More women’s work –

So the useful and charming Stan, the kibitzing neighbor who gets up in the middle of the night to do our water turn and who was kind and brave enough to come over and put the colt on long rein for the first time last summer, came to disk our arena. 

Stan, equally lovely on the back of a horse, or the seat of a John Deere.

Disking is a farm thing.  You drag these sharp free-turning disks that are all at different angles, and they slice the ground and break it up. Like you’d chop onions.  So what was once hard becomes fluffy and loam-like.

But you have to be careful not to take the fence down while you’re doing it.

You should have seen him in his own little garden area—about a foot wider than the tractor, and he didn’t even tear the wire off the fence—AND he made an absolutely impossible ninety degree turn.  Did you know that we can get that bucket up seven feet off the ground?  Cool. 

Our tractor.  A borrowed disker.  And Stan’s skill.  He’s surprising, that one.  You wouldn’t take him for a farm boy, but he can lift a box scraper, and he gets unholy joy out of driving a tractor.  Plus, he’s good at it.  Stan, the farm poet.  

Stan in 1934, just about dust bowl time.  This was before we knew how to restore photographs.  Hasn’t he kept well?  The tractor sure has.

He  taught us a few things.

Yeah, this is the lady of the house.  I didn’t get to do the very outside edges – thank heavens.  See the wind whipping through my hair?

Nice to have good neighbors.

Listen—a Deere is serious business.  And note our horse trailer.  We have a horse trailer.  I chuckle at the very thought of it.

art of the tractor

Agricolam poetae amat.

Which means: I think our tractor is totally cool.

Okay.  Be honest now.  Feeling a tad envious?  Uh-huh.  Okay.  Show of hands—admit it.  You wish you had one, too—doncha???