Fall harvest memories

Autumn is here, a season when spirits soar even as temperatures plummet. This is because fall is harvest time, basically a huge, once-a-year payday for farmers.

The sight of ripening corn always reminds me of the crisp fall day that I became a man — at least, in my mind.

As I grew up on our small dairy farm, Dad had clung to his outdated farming methods. He insisted on picking our corn on the ear and cribbing it, a process that often took all fall. It was not uncommon for us to be pecking away at corn picking long after Thanksgiving.

The autumn when I turned 19, Dad finally took my advice about engaging a custom harvester so we could celebrate Thanksgiving without glancing ruefully at the unpicked corn. Dad hired Alvie, a family friend and an effervescent, jovial guy. A perpetual grin danced across Alvie’s face, and a chuckle constantly bubbled from his throat. Alvie could reduce even the most dyspeptic, sour-faced preacher into a puddle of giggles.

It was a big day when Alvie pulled onto our north field and began to pick corn with his new TR 70 combine. Upon hearing the roar of the machine, I ran out to the headland and waited for Alvie and his giant combine to get back to the end.

Alvie expertly reined his steed to a halt beside his truck, and a golden stream of corn gushed from the unloading auger. I scrambled up the combine’s ladder to the cab, and Alvie invited me to ride along. I was in heaven.

What a marvel that combine was. I was accustomed to picking two rows at a time with a pull-type picker, traveling at speeds normally associated with glaciers. I would often count the ears of corn to stave off boredom.

Flying down the field as the combine gobbled four rows at once made me feel as if I was aboard the Starship Enterprise. Its hilarious captain soon had my sides aching due to excessive giggling.

When we got back to the headland, Dad was waiting with a pair of empty wagons. He had been joined by Alvie’s brother, Sylvan, who had been driving by and decided to stop and take a gander at his little brother’s big new combine.

We chatted in the frigid stillness of the autumn twilight. “It sure feels like fall,” Sylvan declared, his breath forming tiny white clouds that hung in the air. “It would be really nice right now to have a snort.”

Alvie turned on his heel and trotted to his pickup. He returned in a twinkling with a pint of whiskey.

The pint was opened and passed wordlessly to Dad, then to Sylvan. Alvie then silently handed the bottle to me. His actions spoke much louder than words: You’re one of us now. You’re a man.

Following the lead of the older guys, I put the pint to my lips and took a hearty swig. I instantly saw why they called it a “snort” as I nearly snorted the fiery fluid out my nose.

Alvie presently turned to me and asked casually, “You’re going to be our trucker, aren’t you?”

I casually said of course I would, which caused my stomach to launch into violent calisthenics. I was too embarrassed to reveal the truth, that I had driven tractors and pickups but was totally inexperienced when it came to piloting top-heavy, fully loaded grain trucks.

Alvie opened the door of his grain truck. “The gear pattern is on the dash,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “The high/low axle is on the shifter, and there are the hoist controls.”

And that was that. Alvie trotted back to his combine, Dad went home to milk and Sylvan motored away. I’d been tossed into the deep and told to sink or swim. Or was Alvie just pulling my leg?

Hands sweating despite the cold, I climbed into the truck and slipped it into gear. My first obstacle was the worst one: a narrow field approach that had been built with horse-drawn implements in mind, not 20-ton grain trucks.

My stomach threatened to leap out of my throat as the truck growled up the tortuously narrow driveway. I could already see the headline: “Clueless doofus dumps truck.”

Despite — or maybe because of — these fears, I managed to get the truck safely to the local grain elevator, where I joined a long line of waiting trucks and wagons. As I waited, I joked animatedly with other farmers. My spirits were high, but it had nothing to do with distilled spirits.

I felt good because it was fall harvest time, but mainly because I felt that I had just become a man.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at jerry.n@dairystar.com.