Soil in My Blood

 

Soil in My Blood                    

By John W. Vander Velden

 

This is the fourth crop Justin has raised on my farm, yet it feels odd when I climb into the combine cab. I accept the training seat, or buddy seat, or whatever you call the extra place all newer combines have within their cabs. He asked if I wanted to drive the massive machine. Perhaps there was a day I would have gratefully taken the controls.

That day has passed.

It’s not that I couldn’t, with a bit of coaching, manage tolerably, but rather I recognize the quantum leap of technology that has found its way into harvesting equipment since my machine. Perhaps it’s my age, for my years at the controls are in my rearview mirror, and that’s OK.

But after more than forty years at the helm of one combine or another, it feels odd being a spectator. Though I recognize it is the natural way of things...yes, I MENTALLY understand...yet I feel unbalanced a bit as I watch the grand machine devour acres.

Though I might feel out of place sitting next to the controller of the machine, I do not yearn for the life-clock to be turned back. No, I have had my time and I have freely passed the baton to my nephew...perhaps gladly even. For me it is a joy to see the quality of farmer I have entrusted the soil that my parents gave their all to acquire. The farm where I too poured out more than sweat without complaint...for I also have given blood and the largest part of my life to those few acres.

I suspect that Justin too feels much the same about the personal investment DEMANDED upon anyone that is brave enough, or fool enough, to pick up the chalice and tread through mud, or dust, through long days of heat and cold, and willing to continue long after the sun has gone to its rest. Farming is a life commitment. It is not something that can be explained. It is impossible to understand until you have twenty or more years in the seat of tractors or harvesters. It is a life unimaginable by those that drive by on US Highway 6. It is a life very different that the one that those that envied me at the task I had chosen, believe. It is a life I have never regretted.

Farming is HARD.

Yes, I have turned over Sunrise Acres, my parent’s farm, and the two farms I added to it, to Justin. But my mind is filled with the memories of all the years I served the land. I will never forget the GREAT years. I will try not to remember the awful ones. The years of attempting to survive, and doing so by the skin on my teeth. The times when I was certain I had failed, destroyed by low prices, or unforgiving weather, or my errors of my decisions.

In the end I came out on top. Reached a place I never expected. In the end I succeeded, might even say I prospered. The good outweighed the bad only because I, as my parents before me, didn’t give up. There is something to be said for persevering.

So now I write books. And though I have yet to put together my story...my personal battle with weeds, weather, difficult to work land, with cattle, with cantankerous feeding equipment, my cracked hands, and throbbing feet. Stories of how I have fought mud and equipment breakdowns. I have been changed by the experiences that farming has thrown my direction. Perhaps one day I will write that story...but not now.

You see I may be an author, but I will always have soil in my blood!  

(617 Words) 10-23-2020