A BUSY TIME

The days grow shorter, the nights cooler, and the trees prettier. Harvest drags on - or so I hear the farm wives say when they’re in picking up their mail. Glen and I have so little that we actually combine anymore that we’ve been done for ages, but the big grain farm operations are barely halfway.

One conversation between women on their parts and grocery runs earlier this week was all about how this harvest was going so slowly this year. It’s true that there have been frustrating little rains many days that grind everything to a halt for a day or two each time, and as the days shorten up, there are less sunshine hours to dry things up again. If farmers could only have a week of dry and hot weather they would be done. What made me smile, after these younger women had said their piece, was when an older one spoke up - about how when she was growing up, and how harvest always took the whole month of September back then. The farms were smaller size-wise, but so was the machinery that did the harvesting, and no one had the added conveniences of straight cut headers and aeration fans to lengthen out the harvesting hours of a day. I don’t know if the younger women even stopped long enough in their busy rounds to ponder these things, but I kind of sided with the one who remembered the harvest days of my childhood. Obviously I, too, am getting old.

Today must be aggravating the heck out the neighbors again. There have been two different ten minute showers since I got up this morning, and by the look of the skies, number three is about to happen. I love the smell of the fresh, clean air ... but then, our grain is already in the bin.
Of course, there is always something to be done on the farm, though. Glen is still trying to find enough hours in the day to do his farming and go and earn a paycheck as well. He’s off building an oil well lease today but the bales still need hauling home and the cultivation of the calving pasture, so that we can re-seed it, is still undone. I’ve told him often enough there are but 24 hours in a day, and only seven of those in a week, but my words fall on deaf ears. He has managed to get our barns scheduled for cleaning before freeze up and got busy and sold the rye we’ve been storing for three years ... that’s some progress, at least. I know if I offered, I could do some of these jobs, but I’ve learned the more you know how to do, the more you are expected to do. I already cover enough bases, and besides, if I lessened his load of those jobs he’d just think of something else he needed to take on! One of us has to say "Enough!"

So, I’ve spent today cleaning my house, washing floors, and have a roast beef in the oven. I think it will even be accompanied with an apple crisp for dessert. My contribution on a Sunday afternoon.