Cooking a Life—From the Farm:

Part II: The Zen of Tractors.

A few posts ago, Dad shared with us that he loved EVERYTHING to do with farming. (Full disclosure: I didn’t). He just loved being a farmer…full stop—every aspect of it. To my knowledge, he aspired to nothing else. This calling meant that the satisfaction of a job well done came only from within—knowing your hard work effort was producing a yield for the benefit and enjoyment of others with no one offering acclaim. No boss gave him praise; no boss wrote him a performance evaluation; no boss gave him bonuses. As most farmers know, all THAT comes from the quiet satisfaction of work that produces something—driving around pre-dawn, the sun cresting the eastern horizon, with the night’s dew evaporating into the cool dawn air causing swirls of mist to rise from the bines, and saying to yourself (because there is no one else in a cubicle next to you): “This is me. I’m creating this. I…did…this.” Farmers are always at the mercy of forces (nature) and influences (vendors, contractors, capitalism) of others—for those who farm with the right heart, it is a noble act; a humble way of being. Because Mother Nature will humble you every single day. And it’s not for the faint-hearted. It is DAMN hard work,

ALL.

THE.

BLOODY.

TIME.

My Dad did GREAT work! He embodied a noble and inherently humble heart. He, appropriately so, took great pride in his craft—and although he wouldn’t have called it such, I do think farming to Dad was a craft—an art form. Season after season, with every harvest, he produced his masterpiece.

And then he’d do it all over again with the next Spring, wiping clean the canvas of the soil to begin anew. These are more of the Eldering lessons his life has brought to all of us.

Hop farmers measure success by the yield of hops produced, per acre, during harvest. My Dad would enthusiastically, yet nervously every time, look forward to tallying the number of bales that would come in after the entire process of cutting down the bines in the field; to transporting them via truck, or tractor and trailer, to the machine for separation (the hop bud from the bine); and to the drying (which is what my Dad did during every harvest until, that is, he became “Dryer Emeritus” when he handed the responsibility to Trevor—more on this process in a later post! Trevor apprenticed Drying from Dad and then eventually took over in partnership with LeRoy). Once dried in huge kilns with temperature- and time-controlled, POWERFUL propane burners, balers would bale the hops in an elaborate process of compression using burlap cloth that is sewn together to wrap and create 5 ft. tall bales averaging around 200 lbs each. Dad would ink stamp each bale marking the grower and variety of hop. And it is at THAT point, that we’d get our count.

Bales per acre was our measure of success—and everyone associated with “working hops” over the course of the year had a vested interest in that one, single number: “What’d we yield?” We celebrated with high numbers; and were humbled by the low ones. Numbers granted to us, again, by Mother Nature.

Trevor has a few awesome stories about all things “Harvest and Dad” that I think he’ll share with us soon. Stay tuned.

Green gold to a hop farmer. The amber colored Lupulin inside the cone is the ingredient used by brewers to give beer its unique color and flavor.

I’ll come back to “The Harvest” later—there are so many wonderful things to write about that unique period of time in a farmer’s seasonal life. But you can’t get to harvest unless you know how to drive…

a tractor.

Remember what he told us:

Dad’s favorite farm thing to do was drive tractor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Driver’s Ed:

Dad taught all his kids how to drive tractor when we were young—like, WAY young. From Clary, Toni, and even Terry, to Trevor and myself, we all learned how to drive tractor way before we could even THINK about driving a car. I can remember driving Dad, who was on a trailer 18 feet up straightening hop poles, when I was somewhere about the fourth grade—that would have made me 10 years old! At the start of every row, Dad would make sure we were pointed in the right direction, have us push in the clutch, set the gear to first and the rpms to some low number that I’ve forgotten, then climb up into the crow’s nest of the trailer, tap the metal frame with his hammer (which was his ‘go’ signal), then we’d let out the clutch and drive forward slowly to the next pole where he’d tap again on the frame for the ‘stop’ signal, and we’d push in the clutch again. We’d do this over, and over, and over…and over again (have you seen how many hop poles are in a field of hops?) so that he could straighten each pole. At the end of the row, because we might not have been skillful enough to turn the tractor to point it down the next row, he’d climb down, sit in the seat himself (I do remember him also allowing us to sit on his lap while he did this—to teach no doubt) and turn us down the next row to begin again.

We, well, at least I, wasn’t a perfect driver (if my brothers are honest, they’ll admit to being imperfect too: some of our funniest stories come from our tractor mishaps. And we have a few, very scary ones too!). I remember getting unique and sometimes colorful responses from Dad (though my Dad didn’t, and doesn’t, swear) when my foot slipped off the clutch when we weren’t expecting it—it’s HARD to push down the clutch on a tractor when your 10! OR when we (okay, “I”) drove too close to the poles and would scrape them with the trailer. All that being the case, Dad was forever patient and he never took us off the tractor. He taught through patient example and modeling and persistence.

Pole after pole after pole; row after row after “freakin’ endless row!” And when you have a pefectionistic farmer as a father, every bloody pole had to be perfectly vertical. Actually, a strong hop trellis does demand the poles’ strength to be maximized, accomplished best when the poles are straight—but Dad was still a perfectionist and that fact was lost on my 10 year old attention span.

He taught each of us how to disc, harrow, pull trailers, back up with hitched trailers, auger holes, blade dirt and snow, ditch, and pull a damn 500 gallon green propane weed burner! He taught us how to spray herbicides and pesticides (it’s a miracle we don’t either glow neon green or didn’t produce mutant offspring—but we do still wonder about Terry—RIP). ALL on a tractor. And we’ll each come clean (Clary, Trevor and I)—each of us were also given “supervised permission” to drive pickups on the road way before we had our legal driver’s licenses.

This is the honest to God TRUTH!

Dad was a GREAT tractor driver. It looked to us like he could drive the damned straightest row of ditched lines all while looking backwards—insuring the depth of the ditcher was where it needed to be! He never needed to “do over” the backing of a trailer into a spot. He could clear our entire driveways, and that of our neighbors, and the church lot, from snow, in minutes with a blade. And yes, he would spend hours just driving tractor (and his pickups) around his fields—checkin’ them (for whatever needed to be check—and sometimes for no reason ‘tall!), irrigating them, discing weeds (duh!), and just spending time. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was how dad meditated through his endlessly long summer days. All these years removed, I get it now: this is what calmed his mind and quieted his thoughts. This was where he lost “himself” to discover himself—his core nature—his bliss. His pride. He did that on a tractor. Those were his moments of Zen. And as a result, and thousands of hours in the seat, he was able to make the tractor an extension of his body—he was a craftsman.

Fits him like a glove! BTW: the red pickup behind his right shoulder? THAT was the last farm pickup he ever bought. Connor, my son, bought it from him when Dad could no longer drive (Dad was so happy it stayed in the family). Then, my son discovered that fire engine red, Ford F-150’s LOVE gasoline. So, he and I swapped vehicles—fyi: my son now drives an awesome Nissan Maxima. I now regularly donate to the local Shell gas station. Is it bad they know me by name?

Eldering 101: Elders are wise and behind that wisdom (in fact, the only way to acquire wisdom), is years and years, and thousands of selfless hours “in the seat,” to develop skills that become second nature—skills that, so mastered, turn one into a true craftsman. But having all that doesn’t make one an Elder—to Elder, one has to teach, otherwise you’re just a stodgy recluse or happy hermit. Dad taught, but only through example. There was nothing he asked us to do that he wasn’t also doing himself (well, maybe excluding the cleaning of the inside of the baler—but that’s for another time and is between me, LeRoy, and Dad!).

And he kept us as students through his patience. We wanted always to make Dad proud. He wasn’t the most verbose person with his praise and pride—but, we KNEW it when he was proud of us. This brings tears to my eyes even now as I think of those moments. He never “fired us” from a farm chore (hell, he couldn’t, we were FAMILY!). And although we also knew when we disappointed him or made mistakes (the ones he found out about at least), he corrected us, showed us the right way, and then stayed with us until we got it. His leaving us alone to do the task all by ourselves was one of THE MAJOR ways he showed his pride. Earning Dad’s TRUST was the greatest form of praise—NOTHING ever approached that. Nothing.

Elders know how to do that—they know how to grow things: like hops, and like the next generation of farmers (if not also low paid employees and worker bees—aka family!); and self-reliant sons and daughters. Stephen Jenkinson said “Human beings aren’t born. Human beings are made.” Elders, my Dad, made us who we are and the conduit for him doing that was the farm. Having farming in our DNA is unlike any other kind of genetic inheritance that could go into the making of a human. If you have any connection to a farm in your life, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about here. And if you are like me, you didn’t fully appreciate farm life until later in your life—some of us, years after we stopped farming (and yes, I know some of you are still farming…and thank you and bless you. If those farms includes hops, all beer drinkers are raising a pint to ya!).

Over my years of being an educator, I saw that our kids are losing connection with the earth. Getting your hands dirty somehow became “dirty.” Something to be avoided or cleaned up from asap so that they can get back to their screens. Sad. I do miss having the farm; I miss what my own two kids didn’t have access to that enriched my life—we could do things we would never even dream about anywhere else (I mean, heck, who teaches a 10 year old how to drive nowadays?).

My dad never under-appreciated farming—he knew what he was producing through his effort; and yet he was getting back, from the farm, so much more. And he remembers that. And he misses that, I think, every day.

My Dad was a FARMER! And his family is SO proud of that—of him.

Way to go Dad. And thank you (even though I don’t drink beer!). Farm core values are unlike any other, and my brothers and I are blessed.

The guy’s such a stud, he don’t even need stinkin’ work boots!

You can spot a true farmer in his eyes! The dictionary’s definition of bliss has this picture next to it.

T plus 33 days and mowin’, er, counting.