NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/581251
O ne of the many things I love about Nebraska is that we have seasons, and just about the time you're sick and tired of one, another comes along. Summer, winter, spring … they all have their drama, but for me autumn is the most impressive. And it's all because of harvest. The roads and fields are full of huge alien machines lurching along in rolling clouds of dust and debris, an almost invisible helmsman in a sealed environment pod somewhere among the churning wheels and flailing levers. I'm not a farmer … I don't have the spine or optimism to place bet on Nebraska's fickle ways … but I am fascinated by the explosion of energy and commotion that comes along every year about this time. I once met a neighbor on the highway, headed to the grain elevator with a load of corn, and behind him was his wife driving another load. I wondered how that must feel … to grasp victory at last after long months of watching the sky, markets, drought and flood, the wacky ways of man and weather, and at last be hauling the result of his labor and worry to market. So the next time I saw him, I asked him that very question. I listed some of the things I knew he had had to get through to celebrate that triumph … insects, hail, wind, fire, too dry, too wet, too … well, in Nebraska it could be too much of almost anything … and asked, "What does it feel like when you finally take the crop in and know that this year you won." His response set me back but taught me more about farming than I'd ever read in books: "Rog, I haven't cashed the check yet." That's it. In farming you never declare victory. No sense in tempting the gods. Linda and I have a tree farm, but the truth is, this place is a word farm and when a crop fails, it doesn't take much to replant. As Linda once explained when a friend (a farmer!) wondered aloud how I make money writing, "Rog can use the same words over and over … but he has to put them in different order every time." But it's not as if I live without agricultural experiences even without farming. Finally this year we dodged that usual late spring freeze that annually takes our plums and chokecherries. We didn't get enough rain (we never do) but rains came along in a fairly timely manner so we had hopes of gathering sage and sweet grass. Wild grapes and hops cones hung in clusters off our back porch arbor. Finally, I began to think, this was going to be my year. Shoulda knowed. Deer got the plums, raccoons harvested our chokecherries. Wind got the mulberries. Late autumn heat took the hops and sweet grass. Cardinals got the grapes. Hail pounded the sage into the ground. Deer jumped the fence and ate Linda's burning bush and my cherished weeping mulberry. Clamus, garlic chives, daylilies … not this year. At least I had the comfort of knowing that like it or not, I was at least in this way a farmer. That point was made all the clearer when one morning I found a pile of coyote scat (a polite word for, uh, well – you know) up the hill behind the house. I've written before on page 49 about my fascination with the, uh, gift that coyotes leave around here, providing a vivid insight into what life as a coyote must be. So I returne d the next day to the scene of the crime hoping to see what Mr. Coyote's diet had been over the past few hard-scrabble weeks. Again I was too late; someone else got to the harvest before I did. Two dung beetles were already reducing my scientific sample to skeletal remains of hair, bone and plant fibers and were busily rolling their prizes off to a safe place before some natural calamity robbed them of their harvest. Which may say more about life in Nebraska and farming than is appropriate for mixed company. ■ Roger Welsch is an author, humorist and folklorist. He has appeared in NEBRASKAland Magazine since 1977. NOVEMBER 2015 • NEBRASKAland 57 The Harvest It's pickin' season for all. By Roger Welsch t Nebraska is that the dif B ev