harvest – Boomtown Diaries

Another harvest has officially come and gone. When harvest is over, summer is over, and we might as well face the facts that fall is pretty much here.

It always starts great – spirits are high, the farmers are excited, and everyone is full of energy and ready to go.

Then, as the harvest season progresses, energy wanes a bit. It’s imperceptible at first, but it becomes just a little bit harder to stay out combining until dark. Backs start aching and sleep is in short supply. A few weeks before harvest is over, we also begin to lose workers one by one as they pack up and go back to school. It’s always a little sad to see everyone go, but there’s a practical problem too: When school starts, we lose over half of our workers. The students and teachers going back to school — including two of my younger brothers, two young seasonal farmhands, my mom, and myself — also double as combine operators, grain cart drivers, meal wagons, and truck drivers. They leave with the skills and the manpower and the smiles that just make everything go more smoothly around here.

School started this year for us local teachers on August 17. At that point we were only about half done with harvest. Since then, I have found myself juggling very different roles. Each morning, I’ve tried to make myself presentable and drag myself to school in my heels, clutching my book bag and a jug of iced coffee and scrambling to throw together meaningful lessons for 150-some students in four different English classes. Each evening, I’ve come home and changed into grungy field clothes and work boots and attempted to throw together a passable meal to bring to the field. On a few occasions I’ve taken over for my grandpa after dinner and combined for the rest of the evening. After shutting down for the night, I’ve gone home to rinse off, crash into bed, and do it all over the next day — never mind frivolities such as working out, doing laundry or dishes, or spending time with my husband.

I do love harvest. But I admit that since August 17, I’ve been a little bit anxious for the juggle to be over. Do you know how hard it is to switch from comfy work clothes and ponytails and no makeup, to trying to look like a professional every day? Believe me, it is hard. (For me anyway.) Furthermore, the only things I can think of from my own experience that match the intensity of harvest is 1) planning a wedding in four months and 2) school starting, along with getting classrooms and lessons ready, getting back into a bell schedule, and meeting all those new faces.

As of this last week, however, harvest is finally over after six long weeks, and we can all breathe a little easier now.

There is a lot to be thankful for here, don’t get me wrong. My family is always thankful to get another harvest into the books. I’m lucky to have a good teaching job. And I’m always grateful for the time spent together and the fact that we’re lucky enough to be a farm family.

But let’s be honest, I’ve never been that good at juggling.

I think I’m ready for fall now.

I’ve been away for a little while. I’ve been in North Carolina meeting my nephew, Minnesota floating on a lake, the capital city taking care of important business (and shopping) matters.

I’m back at the farm now with the boys, preparing for harvest. A lot of preparation is needed for something like harvest: Change the oil on all the combines, set the sieves, fill up gas tanks, clean out cabs and truck beds, learn how to operate the new grain cart, stock the fridge with sandwich meat, watch the sky for dry weather, and the list goes on. Today, we moved combines, headers and trucks 20 miles to our furthest northwest field, with hopes set high to start tomorrow.

Let me tell you, things are not the same as they used to be.

When we used to move our harvest equipment, we used to make full use of highways, gravel roads, and whatever was the most convenient to move combines with 30-foot-wide headers attached, no problem. We might be passed by a pickup or two or the occasional semi, or we might meet nothing at all. We drove through town, we had entire highway lanes to ourselves, and we never used pilot cars. Western North Dakota was a whole lot of wide open space.

That was back then.

This is now. The oil field has made 20 miles seem a whooooole lot longer. And I’m telling you, it is not a job for the faint of heart. Today, I moved a combine that didn’t even have a header attached, and it was still quite a thrill. If you want to see angry men, just take up an entire lane of an oil field highway and force dozens of semis and pickups to drive 19 miles an hour behind you, unable to pass because of steady oncoming traffic. You will get middle fingers. You will get honks and glares. (You will also generally ignore them because your machine is bigger than their machine, and there is nothing you can do about the 19 mph.) However, you can’t ignore all of them, and some can get pretty ornery. Last year, one of us overheard someone at a convenience store say confidently, “Farmers and their equipment just don’t belong in oil field traffic.”

Hey. We were here first, buddy.

Anyway, this all reminds me of country singer Craig Morgan’s song from a few years back, “International Harvester.” My dad and I used to laugh about it and watch the video on Youtube. Some of the lyrics go like this:

“Three miles of cars laying on their horns,
Falling on deaf ears of corn,
Lined up behind me like a big parade
Of late-to-work, road-raged jerks,
Shouting obscene words, flipping me the bird.”

Or this:

“Well I know you got your own deadlines,
But cussin’ me ain’t saving no time;
This big-wheeled wide load ain’t going any faster
So just smile and wave and tip your hat
To the man [or GIRL] up on the tractor.”

The song is a little obnoxious, but we can relate. For one thing, we also drive Case IH (International Harvester) combines. The video even features the same model of combine that we ran for years, which I first learned to operate at age 12. We’ve upgraded since then, so the difference between our operation and the song is that we go a little faster these days. But not much. The only other big difference is instead of three miles of cars following me, it’s three miles of scoria-colored tanker semis and jacked-up pickups.

It’s just one more adjustment we have to make as we welcome the chaos of progress. But someone has to feed America, so we’re going to keep pluggin’ along in the Case International Harvesters, and hopefully for the sake of safety, we can all share the roads.

Here’s the video. See you out there.

Tag: harvest

Not That Good at Juggling

International Harvester