Joy of the harvest

I grew up on a 380 acre farm in Michigan near the little town of Leslie.

As a boy on the farm my life revolved around the process, sowing the seeds with faith in the future

The planting season starts in the Fall with preparation of the soil and planting the wheat after the first frost because the first frost kills a fly that lays it’s eggs in the young wheat stem and destroys the crop. The wheat grows to about 3 or 4 inches and is covered with a blanket of snow to wait till spring.

In the spring we prepare the next field for oats. The smell of freshly turned earth is so good in the spring. Oats are planted in early May. Next the corn is planted in late May to early June. In June the hay field is ready to cut. The smell of new mown hay is sweet and to this day if I am driving by a field of hay that has just been cut I will roll down the windows to smell that sweet field of hay.

Near the end of July the oats are ready for harvest and put in the oat bin. The wheat comes next. When the song “America The Beautiful” in the first verse says amber waves of grain it gives you a picture of a wheat field as the breeze blows across it. Dad generally planted about 80 acres to wheat and harvested about 60 bushels to the acre. He would keep enough for next falls seed and for the chickens and to mix with oats and corn to make feed for cows and sell the rest at the grain elevator. The price for wheat was between $4 and $5 per 100 weight.

The end of August or early September we had a second cutting of hay, then we prepared a field for planting wheat.

On to October and corn harvest, it was during this time that my oldest brother Bill was injured and died in the hospital. That happened when I was about 3 years old.

I guess I have rambled on too long. The point I wanted to make was the joy I felt as I looked at barn full of hay, the bins full of oats and wheat and the cribs full of bright yellow corn. To me all was right with the world. 😎