The farm is a busy place this time of the year, a flurry of activity. We are into harvesting our second crop of hay now and have just finished our peas and oats, bagging that and baling the second crop. I’m humbled and blessed that we have another abundant return. The moisture and heat together have made our alfalfa thick and lush in most spots. The weather has a huge impact on the crops, either negatively or positively.
All along we had been monitoring the growth of our field of peas and oats. One day my husband asked me if I could see any peas coming up in that field. “I think the peas froze out!” He exclaimed, disheartened. We realized that the cold snap in early June must have zapped the pea plants right out of there. It is what it is.
This particular field is low-lying. We really should have cut a few weeks ago but just then we got all that rain and could not get on the field. By the time it dried down enough to get through it without making ruts, the oats had headed out.
When we could get around to cutting, the oats were twice as high as the front tractor tire. A wave of wonder for it all hit me. Together we work to prepare the fields as we plow, drag and pick stones, then seed it down and wait for God to make it grow, a three-way partnership with our Father to create this. It’s a miracle, really.
I totally admire how efficiently my husband manages everything. In addition to milking cows, maintaining herd health, handling their lactation cycles and dealing with the feeding program, he fixes machinery as he’s able, maintains it all, greases everything, fuels and hooks me up. Strategically planning each planting season, he figures out what field to plant what crop in, when to harvest, what to dry down for baled hay, which fields we bag, what goes into the silo. I listen to instructions and follow his lead. He’s the mastermind behind it, bringing it all to the Lord in faith and then leaving it there with Him.
The three of us, my husband, daughter and I, work our farm and we chunk away at it as best we can. One morning my husband was cutting hay on one field, daughter was raking hay on another field and I was chopping on yet another. As I’d fill a wagon, husband would come out to the field with an empty wagon, go back to the farm with a full one, unload and then cut awhile. As I was slowly making my way around the field in low, it would take me longer to fill a load, so he had time to cut hay. The rows were so thick the chopper couldn’t keep up going any faster.
That same day we went from filling the bag with silage to baling dry hay. Getting down off the tractor hooked to the chopper, husband switched the tractor to the baler and off I went, baling the field my daughter had raked up earlier. We got another helper, thankfully, to help unload wagons full of dry hay bales into the barn. It went like clockwork.
Before I had gone out to chop I took my daughter some ice water, making sure she was OK out there in the heat of the morning. Her long hair bundled up inside a wide- brimmed straw hat, sunglasses perched on her nose and any visible skin slathered with lotion, she was handling it pretty well. The heat shimmering off a field of hay, on top of the sun reflecting off the tractor in the hottest part of the day can be overwhelming.
Working in the heat is exhausting and especially so in humid heat. Sweat trickles down everywhere, gravity pooling it in the small of my back as I work in the barn or make my way around the field in the tractor. As my daughter exclaimed, “Even just stepping outside it’s like you get wrapped up in this super hot blanket that you don’t want to be in!”
Coming into our central-air-conditioned house is balm for our souls after a long hot day working outside. The contrast is amazing. If we didn’t have air I’d be depressed. Seriously. I would be. It can keep a person going knowing the house is our cool refuge at the end of the day, a respite to look forward to. And at night we get a good rest, no sticky hot air circulating, but fresh cool air, making it easier to sleep.
Flurry of activity abounds at all farms this time of the year. Thankfully, we have abundant hay to harvest, helpers to help unload it and the anticipation of air- conditioned comfort to cool us down at the end of the day. All good.
(“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” 1Corinthians 3:7-9)
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