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Out West of Town
By Linda Craun, The Hennessey Clipper
Harvest comes at least once ever year, and each one is different from the years before. During harvest, farmers live on the knife-edge of enough and too much. We need an abundance of the hot Oklahoma winds to ripen and dry the grain, and then enough rain to lay down the straw so we can disc the fields and, later, sow the seed.
Of course life doesn't always happen as we want. In a good year the rain comes after the grain has been cut out of the field and is safely stored at the elevator. This year harvest started out right, but then it rained … and rained … and rained some more. Not our favorite harvest theme.
But farmers are used to contradictions. When we need we usually need it right then. And when we wish it wouldn't come … it's only until after we get the grain harvested or the hay put up. But not too long after in case we have pastures to keep green or need to plant a second crop. What we never want is rain at harvest time.
Harvest is an intense time for farmers. It's the culmination of months of hard work. It's when our prospective earnings are revealed. A time when frustrations build and tempers fray as problems occur. And they always do.
My husband's patience unraveled after we were awakened by the third thunder-heralded rain of the week. Since he's caught up on discing, hubby went back to his off-the-farm paying job. Not that staying home would have helped. When the sun did come out the grain just steamed along with the rest of us.
That set the tone for the next few days. The grain was slow in drying, so it was off to work in the morning, then home again by mid-afternoon to take a sample. You don't clear out a field very fast when you're cutting time reduced to two or three hours a day.
But waiting is something you learn to do when you're a farmer. We wait for the right season. Wait for a rain to plant our grain. Wait for enough sun for it to grow. Wait for it to mature … and wait for it to dry enough to cut.
Then, just as the end of our harvest was in sight, a breakdown. The kind you can't fix in one afternoon or even a couple. But we were lucky. We borrowed a neighbor's combine and finished our harvest. Something others in the area are still trying to do.
And if you want to see frustration, catch the look on the farm wife's face when things go wrong in the field. Sometimes she's right there helping with the repairs or maybe running for parts. Other times she's waiting at home with a hot meal that hubby's too tired to eat when he comes dragging in of an evening.
My idea of a perfect harvest is days full of sunshine and dry winds with the combine running from 10 in the morning until 10 at night … and never a breakdown in between. Great harvest days happen when the only humidity around is in the clothes dryer and rain clouds aren't looming ominously on the horizon. But we don't get many of those.
Yet you'll still see us out in the field year after year. We might pause and look up at the sky, then cringe at a cloud or wipe the sweat from our brow and maybe pray for a cool breeze. But we'll be there. Farming is our blood.
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