Hand on the Plow

 

Hand on the Plow                           

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Beneath the bright hot sun, reins looped over his shoulders he labored.  Behind two stout well trained animals with strength and skill he guided the tool.  With hands on the plow as hour by hour he marched the furrow.  A small strip…four inches depth of soil turned and moved to his right filling the furrow left by the crossing before.  Hours pass. Sweat pours. Slowly the sun crosses the sky.  Time and soil tilled the only measure of achievement.

 

Seated upon a roaring machine of red, he feels the thunderous vibrations through his feet, the backside seated upon the hard steel pan but most through gloved hands firmly gripped upon the wheel.  Each pass across the field, a tug upon the rope sets the plow to its work.  Several minutes later another yank convinces the machine to rise.  He can hear nothing above the constant roar of four cylinders driving clawing wheels dragging the two moldboards burying cornstalks and leaving behind clean fresh earth.  His face reddened by the heat flowing from engine and muffler as sitting hour after hour on the tilted beast, wrestling with wheel, brake and rope.  Many days needed to complete this springs task. Many long hard days.

 

Within a box of glass and steel surrounded by levers switches and instruments he finds himself.  Isolated from the extreme roar of the diesel with most of the dust locked outside, he labors.  He must remain watchful as dragging spikes shattering and blending earth as with each hour acres fall. Though his days are long. Though his mind must be fully engaged. He understands the physical demands diminished.  As time passes he wonders.  “What would his grandfather think?”  Smiling he is certain the man would understand, for after all his grandfather was a man with a hand on the plow.  

 

(302 Words) 5-28-2012

 

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

A Part of the Mechanism

A Part of the Mechanism              

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I have always been fascinated by how things work. The way individual pieces move in coordination with one another. It came in handy all the years I farmed. An example: I operated a machine called an “automatic bale wagon”. A machine that picked bales off the ground and arranged and stacked 103 on its bed and then placed that stack in the barn—for the most part by itself. At first glance it appeared a very complex device of hydraulics, chains, and many trip mechanisms. But it became important that I understood the purpose for each part of the mechanism.

For when it worked it worked wonderfully, but when it didn’t it was up to me to figure out which particular piece needed repair or adjustment. I handled more than a hundred thousand of bales with that red machine and learned a great deal along the way.

Recent events have led me to thinkin’. A dangerous use of time perhaps. But I have wondered about my place in things. My part in the mechanism of the world I share with you. I wonder if I, like those hoses and levers of my bale wagon, am humming along doing what I should as I should, or if I am that suborn valve that would fail at the most inopportune moment. Am I in need of an adjustment—today.

I know I am not the one that determines such things, for I am not the one operating the mechanism—just a piece of the machine that is bouncing along the universe. God is in charge of this machine that you and I share. But when I think of all the things I have over the years repaired, the gears and bearing, belts and motors, plumbing and electrical, I imagine myself among them in a grander wider mechanism. When I think about the things I do, and the things I avoid doing, I wonder if I am a useful part of the machine or just taking up space.

Something happened yesterday that brought these thoughts to the front of my mind. An action I took that I may not have been prepared to deal with, but I injected myself into the situation because I could not just walk passed and ignore it. Some might have seen my action as intrusive. Others as noble. But I see it as neither, I did what I did because it was who I am.

In the end I may not have been any help at all, but I tried and sometimes trying is enough.

You see I’m just part of the mechanism.

(435 Words) 12/7/2018

 

Of Sweat and Soil Part 6: A Place of Their Own

Of Sweat and Soil

Part 6:  A Place of Their Own

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I began this series describing what we found here on this farm on Redwood Road.  If you have read the pages between that description and this part, you have just a bit of understanding of the mindset of Nel and Jacob Vander Velden.  They had spent almost 24 years in pursuit of their dream…more than half their lives.  Dad at forty-seven surely must have wondered if the window of possibility neared closing.  He was never a patient man, and as the year count of his life grew his impatience did as well.  Some might say that impatience drove him from his homeland, impatience drove his return from Florida, impatience led to the purchase of this farm.  

I would disagree. They saw hope and possibilities, even among the broken and discarded.  Dr. Burke’s farm offered a way to at last reach out and almost touch the dream.  For the dream lay ahead, beyond the tumbled down fences, beyond the worn buildings, it would be what they could make out of this clay they found.  It took years and determination, endless hard work and sacrifice, but in the end it was possible. 

I know this part of the journey first hand, for I became a full time member of the team.  I witness each step forward and back, and shared in the sweat and blood given without regret for that dream’s success.  I witness the semi load of milk cow’s arrival.  The herd purchased from a farm near Indianapolis.  I also helped load most of those same cattle and several of our own over the first months at this farm.  Cows destroyed by incomplete repairs to the milk system, done by inept workers.  That disaster and crazy weather nearly caused the dream to be stillborn.  Only the immeasurable aid of those that believed in our family were we able to hold onto this small piece of Marshall County.  Five families, that came before us, had gone bankrupt on this farm, but the Vander Veldens would not be number six.

But commitment and self-sacrifice at last gave the dream its life.  There were good years and in those we advanced…buildings and silos stand testament to our growth. Over the years, the value of crops rose and fell, but milk was our buffer.  If figured by the hour, dairying might not seem worth the effort, but twice a month a check comes, and with care the bills will be paid.  

Like I said in earlier portions of this story, mom and dad were used to doing without.  It was that willingness that made everything possible.  Their last years were financially successful.  But just when everything began to fall at last into place, dad became ill.  In 1982 he was diagnosed with MS, and he fought that disease, like everything else in his life, with all he had.  It can be understood that depression comes with a disease that steals your abilities little by little.  A disease with chronic muscle and back pains.  Dad dealt with that as well.  And though we did our best to help him, we could not really understand what he went through those last twenty-three years of his life. 

In his last years he envied those who had better ground than our little patch.  I told him it was ours and we should be grateful.  But these last years I have come to understand…more.  This farm is unforgiving.  This season’s mistakes haunt you for years to come.  Should we judge someone who would like land that was less hard to farm and gave more in return?  For the soil on Sunrise acres is hard, hard to till, hard to harvest, and just plain hard the rest of the year.  You do not farm Teegarden Clay, you go to war with it.  Maybe dad felt he had settled, that the dream was not really reached.  Who can say? 

Whether he became victor of victim in that war I can not say, but dad fought the battle with honesty and integrity.   He gave it all he had to give…we all did.  But as I walk among all the building we built these forty-five years, I measure myself against the man I respected most, and find myself lacking.  But perhaps I am not the one to judge, and with time others might see things differently.  For I, like my father, and his father am merely man of sweat and soil, no more but certainly not less.    

 

(744 Words)  4-22-2017

Of Sweat and Soil Part 5: Beginning Again

Of Sweat and Soil

Part 5:  Beginning Again

By John W. Vander Velden

My Uncle had found a farm in the LaPorte area needing a farmer.  Dad flew from Jacksonville to Chicago and then to South Bend.  It was the first commercial flights he had taken.  I was not yet ten but when he returned and I knew we were going back to Indiana.  I remember leaving Florida, leaving William Coughenour, who we, the kids, only called “Boss”.  Not out of submission or disrespect, for he was the closest thing to a grandfather I have ever known.  I do not know how I understood even at that age that life was about changes, about those we meet, friends we make, places we know, that they are sometimes left behind, but I did. 

We could not go directly to our new home.  The Baughmans that had farmed the Morrison farm for thirteen years could not move to their new farm three miles down the road as early as expected.  All our things loaded on the tarped Dodge remained in my aunt’s and Uncle’s driveway for weeks.  Their farm was out of the school district we would attend, so dad drove us to school and back each day.

It was cold.  Perhaps not exceptionally, but it had been 80 degrees our last day in Florida.  Though we found the snow was exciting, an old friend to which we had returned, we had little ability to deal with it.  The old house, parts dated to 1860, on the Morrison Farm, did not have central heat, and the Segler Oil Stove might have been sufficient for Florida was not up to the task.  I could see daylight through a hole in the wall in what would become the bedroom I shared with my older brother.  Brrrrrrr.

But the buildings were in good repair and ready for the work my father had come to do.  With time we adjusted to the different climate.  The Landlord, eager to please their new tenants, did much to fix the house.  New doors and storm windows and siding made the old place look presentable.  Central heat came many years later.  But we settled in and though things remained tight, dad began climbing the ladder upward one rug at a time.

Farming was very different in the sixties.  So were farms for that matter.  The Morrison Farm had hedge fences.  Rows of thorny trees, Osage Orange they were called.  No kin to the citrus for Florida. There had been a time when the hedges were trimmed twice a year, but that had been long before we arrived on the scene. The unruly thorny rows divided the main part of the farm into small fields.  During our tenure the wild tall overgrown hedge rows were taken out one after the other.  I remember the hours of “root picking” we spent trying to pick up all the debris the bulldozers missed.  Osage Orange roots do not rot quickly and could cause problems with the equipment, rotary hoes in particular.  By the time we left the land lay wide open, a half mile by half mile space of fertile land.

To us kid it seemed we had been separated from Indiana for eons.  But in the under three years little had changed and dad farmed pretty much like he had before the southern migration of ‘59.  Making hay with an A-C roto-baler, was meant for limited labor, and that worked in Westville and it worked the first years back.  But loading the barn by rope drawn hooks was tedious and hard.  A bale elevator upgraded that part of the operation and a square baler followed when I became old enough to drive a tractor.

The barrel roof barn had thirty-two stalls, and dad milked as many as forty.  We carried the milk to the bulk tank by hand, until we could acquire a step-saver, a machine that hauled the milk through a clear plastic hose.  Though things remained tight all those years, dad gained ground step by step.  Paying for equipment, getting a new tractor, larger silage wagons, a new forage harvester, and a pull type combine was added to the list of purchases.  He was progressing and through that progression the dream returned to life.

Perhaps it was when my uncle purchased his own farm in the mid sixties that a new urgency built with in my father and mother.  But the dream was yet out of reach.

Life went on and finally the time came when dad and mom felt they could begin the search for their own place.  It was 1970 and they met with several realtors, searched ads, and went to see many farms.  When they, at last, thought they had found a farm within their budget, after countless trips to the Walkerton area and to bankers ETC, in the 24^th hour the deal fell through.  By chance a family friend knew of a farm not two miles from the one they had spent more than two years trying to acquire.  That was how they met Dr. Eldon Burke, a college professor.

In comparison to the failed attempt, all the legalese was a walk in the park.  On my birthday in 1972 dad signed the papers and could say that he and my mom were buying their own farm.   

(877 Words)                  7-1-2017

Of Sweat and Soil: Part 4 The Florida Years

Of Sweat and Soil

Part 4:  The Florida Years

Florida was a great place for kids…then.  I suspect in many ways it still is.  But this isn’t about the childhood I had, it’s about the road my parents took.

It was almost exactly eleven years since my parents had come to the United States that they migrated again.  Yes, it was the same country…but…  The weather alone would have been enough for Florida to claim a foreign status to the Northern Europeans.  And the people there spoke English, but once again it was not exactly the same.  Phrases and slangs were unique to the South.  But overall we fit into the culture…for the most part.  Though there were parts of the “Culture of that age” which I still abhor to this day…parts my family never participated.

Again for dad things were very different.  The “Ranch”, the 500 acres of mostly swampland and pine trees, was not the dairy farm we had left.  We had two cows, which dad milked by hand in stalls that stood outdoors.  We began with Brahma and Brahma mix cattle.  I recall one that had long horns that stood straight out like a Texas Longhorn.  I remember one cow that injured her back jumping out of the cattle truck, the wound never completely healing.  Most of the cattle were mean enough we gave them wide berth.  For a time the ranch had an old ford pickup.  We would ride in the back while dad poured feed off the tailgate as it drove through the pine grove.  The animals running up behind to be first to gobble up the treats.

The weather in central Florida had little in common with Indiana.  Strange though winter “lows” might dip only into the twenties, yet coats were as heavy.  I suppose the difference from summer’s intense heat to winter’s frost drove the need.  But I remember the crazy intense summer afternoon thunderstorms that swept through around two o’clock. It was in Florida my older brother became a hunter and the September Hurricane Donna tore through the state, my youngest brother James was born.

Hoping for a little extra cash for his growing family, dad built two large hotbeds in the lot next to the house.  I remember a small red International cub tractor and the transplanter that he and my brother Jerry rode as they placed the thousands of green pepper plants between the machine’s moving fingers.  I was to run behind and fill in the ones that got missed.  I couldn’t keep up very long.  Peppers must not have done well for the following year the hothouses were replaced by a field of watermelons.  All the work resulted in a truck load of the green fruit.  Dad parked on a busy intersection but sold few.  Most of that truckload of melons came home and were, over time, fed to the pigs.  With those fed, those given away, and those our family devoured, none went to waste.  I never had a taste for watermelons, maybe that’s why.

Dad was the first in Alachua County to grow corn for grain.  At least as far as I know he was first.  A few others raised corn for silage, but he was told Florida was no place for field corn.  He bought a two row planter and planted in February…imagine that.  It was difficult to find a corn picker, but a one row Minneapolis Moline snapper was found at last.  You picked corn in the summer…August maybe.  The corn so dry…hard to imagine with the humidity of the place…that what we knew as corncribs were not necessary.  He shoveled the corn from the wagon to bins made in a pole barn.  I remember walking past that stored corn and hearing the crackely-crackle of the weevil feeding on the bright orange ears.

Dad ground feed after dark, because it was all hand labor and the days were too hot.  Things did not go well for him in Florida, a place too hot for a working man to work the way he wanted.  Maybe if he had stayed things might have turned around, but in two and a half years all the gains he had made since 1948 had dwindled away.

On February 20^th 1962 with the old 49 Dodge truck loaded to the hearth, we left Florida, the friends and connections, and even the Coughnours behind.  For dad, it meant starting over in Indiana. 

(737 Words)

Of Sweat and Soil Part 3

Of Sweat and Soil

Part 3

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I do not know what thoughts passed through my parent’s mind when they got off the train in LaPorte, Indiana that October day in 1948.  My Aunt Agatha and Uncle Cornelius Koppert met them as they arrived.  Also, by chance, Rev. Victor Fronie, the pastor of St. Paul’s Evangelical and Reformed Church, happened to be at the station that evening.  He would be our family’s pastor all the years we lived in the LaPorte area.

Frank Scholl needed someone with a strong back and a willingness to work.  He found both in my father.  I know little of those years he worked for the Scholls.  They lived in a small house next to Scholl Hill on Division Road.  Dad was provided with an old Willy’s Jeep to drive the four miles down Scholl Road (see the pattern here) to the Oak Ridge Farm, where he worked with my Uncle.  Perhaps being surrounded by everything new and different, they might not have notice how difficult those first few years were.  But they learned the language.  For though they had taken English lessons in Holland, it seemed, as dad said, “A different English” than what was spoken in America.

They felt, in many ways, isolated.  Separated from most of their family, and living within a culture they did not fully understand must have left them reeling, if they had time to notice.  But it was a start, and hope lay on their horizon. Their first born, Gerard, named after Dad’s father, came in those Scholl years, as life progressed.  In late 1951 or very early 1952 dad’s first break came in the man named William Coughenour. Dad had been no more than a hired man at Scholl’s, but began farming on his own as a tenant for Mr. Coughenour on his farm near Westville.

Three more children came the years they lived on the Westville farm.  I was born first, soon after they had moved there, followed by Joyce in 1955 and Dorothy in 1956.  As a child growing up, the country life was the only thing I knew.  Access to the fields and woods and time spent watching the minnows or tadpoles in the ditch a part of my memories of those years.  We sledded down the hill across the road from our house in the winter, and I taught myself to ride a bicycle.  And I remember my parents hard at work, mom at home and dad not so far away, usually within sight.  I remember a cold hard winter, 1957 or 1958.  The Coughenours wintering in Florida trusted my father to run things.  The snows stacked, the roads closed, even a tractor couldn’t cover the half mile between our house and the dairy barn on Joliet Road.  Dad cut squares of plywood and tied them to his boots, snow shoes he called them, to walk over the deep drifts to tend to his work and the cattle’s needs.  The National Guard came with a helicopter to bring food to the families trapped by the snow and cold.  It was the only time my father rode in such a machine.  They picked him up when he had reached the other farm, brought him and two boxes of groceries, landing across the road from our home.  Of course when they left, my father had to trudge across the half mile of fields once again to the dairy barn.

I do not know what my parents thought of those years, but it was a beginning, a real beginning.  They slowly built up the things that made up a farm.  Dad’s first farm equipment his first cattle these came during those years.  They were progressing…moving forward but their dream was no more than some faint glimpse beyond even their farthest vision.

But things changed, life does that you know.

Dad had the greatest respect for Mr. Coughenour and learned so much about farming from the gentleman.  The feelings were mutual, for when Mr. Coughenour retired to a ranch in North Central Florida, he convinced my father to go along.

I was in second grade when we loaded all we had on a 49 Dodge truck in the late fall of 1959 and moved to Alachua, Florida and a very different life.

(707 Words)

Foot Off the Throttle

Foot Off the Throttle 

By John W. Vander Velden

I work for myself.  And working for myself means I have to decide how I get things done.  It also means that there is no one else to do it.  Everyone deals with their obligations in their own way, but there is always so much that needs to be done.  Though I have been fortunate to have lived my life out and about, surrounded by the wonders of the world, the pace that drives me has given little time to take in the continuous daily wonders.  It’s kinda’ like eating.  Like wolfing down food because you need to “eat ta live” but not really tasting it.  The banquet has been always within reach, but time, it seems, insufficient.  This morning I paused just a moment…only a moment…to take in the wonder of the fog that lay in each dip of the fields.  The sun rose a bright sphere cutting through golden fog.  It took my breath away.  It reminded me of the thousands of mornings I have shared space, but rarely shared...really shared.  Even now I am multi-tasking.  While I write, a wagon is filling with corn to take to the elevator.  I can see the wagon from where I sit at this keyboard.  

Sorry have to go, the wagons almost full. 

I’m back. 

The thing is that all the years I have driven myself as hard as I can.  It’s hard to decelerate.  Even now when the years have slowed these bones, I am angered that I just don’t move as quickly as I used to.  But pushing keeps these bones a moving and I prefer moving to the alternative.  But maybe the time is come that I need to take my foot off the throttle…just a little.  To take the time to taste the flavor of each day.  To breathe in…deeply…and notice really notice the air that surrounds me.  I know I have earned the right, but I need to convince myself I deserve to simply take the time.  It seems, to me, greedy to indulge.  There is after all so much to do.  Time for leisure…well that’s not me.  Oh I take a day off now and then but regularly…naw…. But maybe I should. 

Even now as I move from one phase of my life to another there are obligations.  People look to me to “get things done”, maybe because I can.  I don’t expect to just sit in a rocker and watch the world pass by.  But I might like to move a bit slower…not to go full throttle all the time.  I’ll think on it but for now, I’ve got to go the other wagon is nearly full.  Then to the elevator.  Then maybe lunch. When I get back from lunch I will open the vents and start the dryer. Then fill the wagons again and off to the elevator.  Hopefully the dryer will be done when I return so I can refill it.  And of course a few “odd duck” small jobs in the between time…hmmm.   You get the idea…  Maybe I should take my foot off the throttle…just not today.   

(527 Words)  11-26-2016

Lee

Lee

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Lee watched the cornstalks driven to their final dance by the combine.  The stripped ears carried swiftly up and into the machine.  The low sun reminded of the hours spent and the hours that this day yet holds.  Brilliant work lights would illuminate after the sky filled with stars.  Stars he would not notice for his eyes would remain fixed upon the rows ahead, their brown golden leaves, fluttering pennants in the evening wind, until the snapping rolls tear and crump.  The late autumn air fills his nostrils as his senses searched any

scent of burning belts, oil fumes, or overheated diesel.  He listens to the droning familiar music of the big yellow machine doing his best to pick up any unique squeaks or clatters within the mind-numbing crescendo.  Lee doesn’t count the hours, those completed or those ahead.  He counts the acres.  Acres are his yardstick, and bushels.  Bushels equal dollars…sorta’.  There are bill to pay and plans to make for next year.  Lee tries not to think about how he will pay for next year’s crop, but those thoughts creeps into his mind nearly every day.  Time now to remain focused upon the task at hand.  The years

work and worry is coming to fruition.  The grain that fills his hopper a sign of the hours of sweat and labor, of the months of planning, and sleepless nights.  Even now the fear of “losing it all” crowds inside the cab.  For observes might wonder why Lee would gamble, health and fortune on something as tenuous as farming.  But even among his fears this farmer does not consider it purely a gamble.  Yes, he understands the risk, sees it each day, but believes that hard work and determination mixed with a bit of skill will see him and his family through…again.  Some years have been lean…but others have been better.  It’s the life he lives, and figures that it’s the life that had chosen him.  So he lives it.  But the day is ending…or at least the sky’s light grows dim.  Lee is content, as content as he ever is, that he has accomplished something.  Maybe less than he had hoped when he tied his boots this morning, but acres have fallen and the end is a bit nearer.  Yeah, it’s been a good day… 

 

(388 Words)  11-29-2016

A Bump in the Road

A Bump in the Road

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

I am a farmer.  That seems simple enough, even if it is not a complete description of the man I have become.  But it is the way I have earned my living for more than a few years.  How I have farmed has changed with time, but some things do not.  I find myself near the middle of this year’s harvest and am reminded.  Plans are good…but things never go as planned.

If I needed to be reminded of fickleness of my profession, the weeks just past should have done that.   For I am tied to the weather.  There are few other professions more bound to the weather than farming.  And it’s more than getting wet when it rains.  Summer droughts cause their own fears but over wet fields are no fun either.  The storms of late August and September washed out not only the road…repeatedly…but crops as well.  I was fortunate that the number of acres lost was minimal.  But the intensity of the downpours sent the soybeans ta leanin’ in several directions.  Beans tilted steeply to the south must be harvested from the south…against the grain you understand…if you hope to gather most of the crop.  Running the combine would seem, to the untrained, as random wandering, a cut here…a cut there…drive all over the place. That is not to mention dealing with all the wet spots to avoid getting the machine stuck…hmmmmm.  From outer space the fields with its wandering trails and track, uncountable ruts, and random, oddly shaped unharvested blocks of crops, might look like those high Andean plain drawings of Peru…but not.  Maybe the guys at Google Earth would get a laugh at the sight of it.  But I harvest where I can in the direction I must, it slows things down…a bunch. I have worked on beans for a month, and what little remains will have to wait until the ground freezes.  Time to get back to corn and wonder if those fields will carry the combine’s weight.  I guess I’ll cross those rows when I get there.  

The point of this post is not to talk about the weather, or wet fields, or farming…well maybe farming…but to say that things do not go exactly as we plan.  However just because they don’t, doesn’t mean we can’t accomplish something.  Obstacles are part of the journey.  Just as falling down is a part of learning.  Every day we face things unexpected that seem to stand in our way.  We would like to brush those things aside and just go on, but they are rooted too deeply and stubbornly block the direction we have chosen.  Some we may be able to leap over, some we need to find away around, but some we must backtrack a bit to take a totally new route.  Yes, they’re frustrating.  Yes, we loose our patience.  But, yes, they’re a part of life, so we have to deal with it, one way or the other.  Just like I never asked for the two inches of rain on the already saturated soil in late October, none of us ask for any of the obstacles that pop up without warning. So when an obstacle interferes with our plans, it’s best not to think of it as imposing barricade but rather see it as nothing more than a bump in the road.  

 

(566 Words)  11-18-2016

Challenges

Challenges                     6-18-2014

By John W. Vander Velden

I finally finished planting Wednesday.  I would like to say I beat the afternoon’s rain, but that would not be true.  The rumbles heard as I loaded the last seed warned me the storm was on its way.  No real surprise.  Late last week rain had been predicted for Monday and Tuesday, yet by God’s grace no real rain materialized.  Only a light sprinkle as I finished Tuesday evening.  So today was what I call bonus time.  I had nearly finished when the first round of rain came, pelting me as I sat on the open tractor.  I kept going.  With the first drops the monitor told me that row four ceased functioning.  That row sensor has been troublesome all season.  It has been particularly sensitive to the low angle of sunlight when planting westward in the late afternoon.  I checked the row, once, in the rain, and felt confident the screaming electronics of no real concern as I moved back and forth across the field.  The wind came so strong I had to remove my hat.  Rain on dusty glasses did not make the task easier.

But the events of the afternoon reminded me of all the struggles this spring gave.  Each year there are different difficulties that rear their head, attempting to undue plans which in truth are always in flux.  The end desire is known -- to get the crop planted.  But each day -- what I am able to accomplish in order to move toward that goal remains a question, a question that rarely has an easy solution.

Yes, this spring has been a long hard battle.  And I would rather it wasn’t.   But in the end it was a battle I won -- or at least I think I have won.  Harvest will tell the truth of this victory.  Tilling the soil, preparing the seedbed, and planting have been a challenge.  But isn’t life in general a challenge?  It is our nature to wish that all things move along easily.  That we pass through days – weeks -- even years with things going “our way”.  Not to be friends -- not to be.  Challenges are part of life -- period!

A friend of mine understands this concept too well.  She has been at the brunt of challenges for more than half a year.  Perhaps facing a series of the most difficult times of her life.  I am certain she would have rather not have been forced to face this maelstrom.  I am certain that there have been moments when she considered throwing her hands in the air and fleeing the storm.  But the tempest came upon her and her family suddenly.  They may have felt unprepared for that storm.  But she has faced it and shown that deep within, she was made of metal -- tougher stuff than any knew.  Has it made enduring easy?  No!  But to this point, it has made enduring possible. 

I understand that I too will one day face a turbulent time.  I only hope that having faced these challenges -- all the years of planting and harvest -- of torrential rains and times of intense drought -- are training me -- strengthening me -- preparing me.  For each will likely be “cast into the tempest” -- and there we will find just what kind of material God has provided.  I do not look forward to the possibility, but trust that God has made me tough enough.

For now the seed is in the ground.  I have done my best but from this point onward, the bulk of what the crop becomes is out of my hands.  It will grow, be healthy, stand tall, and yield -- or it will not.  I can not will a soybean to sprout.  I can not order a stalk of corn to give an ear.  Preparation helps, the better the preparation the more likely the success.  But farming’s challenges do not cease with planting’s completion.  Nor do life’s with any set birth date.  Rather I face the days ahead, scratch my head as I find a new problem that needs solving, know that each day offers grand wonders, but also its own challenges.  That is the adventure of it.  Isn’t life grand?

(707 Words)

 

In the Afternoon's Light

In the Afternoon’s Light

By John W. Vander Velden

Carl stood in the late afternoon light.  His eyes scanned the open land that lay before him.  Not long ago he would feel walled in, surrounded by countless rows of tall corn.  All that remained, crumpled stalks and chaff, the harvest complete.  Shading his eyes he could see his neighbor’s farmstead, certain the friend that lived there felt much the same.  It seemed that at last he could breathe, that a great weight had been lifted from his weary shoulders.  Now Carl considered the year…not the time from January till…but a time from first tillage until this very moment.  Of early mornings risings.  Of work ending beneath stars.  Of unpredictable rains and days beneath sweltering sun.  Of battles with weeds and disease.  Of days lost to broken equipment…time unreplacable.  But that did not matter…not now.  Grain safely in the bin, the harvest completed…another year finished. 

Forty-four years and each different…forty-four plantings…forty-four harvests, how things had changed!  And yet in the afternoon’s light he saw the things that remained constant.  A farmer, the son of a farmer, the grandson of a farmer.  If someone would prick him…examine the blood that flowed…very closely…surely they would find soil.  For after all these years…all these generations there had to be dirt in his blood.  There could be no other reason a man would face all nature would cast his way year after year …to fight day in and day out from dawn to dusk…clawing onward to another harvest.  The completed task proving once again, Carl the victor.  A smile touched his lips.  “This has been a good year,” he said softly, “ ‘Spect next year will be too.” Whistling Carl turned, a grateful, content man in the afternoon’s light

(292 Words) 

Misty Morning

Misty Morning          

I walk in the early mist.  The world seems very close, wrapped about me as I move.  The slump, slump, slump of heavy boots hamper my steps, the sound echoing.  I know the way, though sleep’s webs yet cloud my head.  I call out to the ladies in the dark and mist.  A soft low responds, not far, the cows know my voice.  I am expected.  They wait each morning.    On clear mornings in the darkness I can see some lying on the hillside others standing patiently awaiting a new day.  Days when star’s brilliance fill the dark sky, I am seen approaching, my ladies rise to meet. At my call, most begin their trek, stretching, shaking heads, at last walking slowly.  I know the leaders, the first that others follow.  I know the lagers, those requiring a gentle tap to inspire.  Now in thick dampness I move invisible, only my voice and steps forewarn my arriving.   A new day comes, my head now clear.  Yet surrounded by thick air, my task done most by familiar sounds, in a familiar place.  “Move along girls.”  The words strong and clear.  “Time to get up Bessie, lazy bones.”  I nudge the black mass yet asleep.  Startled she leaps to join her sisters.  I hear her quick steps as she vanishes in the mist.  I whistle to remind the lagers, I am near, that though darkness and fog surround the day underway.  Dampness covers my glasses.  It matters little, the world shrouded.  With my steps my mind considers.  Each day, long at labor, early beginnings, late closings, no life for the fainthearted, best it seems for the few, bold and strong, the patient and determined.  Am I brash to consider myself among those?  Perhaps.  But today I enjoy this walk in the mist.                                                             (302 Words)