Road Farming

Summer evening in June.......

Long time ago, before children and other oblgations in life, such as being adults and endless things that needed to be done,  Richard and I used to go for rides around the countryside.  We would just enjoy time together in our little pickup truck.  My wonderful husband would take me on roads I'd never traveled, we were on his home ground, where he grew up.  He would point out homes of classmates and families we might know in common.  We had no air conditioning in our little yellow '67 Chevy truck, the windows were rolled down and the wind cooled us on hot summer evenings.

We named this aimless way of traveling, road farming.  Since my wonderful husband and I were from farm backgrounds it was fun to see fields being plowed and disc.  Rowing (watching it sprout in fields) corn and beans in late May was a sign crops were well on their way and planted on time.  Corn that was knee high by the fourth of July were sure to make ears and have time to dry on the stalk by late September.

This year, 2012, Richard and I are road farming again, this time from the top of a Harley Trike.  We are traveling roads that are unfamiliar to me, he names owners of houses we both know, identifies classmates homes from the class of 1965 and he now tells me where his past students live.  Names are familiar and stories are remembered. 

Tasseling corn June 30, 2012

We have watched the corn and beans grow this spring.   We have smelled the sweet aroma of hay that had be cut and was being baled.  We saw the wheat ripen and be combined and then baled for straw.  The sweet smell of wheat being harvested took me back to our dairy barn with straw bedding and the Greene County Fair when clean newly baled straw was used to bed the animals.  Today animals are bedded down with cedar shavings, a different smell and one our grandchildren will recall someday when they visit their own memories of the Greene County Fair.

On the last day of June 2012 we went for a cool ride on our Iron Horse, Blue.  We rode back country roads and saw corn that was starting to tassle, the smell of those tassles and the silks of newly form ears of corn was intoxicating.  What happened to "knee high by the fourth of July?", I ask Richard.  He said that all the crops were planted unusually early this year, no till planting began in April.  (Farmers no longer plow the earth and disc it smooth, it hopefully will save the fields from wind erosion.)

Wild flowers on the hillside...

Everything seems to be month early this year.  Already the two cuttings of hay have been taken from most fields and the July wheat was harvested in June.  Pastures are eaten down, cattle and horses are resting in the shade of lone trees in their pastures, it looks like late July.  The earth is thirsty for rain and summer storms come with high humidity and hot temperatures.  Summer seems to have come early in every respect. 

I have enjoyed Road Farming again, a time when things stop, you are living "in the moment" "taking time to smell the roses" and remember the way things were.  As much as things change, they remain the same.  We still enjoy the cool air on a hot summer evening.  Life is good............