Harvest

Looking out across the prairie, fields of green are slowly turning to gold. Before long those fields will be host to combines and trucks, pickups with fuel tanks, and people delivering lunches to the harvesters.

Months of field work and watching the sky, hoping for rain at the right time and praying [that] heavy winds and hail won’t decimate the crops [that] will culminate in bins filled with grain.

Though we no longer farm, I still hold my breath when a weather warning flashes across the television screen warning of high winds, hail and heavy rain. Memories of harvests past surface once again.

Memories of equipment breaking down and the rush to get the parts needed, memories of the joy of seeing the grain as it flows into the combine hopper, and memories of the hard work and tears and sweat it took to seed and then harvest the crops.

Once in a while a particular harvest remembered will come to mind every year.

Such is the case with the harvest of 1976. Everything had been going just right and it was thought we were going to harvest a crop, the likes of which we’d not ever seen.

At a Fourth of July family picnic that included visitors from several states, the conversation centered around how great the crops looked. So we all got into our vehicles and toured the farm.

When the picnic ended and our guests were leaving, one of them remarked, “You have a fantastic crop this year.” To which my mother-in-law replied, “It does look like a beautiful crop, but you really don’t have it until it’s in the bin.”

How true those words proved to be a short 24 hours later.

During the night we heard thunder and before long, rain falling. However, it didn’t sound like a heavy rain and we couldn’t hear any hail.

We were all getting ready to go to church. As I stood in the bathroom combing my hair, I heard a sound I couldn’t quite identify. As I walked out the door, the sound was louder. It seemed to come from the east. So I went out to the road and then I caught sight of torrents of water rushing south in the coulee. Fence posts and big tumbleweeds rolled by, taking out the fence. The dam was quickly filled to overflowing.

Running back to the house I told my husband about the water coming down the coulee. We both went back outside and then walked down closer to the water. There wasn’t really anything we could do so we headed out to church.

After we had lunch we decided to take a drive to the rented land to see how much damage had occured. Our hearts sank as we looked at wheat that had been pulverized by hail. We went on to check our other fields. We found a wide swath of crops that were under water and fields that had not been hailed out as badly as those we’d first observed.

A few weeks later we began harvesting the remains of our crops. Fields, that several had thought would yield 40 to 60 bushels to the acre, came in at 10 to 15 bushels to the acre. It was a hard blow indeed.

Difficult as it was, we managed to get through our loss. It required some belt tightening, revision of plans for the rest of the year, and taking a hard look at how to handle things for the coming year.

The words my mother-in-law spoke remained in my mind, and in other years of poor yields helped me handle them. Those words reminded me to be prepared for a loss. To be thankful for what we did get. And to not lose hope.