14 September 2025

We made quite the convoy heading off down the gravel road. I got to take the lead in the old truck with a seed tender on back. My husband followed in the tractor and drill. Kids brought up the rear in the pickup.

My job, one of my jobs was to watch the big hills as we went. Make sure there were no cars speeding up the other side who would then meet the tractor which took up the entire road, coming over a hill with disastrous effect. My other job was to get the truck over to the field so my husband could keep the drill full of wheat seed and get the field planted. Hopefully before the chance of predicted rain.

The seed truck is older than I am. It sits most of the year while mice crawl through it and make a filthy stinking mess of the whole thing. I had complained about it enough that they had cleaned the cab out pretty good while getting everything ready to plant. Luckily. I have never had to drive this before and would not have been willing in its usual stinky state. As it was though, as long as I didn’t look at the floor, it was just a nice old truck. Sitting in the driveway as we were about to head off I got my first experience with its clutch. It involved lots of rolling backwards as I struggled to find that sweet spot where clutch and gas meet to make it go forward smoothly. It was much pickier than the semis I had gotten used to. Finally finding it, we proceeded onward.

With only four speeds going through the gears wouldn’t be a problem. I can drive a stick shift. It’s been an extraordinarily useful skill to have in life. If you can drive one stick shift you can drive any stick shift! This one was just a little pickier than others. The semis are mostly easy. I can go up through the gears no problem, loving how cool I feel as I run through them without clutching. Until I have to slow down. Then nothing will do but for me to come to a complete stop and start over in first. Luckily I don’t drive down the highway.

Coming to the first up hill stretch in this old truck I discovered, quite happily, that this one I could downshift! Dropping one gear she was able to pull the hill.

As we plodded along, the tractors top speed under these circumstances was not quite 20 mph, I got bored with the ease of things and called my grandma. Might as well talk while we made the drive.

Chugging along at almost top gear, 4th gear but low range, we chatted away. With all the weight of the full load of seed on going up hill required going down a gear. Until we reached THE hill. It is a steep down hill, from this direction. Then the road we need to take Ts off to the north going straight back up. the combination of having to stop to make the turn and then the steep hill climb makes life interesting with any sort of a load on. I’ve gotten stuck here before. In much simpler vehicles. A pickup and trailer with a load of calves going to pasture stalled out at the base of THE hill once. It required backing the dead pickup downhill and around the corner in order to try a few more times before giving up. There’s also very limited to no phone reception there. No calling for help. I had to wait until my husband, in the semi with the mama cows realized we weren’t behind him any more.

In the seed truck I made the corner in third. It’s geared really low. And started the climb. Then I realized that I was not a very good driver. I was used to automatic pickups and semis loaded light enough that they could chug right through the hard pulls.

I had been warned that the seed truck ran great, as long as it was running, but would not start again while warm if it was shut off for any reason. Or if I killed it running in too low a gear or failing a down shift.

Phone propped on my shoulder I begged the truck to keep going. My grandma on the other end was listening to my pleading as I cut in and out wanting to know what in the world was going on?! Was I ok? Who was I talking to?? I ignored her for the moment focusing on the very important matters at hand. It was apparent I would need to down shift as the engine chugged hard. Pushing in the clutch the truck came to a complete stop. On the steep hill. My mind flashed back to highschool. To the stop light on the drive to school, on a hill, cars everywhere. This stop was just as terrifying, if the dangers were slightly different. My trusty old Toyota pickup had never quite rolled back into the car behind us. Maybe I could keep this old truck from dying too.

Jamming it into 2nd, 1st was iffy and I had been told not to worry about it, I floored the gas and let out on the clutch.

The engine roared, the clutch slipped, the truck lugged slowly up hill.

I did it! I down shifted 🤣

Such a silly thing to be such a huge deal. The excitement rushed through my veins. I was exultant in my victory! I could drive anything do anything. Good had won the battle over evil. My grandma was still talking in my ear. Her voice heard once again now that the battle was over. She was done talking to me. She’d had enough. But I had been battling the hill and the clutch! She would talk to me another time. Oh well, not everyone can appreciate a battle fought. The few seconds had felt like hours. Apparently they had felt like hours to her too.

Shortly after the hill we got to the field waiting to be planted. My husband got out of the tractor and greeted my with “You nearly lost it on that hill didn’t you” He had realized the battle being waged. He grinned at me. I grinned back. Then they put the first load of seed in the drill.

Category: Farming | LEAVE A COMMENT
9 September 2025

Privilege

My husband called as I was elbow deep in meal preparations. He needed a little help, could someone come out to the field please.

After putting in almost a ten hour day, he had left the town job a little early so he could get home and plant some wheat. He and the kids had spent a large portion of the weekend getting machinery ready to go. Now during the work week he was getting started. No weekends or evenings off for him.

The kids had come home from school and were enjoying a bit of computer time. I ordered them out the door with only minimal, token complaints.

Cutting vegetables and finishing the meal I kept a watch out for them all, worried they’d be in and starving before I got the meal finished. No sign of them. Out to the garden to get it ready for the night and pick whatever was ripe and easy to serve alongside the meal, I heard the tractor in the distance. They were finally headed in.

Husband in tractor, one child on the drill, and the other following with the 4wheeler, they pulled into the yard to park for the night. It had been a long day. Watching the children work alongside their father I couldn’t have been happier. He is the hardest working man I know. Other than my father, and grandfather, and my brother. All the men in my family actually. Hard working men who give everything they have to take care of their families.

My dad took me out with him when I was young. Taught me a little about working on cars and even less about carpentry. But those weren’t the real lessons anyway. What I was actually learning was that I was valued, that he knew I was as capable as anyone else of working hard and getting the job done. My daughter spent a good deal of time over the weekend working on pivots with her father. He was teaching her the same lesson and it was wonderful later to hear her brag about the hard work she had been doing. The lesson was sinking in already.

It’s sad to see girls whose fathers don’t care about them the same way. Who never take the time or care to make their daughters, or sons even, go out and do the work with them. The privilege of knowing how to work hard and get the job done, of having a father who loves them enough to teach them that this hard work is what matters and will get them through life, that is the privilege my children have been born into.

At supper we talked about what they had been doing. How they learned what the dangerous parts of the planter were and how to carefully spread the wheat seed out to get the last bit of the field planted without adding too much seed and needing to clean it all out. Important lessons, but not the ones that matter.

 

Category: Family, Farming | LEAVE A COMMENT
6 September 2025

First Frost

‘They’ say the full moon has nothing to do with frost.

The old stories say that frost will come with a full moon.

As much as I would like to trust and believe the collection of data, watching as the first frost rolls in every year with a big bright full moon I have to say I have my doubts.

The forecast was for mid to upper 40s. The moon was coming full, but it was going to be warm enough, we’d probably escape frost until late again this year. If we could get past this full moon we should be fine until the next time around.

Without doing any preparations to the garden we went off to do other things. My husband took a tractor over to work the summer fallow. Instead of checking cows earlier in the day, like usual, the kids and I waited until it was time to go pick him up. Get everything done in one trip.

We got to the pasture to find a handful of calves out. They have plenty of grass but have cleaned up the wheat they were grazing and think they are starving. At least that’s my theory. Maybe they sense a bad winter coming and want to com home. Now. I held the gate. The kids took the pickup and chased the calves in, no problem. There was a cow out. I walked her in. The kids took the pickup and went to open the gate. It needed the fence stretcher to get. They managed it all alone. As the cow and I slowly walked the length of the fence towards the gate the whole herd of cows leaped into a gallop alongside up and charged the gate. The kids held it!

The cow and I finally caught up. She turned two fence posts before she got to the gate and plowed through the fence.

The kids and I had the pleasure of fixing fence with the whole herd gathered around to ‘help’. They stoll the hammer from the fencing bucket. They tried to eat everything else, including my daughter as she put on the wire ties.

Finally done there we made it up to check water. Water was good. The herd didn’t come to help us with that.

Leaving, through a different gate, we found wires broke in the gate, wires broke in the fence. This must have been where the calves originally left their pasture for new fields. My son had come along without any shoes. He didn’t know we were going to have to get out of the pickup. Ever. That makes all the trouble obviously his fault. He cursed us.

It was nearly dark when we reached my husband waiting in his tractor at the field. He had been able to get more disking done than anticipated while we fixed cow problems. All squeezed warmly into the cab of the pickup we compared weather forecasts on the drive home. Now they were predicting frost. Not earlier when it would have been easier to do something about it. Once home instead of running to work in the garden we ate a quick late supper and went to bed. The garden would do whatever the garden did.

What the garden did was freeze. With next week predicted to be in the 80s again. As always, an early cold snap followed by warm weather mocking us over the blackened burnt remains of the garden.

But, the frost was kind this time. The garden is only lightly nipped by frost. The pumpkins, of course, and the east side. Why the east side instead of all of it? Looks like we will be roasting and freezing peppers today after all! We should be safe from frost until the next full moon now. Not that that has anything to do with the freezing, not according to ‘them’.

Category: Cows, Family, Garden, Goblin Child | LEAVE A COMMENT