A season in the sun

Although growing up in the age of tractors, have you ever seen a team of horses turn a furrow? Their heaving breath and clomping hoofs work hard to cleave the soil. Have you felt your bare toes melt into the crumbled, rich earth?

Have you seen a belching tractor pull a gang of moldboard plows, each turning a fresh furrow of rich, fragrant earth, the plows themselves shiny as mirrors from the friction of the soil? These are the memories of our agricultural past. Man’s struggle to till the soil has advanced from pointed sticks to hoes to horse drawn plows and then tractors and crawlers. There seems to be no end of our escalation of power, our ability to rend and tend the earth.

After the first plowing in May, when the soil is still moist but dry enough to be pliable, the turned furrows are allowed to dry in the sun. Flocks of birds swoop down to devour the bonanza of exposed earthworms, but many more of the earth-richening creatures escape below to safety .

When the earth has dried a bit, gangs of steel discs are pulled across the fields to break down and level the soil. If you were to walk into this biologically active sea, you would sink to your ankles in a velvety, fragrant mass. There is nowhere on Earth like a field just prepared to be planted. The sheer potential of the soil, the thousands of tons of corn or wheat or potatoes to come, waiting only for adequate sun and rain.

The seeds are planted in straight rows with military precision. By the end of May, green tendrils rise in discernible rows as the early crop begins to assert itself. Taking sustenance from rain, sun, and soil, the potential of many tons of crop yield begins to assert itself. By July the crop is over knee high and vibrant green. In August, just taking a tinge of brown. In September, ready to harvest.

If the autumn rains come, mud is the enemy. Tractors gang up to haul harvesters and combines through the muddy fields. The crop must be dry enough to avoid must and rot, but leaving it in the field to decompose is not an acceptable option. Whole corn stalks can be fed into choppers that blow huge silos full of aromatic silage to feed the cattle over the long winter.

In December, January, and February, when deep snow and the cold of winter blanket the land, the barns are warm with the lowing of cattle, consuming their rations of sunshine from the silos. Soon enough, though, new furrows need be plowed.

But for now, a little rest.