Farm Life

The sun shines through the hazy morning air as in summer morning fog.  The haze is dust from the rolling combines.  The sun will be scorching as the day progresses on.  “Baa…baaa…baaa.”  The sheep in the feedlot to the east make noises as if to say, “We want food.”  Unfortunately we don’t have anything for them until the field gets combined and we can let them eat the corn left out in the field. 

We are out early in the morning to start the dust rolling again.  The combine must be greased to keep the parts moving smoothly. Hopefully this will prevent the ever-dreaded breakdown. A breakdown can ruin a day. The harvest is all about momentum.  A pause in the momentum can make the rest of the harvest miserable.  A snowstorm during any part of the harvest can cause a loss of crop.  If the snow gets too heavy, the ears of corn fall on the ground. There is no way to salvage it after that. There is much risk that goes along with farming. I hold my breath until the last load of grain is binned and I know that the harvest is successful.

The finish of the harvest is a great victory.  If everything goes well, the harvest takes about two weeks.  During this time, we work from seven in the morning until as late as midnight. It is a stressful time.  This is how we make a living; this is where the profits of our hard work are redeemed. After the harvest, there is a little down time until winter arrives.  Along with winter comes snow, and with snow comes our work with the livestock.  We turn the sheep out onto the cornfields after they are harvested, and they stay there until the first snow.  When the snow comes, we have to begin feeding them by hand.  We go out to the grain bin twice a day and fill buckets with corn. The corn is spread out into metal feed bunks.  After the corn, we fill up the feed bunks with alfalfa hay, taken from a round bale using pitchforks. This must be done twice a day, every day, from the first snowfall until April.

The coldest week of the year seems to be when we start lambing around the middle of February. The lambs do not do well in the cold weather.  Sometimes the mothers give birth to their lambs outside in the snow and cold. The lambs will freeze to death.  The mothers are left to take care of the lambs themselves. They must clean their lambs and help to encourage them to eat. If they do not do this, the lamb may freeze or starve to death. 

During the nights, the sheep are put up in the barn to prevent them from freezing.  I must check them two to three times during the night to make sure that everything is okay.  Sometimes, if I am too tired to go back inside, I lay down some straw and sleep out in the barn with the sheep. If they are not checked, the lambs would probably die and my profit would be lost.  I don’t have a job that I go to work from nine to five. I work twenty four hours a day seven days a week when need be. I don’t get paid every two weeks.  I get paid when the lambs are taken to market. The fewer lambs I have, the less I get paid.

Life on the farm can be very tough. Our crops are completely dependant on the weather, and our livestock are dependant on us to feed and take care of them.  There is always the risk of disease in the crops or in the livestock. Our profit is earned by how hard we work.  Nothing is guaranteed in our occupation. But that is what we do.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Bryant Soulek