Farming
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moreHarvest Days
On Thursday, September 06 th, 2007These are harvest days. Beans roll golden. Wagons fill. Children ride with uncles, Grandpa, Dad, and Mama brings meals. We are a family, grateful and blessed to be. I worked these fields in the spring, with hopes, expectations. We laid seeds into this bed of earth. We tended Mom V.’s bedside. Tender shoots leafed, plants flowered, the promise of pods a...
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moreListening… and doing
On Wednesday, July 11 th, 2007I wake Sunday morning to grey growing on the horizon like dark waves rolling in from the sea. These fields of corn and beans, that lap up around old farmhouses and quiet country churches, lie far from the shore with its seagulls and wet grains of sand, but those clouds to the west, riding in low and full, carry the ocean close, droplets from the depths. I dres...
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moreSaturday at the Farm: Stay the Course
On Saturday, July 07 th, 2007Lean into it, girl. That’s it. Turn her hard. She’ll build your muscles, this old girl still going strong. Steering takes focus. And strength to keep that wheel straight on the row. Don’t turn to the left or the right. Keep your eyes fixed on where you are going. There’s a crop He’s counting on you to harvest. Stay the cours...
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moreAlways
On Monday, June 25 th, 2007They say that on still summer nights in these parts, if you lay in bed just so, ear cocked and listening, you can hear the soybeans growing out in the milky moonlight. Under the stars, seas of green surge around island farmhouses, waves rolling across this countryside, growing, stretching, reaching. The other night as I lay there, an expanse of window my celestial headboard, I ...
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moreLed by GPS
On Thursday, May 10 th, 2007Heading north down the field I had vision, that endless blue sky stretching out like a royal canopy under which we could ride to where earth meets the heavens. But at the northern headland, I’d throttle back on that 175 horsepower tractor, pull the hydraulic lever up to raise those 30 feet of steel teeth digging deep behind me, wind that steering wheel hard t...
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moreBroken
On Monday, May 07 th, 2007Back to the fields today, cultivating while Darryl plants…notes scratched in the tall ditch grass Friday… We broke up the earth, tearing her asunder, steel ripping deep, and she wept not. Then the hydraulic hose on the teeth ripping machine blew apart, again. When the men came up that long lane, dirt-crusted and splattered with oil, Mama, baking co...
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moreSabbath Rest
On Monday, May 07 th, 2007We did not work in the fields yesterday, though the sun shone bright and the earth warmed, ready. We rested in Him. And let the seeds lie still. Sietze Buning’s poem, “Obedience” : Were my parents right or wrongnot to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morningwith the rainstorm threatening? I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for manand of the ox f...
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Dirt in the Blood
On Friday, May 04 th, 2007A few scratches while kids eat breakfast and before I head out to the tractor again to cultivate the home farm. Told the children last night on the way home from the fields that once you get dirt in your blood, you can never get it out: the farm becomes part of you. From my inbox: “I suppose the greatest tears flowed [after reading yesterday's post] when I remembered my h...
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moreFamily
On Thursday, May 03 rd, 2007Yesterday was a milestone day. From my tractor seat, I looked out across the field. Three tractors moved together across the northeast corner: my husband and our two eldest sons, a few days shy of 12 and 10. While I cultivated in long sweeping swaths with the International Maxxum and the 30 foot wide cultivator, our third son beside me, the older boys and their...
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Spotted, at just past one
On Tuesday, March 13 th, 2007It was just before lunch, today. I think the clock on the stove read a few minutes after one. I was serving up the broiled sandwiches, Darryl ladling the soup. I could hardly hear Darryl talking about barn happenings over the din. Darryl turned to Malakai, sitting on the window seat’s edge by the table, driving his spoon in high, loud gear, like a tractor over his waiting...
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All is Well….
On Friday, December 22 nd, 2006Somedays it doesn’t feel like it. At all. And then I remember. I remember the first time I heard this story. Hope, our third child, was 10 days old. Christmas was 4 days away. Pig prices were at life-time, staggering lows–less than my grandfather had been paid for a pig 50 years before. Our breakeven–just to pay the bills– required $30 for each piglet so...
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Harvest Storm
On Monday, October 30 th, 2006I come to bring meals, to feed men. But it is the men who feed me kernels of truth… about a waiting harvest and the gnashing storm coming down. Turning the gravel corner onto the 16th line, autumn glory washes the fields. A backdrop of indigo black sky frames flaming trees, combines, and soybeans gilded in sunshine. That backdrop holds rain. Pulling i...
