24th
Autumn
I found out today that a farmer my boyfriend works for will be starting harvest this week. Most would react indifferently, but I know that from now until December I’m going to be spending a lot of my time alone or riding in the cab of a tractor. Someday October will mean I’m watching my own crops be combined.
City people love the fall. The weather turns crisp and heady, the air blooms with red and yellow and pumpkin pie. But to the farmer, October brings back-bending work and a constant headache. Harvest is an exciting time, an exhausting time and an anxious time. These are the moments when the year’s work is reaped, and the ability to pay the annual land bill hangs in the balance. Did we plant the right brand, the right number, the right spacing? Did the early rain cut the crop, will it be ready by Christmas? These questions are asked again and again from April to October. No matter how many soybeans he’s chewed, wives’ tales he’s remembered, ears of corn he’s husked to see what’s inside, the magician will reveal his secret in three months’ time.
Seventy, eighty, ninety hours a week for three months, eating two meals in a field with grubby hands and plastic silverware, going to bed only to spend the wee hours calculating, taking in a load and in a single hour going home with $10,000 in his pocket only to find he’s spent most of it before the corn was even knee-high… talk about workaholic. But if you ask them, fall is their favorite time of year. This is his land, his seed. He planted it, nurtured it and for a brief moment in time, he is God.
Give us this day our daily bread, farmer, and thank you.
