’t have the strength to argue. 

A Lesson About the Importance of Legacy: A Tribute to My Grandfather

Growing up in the grasslands of the Palouse, I always thought I was a farm girl. After all, I was surrounded by wheat and barely fields, tractors, dirt-covered men and sun-weathered women who wore Osh-Kosh during the day and tight jeans and cowgirl boots at night. It was only when I married a farmer that I was told something different.

Around here if you haven’t had farmland in the family for at least three generations, you’re not really a farmer, or a farm girl. Was that irritating to me, and does that seem a bit pretentious? Yes, but you have to look at it from the farmer’s perspective, I guess. Compare it to someone in from New York or L.A. calling someone from Spokane a “small town” girl. If that girl from Spokane said something like that to me, being from Tekoa (population under 800) I would probably spit my Coors Light through my Carmex-smeared and right onto her Prada bag. Let me tell ya, sista’ a girl from Spokane ain’t no small town girl. Not to me anyway.

Apparently, that is just how multi-generational farmers feel about those of us who neighbor around them, but haven’t been in a farm family for three generations or more. Based on the analogy above, I get that. And I don’t think it’s pretentious. It’s called pride.

And yet, yesterday, as I was sitting tall in my warm Case IH tractor cross-harrowing a large flat piece of land, I could not help but feel a little bit of that old pride when I noticed that my grandfather was doing the exact same thing in the field across the road from me.

Now, you all are used to my amazing whit and irresistible charm (let’s face it ladies, I talk about peeing in places you would never admit to – now that’s charm!) but on this topic I am all serious!

I have listened to The Boss wax nostalgic over the years about how he remembered the year that his grandfather could no longer get up into the tractor by himself. That was the year that he died. It sucked for my husband, but as a multi-generational farmer, it imprinted a memory in his mind of the hardworking, dirt-tilling, family-loving legacy that his grandfather had left, and that he, himself, tries to live up to.

However, we don’t talk about my grandfather that way. It’s not allowed. Why? Because I am of the blessed few 39-year-olds who still have all of their grandparents alive. That’s right. Every one of them.

Heck, up until my son was born, I had my great-grandmother around as an example of how my family lives. That being said, I feel that I need to point out – if you didn’t get that already – that my son had his great-great-grandmother around until he was almost a year old. He still had both of his great-grandmothers and both great-grandfathers. Now that's legacy!

I think that the reason that I always thought of myself as a farm girl was that my great-great grandfather was a farmer in Idaho, and though my grandfather who was tilling across from me never farmed the land himself, he was the landlord. So, you see, I felt like I had dirt under my nails just by association. But, let me tell you friend, there are 20+ miles between here and Idaho, where my family farmed, so really that history doesn't really count in our neck of the woods.

However, because of that, I spent much of my days wandering through wheat and barely fields that were worked up by someone else – but owned by my family – hiking up the mountains that surrounded those fields hunting for Sasquatch with my mom and grandparents, and swimming in the cat-tail pocked pond that sat at the edge of those fields.

As a result, my memories of my amazing grandfather have always been surrounded by farmland. If he didn’t own the land, he worked as a hired man for someone else. He was -correct that- is a man with dirt and oil under his fingernails. He is a man of integrity, family honor, and an amazing amount of love and knowledge about farming and everything else that we ever wanted to know; so when I looked up yesterday and saw that man -my amazing grandfather - sitting in the seat of a John Deere across from me, I once again felt that swell of pride that comes with being raised on and surrounded by farmland, by family, and by small town pride.

No, I will never be the son or grandson or a farmer who tills the same earth as their grandparents, but that does not mean that at some point I didn’t breathe in enough of that dust that has been stirred up around me, and my small town, not to feel the land pulsing around me in a simliar way that they do.

As I told my aunt yesterday, as my grandfather and I went round and round across from each other oblivious to anything else but the lines we were criss-crossing around our prospective fields that had been tilled for years by other families, I never in my life thought that I would be out here farming “with” my grandfather.

"Neither did I," my aunt said. "Neither did I."

I love you Grandpa!

Amy  

Day 2 of Harrowing: Why Did The Harrow Cross The Road?

I don’t know why it is that movie quips tend to run through my mind when I am stressed out. Maybe it’s because script writers have the enviable ability to express exactly what it is that we think and feel so much better than I do, but when I climbed down out of the tractor this morning – that’s right ladies and gentleman – THIS MORNING – the first screaming voice I heard in my head as I slammed the cab door behind me was of the cunning Fairy God Mother in Shrek.

“My Diet is Ruined!”

It was too. The day started out with the harrow needing to be fixed. You see, yesterday The Boss tried to gently inch the harrow up a small bank and across a short road in order to get to the next field instead of taking the time to fold it up. The next field is literally like 10 Shrek steps away, I’m serious. Folding up takes like ten minutes, so you do the math. You make the decision. I was on his side –which in Spring Work isn’t all that often.

Since Spring work started three weeks ago we have maybe been in the field 3 days, and today was the only day in between another series of storms that we have the potential to be in the field again for possibly another week. Let me put it to you in Amy terms: Memorial Day Week-end is like 6 weeks away people and that is camping season – not Spring Work Season, so this s^&! needs to get done like NOW!

But, I digress…the point here is that he chose to cross the small road to save time – which he has done numerous times in the past. Well, somehow, someway, the cable which attaches the harrow to the tractor (there are 4 of them all along the back holding the harrow in a straight line horizontal to the tractor) caught on something and it snapped, and when it snapped, the harrow gave way and bent in half.

Now, there are breakdowns and then there are BREAK DOWNS. For my “farmer by association friends,” this is a BFD (you figure that out because there will be a test in a  later blog) Anywhooo…that being said The Boss went out early this morning to fix it while I made lunches for everyone and their brother, tidied the house, did some paperwork, and cleaned up breakfast – you know my list of complaints already…He called me at 8:30 and said to get out there – the harrow was finally ready to go.

Therefore, I went, along with my coffee, coffee for the Boss, lunches for us, and even my good attitude. After all, today offered like 10 hours of harrowing possibilities and I was going to get out there and make hay while the sunshines – or so to speak because we don’t cut hay – like ever!

So, I get the first field done – you know, the one The Boss crossed the road to get to in the first place. It’s 20 acres. Again, for my FBA Friends, that only is like 45 minutes worth of round and round time. After that, I had to try and cross that same road to get back to the other side. Now, I’m not exactly sure why we crossed once when the field on the other side still wasn’t done, but reading the mind of a farmer (or daring to question it) is a whole other blog that I don’t even want to go into. As Yoda said: Do or Do Not. There is no Try.

Now FBA Friends, and everyone else who drives by and watches me, you know that I am not the most experienced tractor driver (although I dare any farmer to challenge me in a pee-in-your-coffee-cup-while-driving-a-straight line contest) but nor am I one to tell The Boss NO (during Spring Work) either. Give me a challenge; I’ll do my best. So I took it slow, I crossed where he said, and yep, you guessed it, the chain caught again and bent the harrow in half-again.

“Son of A B#@!”

So, I inch my way across the road, all the while thinking another stupid saying, “Why did the harrow cross the road?” And the only answer I can come up with is, “I don’t know. Maybe it shouldn’t have!”

I get it into our other field, park, breath, laugh, sigh, cuss, and then pick up the radio.

“30 to 31?”

Nothing. Static.

“30 to 31, you copy?”

Nada…zilch…I’m starting to get a little angry now. Because, Boss or not, he is also The Brains, The Mechanic, The Schedule Guy, and by goodness when I call him guilty and angry and scared and confused, he damn well better be there to be The Husband too!

“30 to 31, you got a read on ya’ Smokey?”

Stone cold silence again…no one loves me, and I sure as hell hope no one drives by.

I go for my phone. That way I can break the news to him without half of the county listening and gossiping about it at the bar later, (you know, like we all do) but as I pick up my phone to text him, I hit some update button and blamo! the phone is instantly out of commission for up to 20 minutes to do some unneeded update.

“Thank you for your patience while we update your phone so you can enjoy better service more often!” Bite Me!

So, while I wait I sit there and wait, I decide to eat a boiled egg. Iw as only going to eat the white part that is good for you, but PO’d as I was now, I pretty much swallowed the yolk whole and immediately got the hiccups. I waited another minute and then I grabbed the other egg.  Good cholesterol out; bad in.

And then I think, as I look in my lunch box, that “You are forcing me to do something I really regret!”

It’s not lunch time, nor is it close. It’s like 10:00. Not even apple time. But, what else am I supposed to do. It was kinda their fault, or someone’s fault. So, while I’m waiting I eat my sandwich, drink some coffee, and have a little water. That’s just about all I have in there, so I try again.

“30 to 31?”

Flatline…Uggh!

Well, that’s it. I turn off my tractor, and decide to drive home so I can use a phone to call The Mechanic. A landline, the real deal, like other farmers used to have to use in the good ole days, right? Wrong! They used their radio, but mine is stone silent still.

So, as I’m climbing down out of the cab, I accidentally come face to face with my lunch box and I spy two cookies. I had put in my lunch this morning for treat that I could eat guilt-free later in the day when I would be long past lunch and out on my tractor bouncing around, singing along to Merle or Willie or George, and possibly thinking about George’s fine hind end in his Wrangler Jeans…ummummm….ooops, I digressed again. But I could clearly see that that little fantasy and alone time treat (you decide which I’m referring to) would not be taking place, so I grab the cookies and start stuffing those into my maw as well. By now, I just didn’t care!

And as I get to the car, cussing and carrying on about harrows crossing the road to get to the other side, I sit down, look at the clock and realize that because of this – because of taking ten steps and saving ten minutes, “MY DIET IS RUINED!”

And now, as I sit here writing to you, the clouds are coming and the rain is on the way and I’m just thinking, what in the world am I going to eat now?

Is That Homemade? No, It Came Out Of A Box

My poor children love boxes. They love climbing in them, hiding in them, cutting them up and gluing them piece by piece back into stuffed animal houses or aircraft carriers, but most of all they love making food from them.

Growing up with a back-to-basics mom, I did too, but it rarely ever happened. I loved going to my friends house simply because they had boxes macaroni and cheese, Top Ramen, and instant oatmeal. I, on the other hand, felt like I got the shaft when my mom presented my family table with baked cheese and macaroni, homemade chicken noodle soup with thick whole wheat noodles and garden veggies, and of course, Oatmeal. And not that yummy dried strawberry stuff you dumped water in. We ate Wilford Brimley Oatmeal - with raisins and a hint of raw sugar. We got brown sugar only if we got up and snuck it ourselves.

Yesterday was my son's birthday party at school. Following in my mother's footsteps I have always baked cupcakes the night before with the child who is having the birthday and frosted them in whatever manner the child requested. For my 8-year-old son this year he wanted blue and red cupcakes with sprinkles. Yummy! There goes my diet! So, the next day I packed up the mass of blue and pink cupcakes in a tin foil covered pan and hauled them into the school.

Being the polite children I know my son's classmates to be, many of the students rushed up to me with pink and blue frosted lips and told me just how amazing the cupcakes were. Frankly, I thought they were just fishing for a second piece of cake. So, when the teacher leaned over to me and said, "Wow, that is a real compliment," I was puzzled.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because they don't really like cupcakes."

Okay, if I wasn't puzzled before, I certainly was now. My kids would eat a cupcake that had been tipped upside down on the pavement outside.

"Why wouldn't they like cupcakes," I asked. "Every kid likes cupcakes."

"Well," she smiled, looking at the fluffy frosting I swirled into a pink mountain peak on the top of one of the cakes. "Are these homemade?"

"No," I quickly said, feeling slightly embarrassed at the memory of what my mother would have made. "They are out of a box."

"Honey," the teacher laughed sweetly. "That is homemade."

I quickly recovered myself and realized what she was referring to.

"Most of the moms," she said. "Bring the ones from the store. Some of the kids aren't big fans of those."

"Oh," I smiled. "Yeah, I guess they are homemade."

But secretly in my mind, I was thinking, Man when I was little, I would have killed to have my mom bring the ones that were made in the bakery at the store.