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September 27, 2011
The Feeling of Fall
By: Linda Wuebben
Fall is a wonderfully relaxed time of the year on the farm. Most of the work is done. Most haying crops have been windrowed and baled for the last time. Farmers are just waiting; waiting for the soybeans to drop their leaves and stems to dry out so the crop can be run through the combine; and waiting for the same thing to happen in the cornfield.
Every time my husband leaves to work at the butcher shop in the morning, he waits for our pet squirrel to dash across the driveway with another kernel of corn. It makes us laugh because he only cleans kernels off of one ear. Everyday he heads to the same ear in a field filled with a bountiful harvest of ears.
First the chattering critter cleaned off the kernels on the bottom of the ear and eventually worked his way to the topside. We wonder if one ear will be enough. He almost has one ear completely cleaned off. There is a grove of trees on the other side of the driveway and we could probably find his hidey-hole. I wonder if it is spilling over.
This year will be another year of blessings for area farmers. The rain was just right, the hail stayed away and the drying process has already begun in the field. We are very grateful. It gives us comfort to know our economy is holding its own in a country where jobs are being lost every day.
It’s time to pay all those expenses accumulated during the year. Like the spraying for weeds and bad bugs we must apply for a bountiful harvest. Next we will have fuel bills to pay for running the big tractors through the field for planting, cutting and baling hay and chopping silage. And there are always repairs. We carried insurance in case Mother Nature leashed bad storms across our fields and now it is due. And a loan for land taxes can be paid off.
All necessary farming expenses and we only hope at the end of the harvest and the end of paid bills, there is something to live on. Usually there is; then we thank the heavens for that.
Through all the mountains of work and bills to pay, we know we have done our best to grow a crop which will provide food for people around the world and we love doing it.