Farm to Family Connection - Commentary

FARM TO FAMILY COMMENTARY ---Select commentary from a weekly column by Curt Arens published in the Cedar County News, Hartington, NE

July 2006

Angels in the Field

"You’ll do just fine," Dad told me as he hopped into the pickup and sped off, out of the field and back home.

I sat as a young teenager in the tractor seat of our old Farmall 560, brimming over with excitement and apprehension. I had never driven the 560 in the field before by myself. In fact, the only tractor I had any experience driving before that day was in the pilot’s seat of our old Super H, pulling a bale wagon through the field at the supersonic speed of 1 m.p.h. in granny gear.

But I had rode with Dad hundreds of times and watched intently as he maneuvered field upon field. He had schooled me thoroughly on the "dos" and "don’ts" of tractor driving, so I felt sufficiently prepared for the job at hand.

I had bounced around most of the day in the back of our endgate seeder wagon, scooping oats seed into the hopper. Now it was time to drag the field, but the field where I was working was shaped irregularly by the winding, steep-banked West Bow Creek.

As the creek meandered here and there, it left plenty of shorter point rows that were hard to maneuver.

I had great respect for the West Bow. I recalled one day when I was four years old returning home with my mother from a home extension meeting at one of the neighboring farms to see my Dad, cut up and bruised, standing at our kitchen wash sink.

Mom asked him what happened. He told her that he had rolled the tractor into the creek. Mom thought he was kidding, but Dad didn’t crack a smile.

He was pulling a wagon that day and got too close to the creek bank. The tractor and wagon overturned, throwing Dad into the creek ahead of the implements. He ducked into a culvert protruding out into the water.

The wagon tumbled down into the creek, hitting the corner of the culvert where Dad was taking refuge. The tractor followed directly. He had escaped sure death.

All of these things ran through my mind as I ground the tractor into gear and let the clutch fly. Everything was going fine until I came to some of the really short passes next to the creek. I turned too sharply with the tractor and the cable holding the drag sections into place started climbing up the tractor wheel.

Something made me push in the clutch. Everything stopped. I sat there breathless for several minutes with the sharp teeth of the drag section hovering over my head.

Finally I realized that if I put the tractor in reverse, everything might drop back down to where it was supposed to be. And I was right. I went back to dragging and never made the same mistake again.

Most farmers can recount hundreds of close calls like that. They might remember an angry mother cow that pinned them up against the pickup. Or they surely recall near misses between implements and fences, buildings and power poles.

I don’t know how many times I’ve become sleepy driving in the field and something will nudge me, startle me or jolt me into a more alert state in time to avoid a problem.

Personally, I know the good Lord watches out for us day after day out in the fields, on our farms and everywhere we go. This time of year when everyone is in a hurry to get fieldwork completed, we need angels out in the field with us, watching over us, keeping us alert.

St. Isidore, the patron saint of farmers and farm families, is said to have had angels with white oxen plowing the fields beside him, making his work go twice as fast. I have a couple of tractors that are white, but I haven’t noticed any angels in full view.

Yet it is comforting to know that we really aren’t alone out there day after day. The good Lord is watching out for us, and this time of year, we need all the help we can get.