Wherein We Start Cutting Wheat and Think About History ⋆ A Delightful Glow

My husband started farming eighteen years ago. He cut his first milo crop in the fall of 1996, married me in May of 1997, and cut his first wheat crop in June of 1997. {I can’t say for sure which of the three events he enjoyed the most, but I’m leaning strongly towards wheat harvest.} 😉 1997 yielded a very good wheat harvest. We cut some 70 bushel wheat and haven’t done that since. The elevators filled up and the line of trucks waiting to dump their wheat backed up onto the edge of the highway. My new husband borrowed a semi and trailer from a neighbor so he could keep cutting away with his John Deere 95 combine. His Grandpa was hauling wheat for us in the dump truck, but was stuck in line, waiting, at the elevator. Every bit of this was pretty new to me. I knew a few farm basics and visited once during wheat harvest, when we were dating.

I had a flashback as I sat at the edge of the field last night. Seventeen years ago, I had no idea how fast the years were going to fly. I didn’t realize how young we were or the history we were writing at that moment. No life-changing history to anyone else, but our own history and memories, near and dear to me now!

This year, 2014, finds us cutting the poorest wheat we’ve ever had. We simply did not have the rain and moisture that our wheat needed. We’re just getting a start, but we’ve heard from some neighbors to the south of us with averages of 10, 8, 12, and 18 bushel to the acre. Cutting short, poor wheat doesn’t even compare with the beauty of a good wheat crop. It’s not nearly as fun to harvest and there are other things like needing to run your header close to the ground and weeds starting to flourish in the short, thin wheat, that add up to a little more stress.

On the up side, there’s not a lot of straw to deal with and the stubble is short, so it’s much easier to walk in!

{Insert more history~funny story}

{When our Renae was somewhere between two and four, which could be three, but I can’t remember for sure, she was walking around in the wheat stubble. As she gazed over at where the combine was droning down the field, she proclaimed, “I wonder when they’re going to cut this short stuff!” }

If time continues, we will look back in a few years and talk about the history we’re making now. We’ll talk about 2014 and how dry it was and the wheat wasn’t very good and we’ll remember how I was getting better from dealing with sciatic stuff.

Every day we’re making history. Adding pieces to our own special story. Life happens so fast and change happens unaware. And that’s why I find myself loving books like Karen Kingsbury’s children’s book Let Me Hold You Longer.

We heard that an older farmer in our area died this morning. It’s not that I really knew him that well, but it felt like change and I don’t always like change. I’ve seen him in his fields every single year at harvest time. It feels like the ending of an era. We’ve recently had two other elderly neighbors pass away. My mother told me at the end of last week about the passing of an older gentleman in Ohio, whom I’ve known all my life. And I wasn’t close friends with any of them, yet I’ve known them all a long time and they are part of my history and it makes me realize, once again, how fleeting our inch of time on earth is. It just feels different and it makes me realize that my parents are becoming the older generation and we are becoming the middle-aged generation.

I want to grasp today and savor the history we are creating as the minutes tick by.

And this. I want to do this.

Just appreciate my things today. Hug my people today. Because Change happens quickly, quietly and unexpectedly.

And history happens every second.

I froze a few of our moments in history, last night at the field.