Thoughts

Father’s Day 2017

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“Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“My dad was my best friend and greatest role model. He was an amazing dad, coach, mentor, soldier, husband and friend.” – Tiger Woods

“When it comes to Father’s Day, I will remember my dad for both being there to nurture me and also for the times he gave me on my own to cultivate my own interests and to nurture my own spirit.” – Jennifer Grant

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I suppose that looks like an odd combination of people to quote – a scholar with some interesting, provocative views on the world, a world class athlete with some questionable personal issues, and an actress from Beverley Hills 90210.

All are valid quotes though, and I feel that my dad will get a kick out of them once he reads them.

I think it’s probably easier for women in general to write about such things, especially about their fathers. I think just about any of us in the agriculture field was a “daddy’s girl” whether we knew it or not. Some of us while growing up maybe dabbling in ag because it was our father’s hobby, born into a the family business, or we fell into it unexpectedly.

My father grew up in Northeastern Wisconsin into a poor family that subsistence farmed well into the 1960’s. They grew what they needed to survive, had a hodge podge of livestock, and contracted to grow cucumbers for a local pickle company- Bond Pickle Co. that used to be right on the rain system in Oconto, WI.

His love for gardening, hobby farming, and an increased interest in naturalism strengthened over the years and after traveling the world in the military. There were always vegetable gardens and flower beds while I was growing up. He didn’t need anything fancy. He was brought up to work hard and lead by example, and that work ethic showed in his leadership while progressing through the ranks first in the Air Force and then the Navy. He instilled those same traits, work ethics, and mentalities in me.

Over the years he’s focused on rebuilding my family’s property- the natural wildlife population has slowly come back- quail, turkeys, foxes, birds not seen in the area for years, etc. It’s turned into one of his greatest joys. You don’t need to be a “farmer” to appreciate what you can do for the land, and in turn, what the land can give back to you. Imagine his surprise (or, maybe not) when I ended up in the middle of nowhere Nebraska and eventually started a job that no one had ever expected me to do (including myself)- farm and custom harvest.

Even though some of our worldy views may differ, he’s always encouraged me to explore, go out into the world, and find what was right for me. He’s always supported my decisions and yet knew when to stand back and let me make the mistakes we all make when we’re young and stubborn and have our own lessons to learn.
Here’s to the fathers in the world that (tried to) patiently teach all of us while growing up- whether it be in the world of agriculture, driving a stick, rebuilding an engine on a car, complex math equations that we never end up using in real life, changing a tire, their best ways to do certain things.

Here’s the the fathers who work long tiring hours at the office so their wives can be stay at home moms and create more of a traditional/conservative home life.

Here’s to the father’s who are gone for days, weeks, or months on end to provide for their families. Whether be it over the road truck drivers, pilots, military, etc. Sometimes our professions are our choice and what we dreamed of as being little, sometime it’s just purely a job that is financially the best way to selflessly provide. Everyone makes a sacrifice- but our society seems to place the focus of the sacrifice on the mother- let’s not forget about the father.

With that said, let’s not forget about the mother’s for whatever reason are raising their children by themselves and have to fill both parental roles.

And even on the flip side of that- here’s to the single dads that do the equivalent of a single mother and seem to never receive those same accolades.

Here’s to the dad’s who are the stay at home dad’s- being a stay at home parent is no easy task, and here’s to the men that realize that them staying home works the best for their family and situation.

And also, please let’s not forget about the father’s who no longer have their children with them on this Earth. The emotions, feelings, reactions, anger, guilt, etc. all still are very valid to the men who have lost a child. Fathers and men are not immune to this. Take a moment and think of them on this day.

To my daddy: thank you for teaching me about so many things over the years, and I appreciate each day with you, along with all of the sacrifices you made for our family. Our family is blessed to have a hard working, kind, generous soul as our rock.

-Love,
Your Punky.

This entry written in cooperation with HarvestHER. Go checkout our Facebook as well!

 

Q&A: Part One

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Sometimes, I get asked questions. It comes in the form of small talk- like when you’re at a salon, a nurse asking questions before the doctor comes in, waiting at an airplane terminal.
Usually I’m glad to answer their questions, but sometimes it gets tiring. How do you explain what you do for a living to someone that doesn’t have a clue about the agricultural world? There are times I wish I just had a card that I could pull out of my wallet and give to the person. Something like a brief summary. It would go like this. You can pick your answer.

What do you do for a living?
I farm!
I work for a family owned and operated large scale grain farming company. We farm 20,000+ acres of conventional and organic soybeans, corn, wheat, rye, popcorn, pinto and kidney beans. Fieldwork starts in March, followed by planting, cultivating, and eventually ending in final harvest usually around November. Our company also does custom harvesting, which means we travel in TX, OK, KS, NE, SD, and ND and harvest other people grain; mostly wheat, some durum and canola, and a little bit of corn. Depending on the year (aka, Mother Nature and predicted crop yield) we take about 9 John Deere S680 combines with 40 ft. grain heads and 4-5 John Deere 8370R tractors with Brent 1196 grain carts along with a mix of Freightliner and Peterbilt semis with Cornhusker grain trailers. We also have 3 fully equipped shop trucks with fuel tanks and trailers we bring. We leave on the harvest trail late May after our crops are in, and are on the road through early August. The crew I’m on also leave again middle August into September, and again in mid September. Last year I spent a total of six months on the road, including trips back to WI. During the winter months we replace the years equipment with new equipment- 12 combines, approx 22 tractors, etc. All need to be gone through, thoroughly washed, old ones brought to dealerships, and new ones picked up from the factories. By the time all that has been taken care of, it’s time to go through 5 planters, all of the fieldwork implements, and that brings us to March again. That’s our year in a nutshell.

Oh, you farm! You must have a ton of cute furry cows and chickens and pigs and stuff?!
We grain farm and don’t have any cattle or anything like that!
No. Hell no. That would add to the headache.
I do have a German Shepherd- Kelpie mix that would love to have some animals to “play” with though. I’d love to have a small acreage someday with a steer or two, couple of chickens, and a nice big vegetable garden again. Someday. When we have time.

So you work on a farm…. are you like the farm secretary? What do you “do”?
We have an office that’s full of awesome secretaries that deal with all of that stuff. I’m out in the field with the rest of the guys!
 (ah, yes! I am woman therefore I can only be in an office!)
I do play secretary when we’re on the road for harvest. I keep track of internship paperwork, receipts, payments, make hotel reservations and things like that for all the crews.
During the winter I recruit possible new hires and interns for the next season, help with interviews, etc. But no, I’m not an office person at all.
My office is inside of a pickup, combine, or tractor. Yes, I drive all those things, operate them, and work on the them.
In spring I do field work, seed tend, and keep everyone else running and (somewhat) happy. On harvest I’m also equipment hauler, flag vehicle, equipment mover, lunch getter, part runner, fuel deliverer, grain samples to the elevators, the runner, the gopher, and everything else that needs to be done. There’s a not so nice word that is generally used. It rhymes with witch, and I’m everyone’s. It’s fun. I love it. I’m never in one place for very long which suits me.
During fall harvest I usually grain cart. I like it. It seems like a vacation. All I have to do is get the grain from the combine, dump it on a truck, and record the weights. It’s simple and no one bothers me.
In winter I work in the shop when I feel like it. Mostly I enter into a hibernation mode and say “screw you world.”

You work with all guys then? Are there other girls that you work with? Does that get old after while?
Yes and no!
There are the “office girls” that keep the whole company running which is a giant undertaking. Those girls are worth their weight in gold. They really go above and beyond- even taking care of our personal matters like paying our bills when we’re gone, getting our mail, picking up prescriptions, running errands, going to the grocery store because we’re out in the fields during any sort of business hours, etc. They make our lives tons easier and probably don’t ever get thanked enough for it. But I don’t work in the office with them.
As far as the shop is concerned, yes, I’m the only girl. There have only been 2 other girls that have come out for summer harvest and they. were. awesome.
Working with all guys is great. No one cares what you look like, smell like, talk like, act like, etc. There’s considerably less drama than working with girls, and if someone has a problem they come directly to your face instead of talking behind your back. For the most part. We all talk crap to each other, but I know that if it came down to it, if something happened, there’d be a whole line of guys waiting to beat the crap out of a guy who pissed me off. These guys are my family, my best friends, my drinking and cook out buddies, my confidants, my rant listeners, etc. 

That sounds like a lot of hard dirty work and long hours!
Yeah, it can be!

No.
Freaking.
Shit.

Dirt. Grease. Fuel. Engine oil. Hydraulic oil. DEF. Fertilizer. Chaff. Dust. Mud. Anti-seize. Brake cleaner. Unknown goo. Sweat. Blood. Tears (occasionally). It’s been in my hair, skin, clothing, boots, vehicles, in my bra, down my pants, caked in my eyes, up my nose, packed in my ears, jammed under my fingers nails, ruined washers and dryers, dyed and stripped my hair, destroyed clothing, etc.
Try to add in normal stuff like preparing meals, eating, cleaning your house or hotel room you only sleep in, laundry (oh my God the laundry), errands (grocery shopping!), paying bills (thank you online banking and auto pay), keeping in touch with family (because they all want to know what you’re doing, and why haven’t you called us for so long!) taking care of a dog, being a good wife, trying to get a haircut every once in awhile, and sleep. Sleep is a big one. Coffee is my main food group, followed by Diet Coke. If there was something stronger than caffeine and more legal than cocaine, you bet it’d be added.

So why do you do it?
I get to see the country, meet new people and form new relationships, visit old friends, swap stories on rainy days with a beer, view beautiful scenery, hang out with my friends on a daily basis, create a lot of inside jokes, talk to people from all walks of life in agriculture, from the old boys that hang out at the elevators who have seen it all, to the little kids that come out to the field and make you see the world again through a untainted eyes and honest thoughts.

Because I love it.

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the tempering of wanderlust

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In the whole year of 2015 I was on the road one way or another for a total of a scattered six months.

Trips to haul to equipment for the start of harvest, mini vacation weekends, the long harvest itself, and many different treks back to Wisconsin for holidays and wedding planning. So many miles traveled, so many different unique places.

I love being home- the dog, our own bed, being able to cook real food, but over the past few years wanderlust has settled deep into my bones.

Not right away. It takes a bit of time. It starts off with just hopping the pickup and going for a drive. 10478677_10100161210276957_572497094808312584_nThere’s something comforting about dirt roads and asphalt. The growl of an engine. Open country with clouds. Small towns that are barely on a map that no one notices.

It started with missing Wisconsin. I grew up in the hardwoods and Nebraska isn’t known for it’s trees. (Hilariously enough, Arbor Day started in Nebraska.) I went from thick forests that stood firm right up against major highways packed with traffic to dirt roads with open land as far as the eye can see. Slowly it transitioned- a few years after moving to Nebraska, we drove back. The forests I used to find so calming had turned almost chokingly claustrophobic.

I feel an almost unsettling ache to be on the road again. When you travel (even for work) you leave bits and pieces of your soul strewn about. Relationships with people. The land. Even little things start popping into your mind, like an old lone windmill at the east side of a wheat field that you always park by. Something always feels missing after you return home, where ever home may be.

For me, it’s a constant internal debate as to “where” home is. Is it WI, where I grew up, where my closest friends are, where both Matt and I’s families are? Or is it NE, where I live now, have settled down and made roots, have a job I love, and friends that truly understand my life and what it has become?
My Dad spent years in the military traveling, and one of the last times I was in WI we had a deep conversation about the concept. He brought a view to it that I hadn’t considered- “home” doesn’t change. The traveler changes.

Your views, experiences, sights, thoughts, habits, everything about you changes. You don’t realize it. Then, when you go home, there’s this almost frustration, this not quite anxiety that starts to creep up on you. You’re not there for big events, you miss out on weddings, new family members being born, baptisms, holidays, and even the little things like spontaneous dinners. You miss out. It’s all just snapshots into a different life.

So you go home, and find out that life has gone on without you.

It’s this feeling of wistfulness– wishing you were there for everything, but at the same time wishing your friends and family could go into your mind and understand. Time at “home” still flows and you feel like an outsider. But, your time also is flowing, like currents in a river. Still the same river, but different swirls and eddies. I think the older you get, the more this feeling stretches out and touches on the way things used to be, what the could be, what might have been. There’s never regret- regret is pointless, but the thoughts are always there.

Wheat harvest is fast approaching- it feels like forever since we left last year, and it feels like yesterday. The first haul of combines is leaving this weekend to be unloaded at our first stop in Oklahoma.

Harvest is coming and so starts the tempering of my wanderlust.

how now, brown cow

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I remember the first time I visited where I live in Nebraska.

The cows were the wrong color.

I grew up in the heart of dairy country in Wisconsin. Holsteins are the overwhelming norm along with Jerseys and the growing Brown Swiss. Black and white dominate barns. Dairy cows aren’t often seen outside roaming the countryside, instead staying in large barns.

Now I live in the heart of beef country. It’s not uncommon to see a few hundred head roaming free across massive pastures. Pastures so large that country roads go right through them without a fence in sight, auto gates forcing you to slow down and sometimes hang tight, and the only telltale sign of cattle is the dotty smattering of cow pies laying by water holes.

A few weeks back I drove four hours round trip to the nearest Social Security office. I left when it was still fairly dark out and the road was patched with fog. On my return trip the sun was actually out for once, melting the last of the wind torn snow. Visibility was about as far as it can be when driving through the constant roll of the Sandhills region.

During one stretch on some fairly flat ground at opposite sides of the highway, two different sets of cattle grazed. On the west side was a large herd of brown Herefords. Black Angus mingled on the east.

I took notice, albeit not initially thinking of it. There’s not much to do on this particular drive. There’s no cell reception, no radio reception, only one small town at the halfway mark. It is a stretch of road where it’s not uncommon to see a vehicle pulled over on the side of the road and it’s occupants taking a leak against a tire or in the ditch. (When you have to go, you have to go.)

Then, it dawned on me.

These solid brown and solid black cows are now my norm.

And for the rest of the drive I craved to see a big red barn set against lush green grass. A giant immaculately packed tightly tarped silage pile. A tanker backed up to a parlor. A feed mixer.

The type of lonely longing that comes with being away from a place too long and too inconsistent.

I miss the black and white cows.

Now they seem to be the wrong color.

(This was orginally posted on my previous blog which has been deleted, but felt the need to archive it over here.)