Oat harvest memories

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I take our dog, Bella, for a walk early on these summer mornings when the air is cool and saturated with the sensuous aroma of sex.

Plant sex, that is. The corn is pollinating lustily, with millions of corn plants making whoopee. Tassels jut skyward at jaunty angles, proclaiming their vegetative studliness. Golden silks dangle seductively, miniature Rapunzels displaying their luscious locks, inviting their paramours to clamber up and enjoy the delights that await at the top of the tower.

Strolling with the sweetcorn-like smell in my nostrils causes me to ruminate. I recall that a walking human covers 2.5 to 3 miles an hour — slow enough to count the obscenely green corn stalks as they slip by, but not as sluggish as first gear on a John Deere “B.”

The reason I know this is because we once owned a John Deere “B” and an A6 Case combine, a team that was pressed into service for oat harvest at about this time of year.

By today’s standards, the A6 was a puny little machine. Driven by an asthmatic Wisconsin V4 air-cooled engine, it probably had as much horsepower as the starter motor of a modern combine harvester.

The A6 was woefully underpowered. This lack of snort is why it had to be spoon-fed oat windrows with the “B” and its super-slow first gear.

We owned the A6 together with our neighbor, Martin. He was a nice guy, albeit somewhat eccentric. He was also as tight as the bark on a tree.

Every summer at the end of oat harvest, we would plop a soup can onto the top of the A6’s muffler and park it out in the trees. We didn’t have a machine shed, so the A6 had to sleep outside.

The summer when I was 14, I began to prepare the A6 for another oat harvest. Starting the engine topped the “to do” list, mainly because it wouldn’t be much fun to spin the combine’s threshing mechanism by hand.

The Wisconsin engine, however, was hand-started. Ever the innovator, I learned how to crank the Wisconsin with my foot, as if I were kick-starting a huge, clunky-looking orange motorcycle. I was thus able to kick the engine over with great vigor and avoid a broken arm should the engine kick back.

I slipped the crank onto the Wisconsin’s crankshaft and gave it a mighty kick. Nothing. The crank didn’t even move. Repeated efforts produced not the slightest hint of a budge.

Investigation revealed that numerous holes had formed in the muffler. Rainwater had entered the engine, fusing it into a solid clump of rust.

Copious amounts of WD-40 were administered through the sparkplug holes. Only after the engine had absorbed approximately a gallon of WD-40 did it grudgingly consent to crank.

But would it start? Ha. The Wisconsin merely laughed as I spent hour upon hour kicking it over, sweating so much that my shoes squished when I walked.

Martin drove over to our farm to check on progress. I apprised him of the situation, declaring that the Wisconsin would never run again. Martin thought for a moment, then instructed me to hop into his pickup. We sped the half mile over to his farm.

Martin’s farmstead was a mishmash of junkpiles. He had held onto everything, no doubt thinking that it all might come in handy someday.

After digging into a pile of what appeared to be scrap iron, Martin produced a flat pulley. He then disappeared into a rickety shed and returned with a hand crank that fit the Wisconsin.

A trip to the local welding shop wedded those two items. We returned to Martin’s farm where he scrounged up a long flat belt.

Martin jockeyed our “B” into position near the A6 and instructed me to slip the pulley/crank onto the crankshaft of the Wisconsin. The flat belt soon connected the “B’s” crankshaft pulley to that of the obstinate Wisconsin.

Our first attempt to start the Wisconsin with the flat belt was a spectacular failure as the pulley/crank combo immediately went flying. Martin suggested that I stand beside the Wisconsin and use a tiling spade to hold the jerry-rigged apparatus in place.

The belt shrieked and smoked against the spade as I gritted my teeth and wondered what might happen next. The Wisconsin suddenly burped out a colossal backfire and thundered to life. A few seconds later the tattered remains of a muffler crashed onto the earth several yards away.

The A6 was thus returned to service, and I spent yet another August driving the “B” in first gear, watching the nearby corn plants slip slowly by and ruminating upon their lascivious lifestyle.

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.