Getting the Itch

I posted this same post on Northern Farmer, but wrote it for here this evening.

I’m getting the itch, or should I say the fever, spring fever! Was only twenty below this morning! Truthfully though, it set a record low, kinda like the rest of the winter has done. So much for global warming. I finally realized that in about a week spring officially arrives, even though that doesn’t mean a whole lot in this neck of the woods, it still is a reason for hope. Its been cold since November and I’m tired of it. Dug behind the seat of my silver farm truck today and found two farmer hats I wear for summer. Beat the dust and dirt off of em and might have to get them somewhat back in shape cause they’re all flat and bent. Ah, but the season’s coming and I gotta get my stuff ready! Oh, did I mention, one of our un-wed heifers decided to have a calf this morning being that the temps were so nice? Couldn’t wait even one more day!

So with the temps warming up, or so they say, there’s a few hundred ton of manure to haul when it unthaws. Maybe more than that, but there’s allot of that farm raised fertilizer to spread on the fields. It’ll go a long way too and save an incredible amount of family money. Get that stuff straightened up and life does have a much better outlook to it! But I can’t wait to hit the dirt. Something that’s in a farmer’s blood! Yes, I have the itch, that same itch folks have had since the beginning, to go and work on the land. That feeling a person has turning over the soil, getting fields ready and planting the seed. The Bible is full of the planting the seed kinda stuff and I know its preached and preached till folks are just full of that preaching. But its something special to someone that actually makes a kiving on it. Different to someone that depends on it. Planting the small grain seeds. Planting corn seeds. Planting grass seeds. All are done differently, but the faith that there will be a crop is the same with every one of them.

Then comes the tending of the crops, from picking rocks to cultivating row crops. There’s hay to cut and dry, rake and bale all summer long if there’s enough rain to have multiple crops. There’s small grain harvest in late July and early August, swathing the grain, leaving it in the windrows for a few days and combining out the grain and usually the next day baling the straw from the same field. There’s meadows to cut and bale during the mid summer time when its dry enough to drive down in those low lands. There’s pastures to tend to every single day of the week, checking fences, counting the critters and seeing if anything is wrong with any of them. Pumping water in the remote pastures, filling up the stock tanks for another day while counting the cattle.

Come early September much of the corn is chopped for corn silage. That’s where the whole plant gets chopped up and we put it in a silage pit. That’s a big long pit in the ground where we dump the loads of silage. Push it around with a Bobcat leveling it off and packing it down by driving on it with a tractor, back and forth, forward and reverse. A good year would give us a thousand ton of corn silage and that’s enough to make it till grass in early May. The last harvest job is pickin corn, pickin the corn cobs with an old two row corn picker. Filling up corn cribs and snow fences set up for temporary cribs. By then winter is knocking at the door once again.

And this wasn’t even mentioning raising the chickens outside all summer, tending the multiple large gardens, raising a few family hogs, and a host of other things. In the longest days of summer its rare to get in before sundown. Even if there’s no big farm job to do we head out to the garden to wind down for the day. There’s something about being out there on a summer evening pulling weeds or some other garden job, listening to the country sounds that are so clear that time of the day. The wild geese and their families down by the creek usually are giving us a honk, the killdeers are making an evening racket, a pheasant doing what pheasants do in some field near by.

Church activities and also small town activities pick up this time of the year when the area comes out of its winter slumber. There are festivals in the towns and villages. There are special activities at church. And not wearing a pile of winter clothes sure does set a person free. There’s visiting where folks can sit outside, fire up a barbecue and shoot the bull for hours. This coming June there will be special services at our little country church. Almost a week long series of revival meetings and its looking good. It should be before hay cutting and after planting so for once things might work out for me!  Glory, things like that keep this old dirt farmer going!

I don’t know what will happen in this world but at the moment I’m not going to let it get me down. And after the moment it ain’t gonna get me down either! The country life is different, not the same as what city folks consider the norm. Between dirt farming and church I couldn’t ask for a better life. Family farming and working for the Lord when the day’s work is done. Or even during the day’s work if the opportunity arises! Come in every evening and the last thing a feller does before hitting the hay is read that Bible no matter what. Get the Word into the very marrow of our bones. Get so much of the Word into us that it must be spoken forth all the time!