The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

As time goes by here on the farm, we have been watching my Amish neighbor handle a crop of corn on acreage which he has rented from me. Finding just a mere one or two words to convey how both entertaining and instructive this viewing has been is difficult.

What of course has been entertaining for us, once viewed from an Amish farmer’s point of view, is a lot of arduous, hard work, both for him, and for his horses. We are, as we have watched this plowing and planting and harvesting, continually impressed. Several moments through all this stand out.

The first memory comes from the moment I stood behind his single-bottom riding plow pulled by four large horses. The horses themselves are impressive in the way in which they are almost always content to just stand wherever they were stopped.

Of course, that brings to mind my dad’s stories of times–and he of course began farming when it was done just as the Amish do it now–when horses did not always iidly stand by. The neighbor, he once told me,  as he was mowing hay uncovered  a ground nest of hornets. Horses don’t like yellowjackets any more than humans, and the results of the ensuing runaway brought injury to all involved, including a line fence, the horses that tangled in it, the machinery, and some injury to the farmer himself.

So I guess they don’t always stand there like statues.

As I watched my Amish renter line up the approach to his first furrow, and drop the single 16-inch bottom into the 20-year sod, I for the first time listened and heard that iron plow ripping its way through all the root structures. With no engine noise, one could hear the tearing sound that the plow made as it cut its way through. With the noise of a tractor’s engine, one never hears that.

At this point, I have to tell a story that Morey B. once told me. We were talking about horses. He said: “I was once cutting oats with a binder–(which cuts the oat stalks and ties a bundle of them together). It was a warm day. The horses seemed content to not need me at all. They came to the corners and turned by themselves. So, needing a nap, I got off while the horses happily around and around, cutting oats. Seeing they didn’t really need me, I went over to a nearby shade tree.” (That’s why you always used to see one tree in the middle of fields, for shade to rest the team under.)

He continued: “I was fast asleep, as the team just kept going. Then I woke up. The team had come to a full stop.”

At this point, he stopped the tale. So I asked: “Why did they stop?”

He said: “The binder ran out of twine.”

I instantly realized I had been had.

However, as I watched my Amish renter picking corn  by hand just now, I realized that horses have a big advantage. As it comes time to move the wagon ahead, all he has to do is vocally  move them straight forward, and halt them. They’re quite content to keep straight with the rows. Then he can pick a bit more, move them, pick, move.

And with a tractor? One would be up and down repeatedly. I remember opening up the end rows of a field of corn–picking those rows–with dad. And although I was only seven or eight, I was the one who climbed up and down the tractor, to move it a bit forward.

Of course, dad was so proficient at picking corn that I usually only got a few ears up against the bangboard of the wagon before I was back on the tractor.

I remember that quite clearly, picking corn with dad. He said: “My Uncle Wilbur was so good at this picking that he travelled all over.” I was struggling to get the husk off an ear of corn with the husking hook I had fastened on my left hand. Stupid corn. I was not good at this. Dad was good. Dad went on: “It was said  that Uncle Wilbur could keep two ears of corn in the air at once.”

Dad’s last horse was named Bill. I at the age of maybe four sat o Bill as he walked around and around a feed grinder. Thought I had the world by the tail.

These are such great memories to have. 

I have the Amish farmer to thank for reminding me of them.