Harvest

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For a crop farming family, the Harvest Season means long days, early mornings and late nights. It means eating your meals in the cab of a tractor or combine, praying for Mother Nature's cooperation, God's blessing, and your machinery's endurance to make it through the harvest without any major equipment breakdowns. Cliff and his parents, as well as many of our other family members, pray and work through the harvest season every year. I just pray that it all goes well and our family life returns to normal soon. It's easy for me to watch the work from the comfort of home, to watch through the living room window as the dust is kicked up behind the combine or plow moving slowly down the rows outside in the cold. I'm not going out early, staying in the field long past dark, or worrying about the rain, the price of corn, or whether or not there is enough fluid in the tractor's radiator. I am just looking forward to the end, to the big finale, to the day the last row disappears into the combine...

That day was Saturday. Gavin and I walked up our road Saturday night to watch Grandpa Jennings run the combine, taking the corn out of the last field standing. We watched Grandma Jennings drive the tractor down the field hauling another wagon waiting to be filled with shelled corn from the field. It was a beautiful, but chilly evening. The setting sun was bright and the night was full of hope, anticipation, and finally, a sense of sweet relief that the precious commodities were out of the fields and safely stored in grain bins and wagons.

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After visiting with Grandpa and Grandma for a few minutes, we walked back down the road, past our house, and into the field to the East, where Cliff was out in the tractor pulling the Chisel Plow. Gavin loves to be outside, no matter how chilly. He was all bundled up in his coat and hat, snuggled into his wagon with a warm, soft quilt. He sat in the wagon, running his fingers through the tall, dry grasses along the edge of the field while we waited for Cliff to make his way across the field to us.

We watched the sun set behind the farm, amazed at it's beauty.

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The colors in the sky behind our house were magnificent.

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The combine moving through the field, harvesting the very last of the corn in the very last bit of daylight, was a sight to be seen.
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