It's About Time

Yep, we're finally harvesting the barley.

Dead Broke

When you send your farmer out to the field and they return hours before they could possibly be finished, there is generally only one question on your mind. "How bad did you break it?" The worst possible answer to that question would be this: Happily--for us anyway--this was not our $150,000 weenie roast. But short of "It burnt up", the next worst answer is, "Well, I think I found all of the parts." Which is exactly what my dad said when he came in from the hayfield this week. According to my husband, Dad picked up a rock the size of a basketball with the swather. This was, of course, a gross exaggeration. I saw the rock in question and it wasn't a millimeter bigger than a standard bowling ball. At the moment the rock entered the header, an irreversible chain of destruction was set into motion. It jammed, bringing the auger to an abrupt halt. This caused all of the pins to shear off the twelve inch sprocket at the end of the auger. The chain attached to the sprocket whipped free and wrapped around the shaft at the other end, which brought it to a stop, but only at one end. The other end continued to spin, driven by the Power Take Off from the tractor, until the shafts bowed, and one snapped. Bearings and bolts and chains spewed across the field. All quicker than Dad could hit the brakes. Three days later, after a parts scavenging expedition that involved at least two neighbors, the swather has been reconstructed and is once again whacking away. Now let's just hope we don't see hide or hair of my dad until at least late this afternoon, which is the earliest he could possibly finish. We'll also be keeping an eye out for clouds of black smoke.

Waiting to Exhale

Farmers around here are holding their breath so hard they're starting to keel over in the cafes and parts stores. This could be one of the best grain crops they've had in years. I say 'could be' because in farming, disaster is never more than one thunderstorm away. And farming at above 3000 feet in the shadow of Glacier National Park is an annual invitation to disappointment. Once in a while, you have one of those summers where it all comes together. The ground thaws and dries early enough to get everything planted at a decent time. The rain falls right on schedule. And the grain springs to gorgeous, bountiful life. And then you wait. There is nothing quite as nerve-wracking as watching that bumper crop ripen with all the speed of a snail racing up the side of Chief Mountain. Will it be ready to combine before the sawflies buzz through and whack off every other stem? Will the cold, damp weather delay it so long that an early snow mashes it? It's so thick, a wind-driven downpour could do almost as much damage.

Or it could hail. Hail is a hit and miss annihilator of farmers' dreams. Storms tend to be compact, often less than a mile across. Sometimes you can almost draw a line where the squall ended that turned your barley to muddy green pulp without touching the neighbor across the road. The weather man isn't much help. It's not like you can run out and throw up a tent over a hundred acres of oats. Listening to a storm forecast is like parking your car at a jam-packed Walmart, knowing a plane is about to fly over and drop a few bowling balls. The odds that one will go through your windshield as opposed to one of the hundreds of other cars are actually pretty low. But you know it's gonna hit somebody. Combines and swathers are just now beginning to chomp their way across the fields to our south. A week of good, warm weather and some of our neighbors will start harvesting winter wheat. But here on the upper slopes, we'll be holding our breath for a while yet.

Tractor Crazy

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Some day spring may come, and when it does the cattle will take a back seat to farming for a bit. My brother and I would have made good partners in this split operation. He has always loved anything mechanical. I'm an animal person. In his opinion, a cow is a thousand pounds of mobile aggravation in leather pants. I consider a day on the tractor slightly less tedious than counting the grains in a fifty pound bag of rice. \

Unless it's wild rice. That might put it over the top.

 The topic is fresh on my mind because I dragged pastures today. In other words, I drove a tractor around in circles for two hours, busting up cow turds with a harrow. My MP3 player was no help. Forget those businessmen trying to sleep on a noisy airplane. This is the real reason they invented noise cancelling headphones.

Luckily, the tractor did its best to keep me entertained. If I went more than two miles an hours, it immediately hit a badger hole hard enough to launch me out of my seat. And every fifty yards or so, for no particular reason, the door popped open. No big deal until the wind freshened and starting driving pellets of semi-frozen rain into my face as I attempted to steer with one hand while leaning out to drag the door shut with the other. 

Man, I love farming.

Maybe I would like it more if I was gliding along in one of those deluxe tractors with a temperature controlled, sound-proof cab, ergonomically designed seat, Bose stereo and a GPS system designed to eliminate all need for thought on my part.

 Wow. That sounds really dull.

 Old equipment does add a certain edge to farming. Can I make this one last round before the clutch goes completely? The answer is no. It will disentegrate when you've only got five acres left to seed and a three day rain settling in. The tractor I was driving today has a history of personality quirks. One year, during harvest, my sister was using it to bale straw. I was ahead of her on one combine and our hired man was on the other. Mom was in a field a mile away, swathing barley. Dad was in the fuel pick-up, roaring from one machine to the other, fixing them almost as fast as we could break them.

 I can't recall exactly what was wrong with the tractor, but every time my sister shifted gears the front end popped off the ground. She bounded down the rows like a bronc buster on a rearing colt. I had problems of my own. The slightest pressure on the brake pedal caused the combine wheels to lock up. At the end of every row it lurched to a stop, nose-diving, butt flying in the air.

It was a real rodeo out there, I tell you. Her tractor rearing, my combine bucking, and Dad racing around picking up the pieces that flew off.

 Like the people on this ranch, our tractors are getting to the age when they require a little extra encouragement to get going in the morning. Each is equipped with the same basic tool kit: wrenches, screwdrivers, and a blue can of starting fluid.

We hadn't realized how often we had to pump ether into carburetors until one chilly morning when Mom and I and my three-year-old son climbed into one of the diesel pick-ups. It is notoriously cold-blooded and we had forgotten to plug in the block heater. My mom turned the engine over and over, hoping against hope that it would start anyway.

 My son tapped her on the shoulder, full of male superiority. "You know, Grandma, it won't go unless you use the blue can."

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