A New Day

Harvest happens every year towards the end of May or early June when the fields of wheat are golden, waving lazily in the breeze. Some of my earliest memories center around harvest time. I remember long days at my grandparents’ homes while Dad and Grandpa Nick were out in the fields from early morning until way past sunset, the purr of the combine engines rolling over the hills. 

I remember loading up the car with plates laden high with mashed potatoes, meatloaf, and cucumber salad and quart jars filled to the brim with iced tea and driving down country roads to the fields to feed Dad and Grandpa who would perch themselves on pickup truck gates and talk about how much wheat the harvest would yield while the san glared down and red dirt squished between my toes.

I remember wading out into the fields of waving wheat with Grandpa and Dad. They would pluck a kernel of wheat from the field and bite into it, determining whether it was ready to harvest or not. I tried that one time. But only once.

I remember the old truck with the deep bed that Grandpa had and when the combines were bulging with wheat, I would sit on the seat beside Grandpa while he drove over to the combine and together we watched kernels of wheat spill into the bed of the truck until the truck was filled to the brim. And then I would ride with him to Thomas, bouncing along on that old vinyl seat, sitting up tall so that I could see over the dash to the country road beyond us. When we got to the grainery, they unloaded the wheat and then Grandpa and I bounced back in that old truck, parked along the side of the wheat field, and waited for the next load. That grainery still sits in Thomas, its silver silos reaching to the sky, and every time I see it, I remember with a smile.

As the years went by, Grandpa retired that old truck and companies were hired to come in and complete the job while Grandpa and Dad watched from the sidelines. Many times during my teen and early adult years, I visited Grandma during harvest. And several times a day we would get in the pickup and head down to the fields, parking on the outskirts. Together we hung out there in the pickup, windows down, dust blowing, and watched the combines lazily driving in circles. Golden waves of wheat were cut down, leaving short stubby stalks that Grandpa and Dad would later till up from the ground, leaving rows of fresh red dirt, smooth and soft from the plowing. 

Sometimes, late at night, Grandma would say, “I wonder if they are still in the fields. Let’s go check.” And so we would go, and then watch the headlights of the combines circling in the darkness.

When harvest was over, conversation buzzed about the yield — whether there was enough rain, or too much rain. Of course, when we asked Dad about harvest in recent years, it was always a bust. “I’m not sure why you still go to the trouble, Dad, as clearly it never makes you any money,” I’ve said more times than I can count.

“I don’t know either,” Dad always replies.

But he knows. Deep down inside? He knows. It’s the land. Farming runs through his veins. Throughout my growing up years, Dad worked as a superintendent of public schools and then later as the State Director of Regional Educational Service Centers. However, every weekend he loaded up and headed to the farm where he plowed fields and counted cattle and talked wheat. I often went with him, hanging out with Grandma Nick while Dad wrangled barbed wire and drove the tractor. When Dad retired, he and Jo built their home on the very land where he was born, bulldozing his childhood home and building on top of it. And through the years, Dad has continued to  farm. 

I love going home. I love that Dad still lives on the land of my childhood. I love freshly plowed  red dirt, grazing cattle, and lazily waving wheat fields. 

I love harvest time, even when I’m not there to gaze in wonder.

For the past few years, Dad has threatened to give it all up. “I’m gettin’ old,” he claims, “and Jo has to do too much of the work by herself.” But we never believed his threats. It’s who Dad is. He is a farmer, a man of the land.

But this year Dad made good on his threats. He brought in the harvesters for the very last time. He has rented out his land and sold his equipment. Harvest time for the Nicholas family has officially met its end.

I’m not sure what to make of that actually. In fact, I’ve known this for a few weeks and yet I haven’t been able to quite put in words what it signifies for all of us — for my sisters, for our children. It’s the end of a legacy really.

I call Dad every Sunday evening and chat with him for awhile. The Sunday after harvest was over and after the last of the equipment had been driven off of Dad’s land, I was talking to Dad. “How does that make you feel?” I asked.

And pretty much Dad summed it up best when, without missing a beat, he replied…

Like hell.

When life brings change, sometimes sudden, sometimes subtle, we can balk, fight against the inevitable. Or we can look back with a smile while looking forward with a grateful heart-- at a beckoning future that forges a new way.

I am so grateful for my roots that are deeply planted in Oklahoma land -- in land that has been in our family since well before my birth. I am grateful for its heritage. 

I am grateful for memories of wheat and and cattle and red dirt.

I am grateful for harvest time.

But like Dad says...sometimes the reality of change, of a new day...

Sometimes it's just hell.