By Carie Moore
I know there have been a lot of posts the past few weeks making people aware of our food production systems and how they all begin on the farm. Along with potatoes, sugar beets, and sunflowers – wheat was another crop that never got harvested for many.
I look at this picture like many look at things on their farms. We all say time is money. It is, but it isn’t. As I lit this wheat crop on fire, I said to myself, “I’m sure glad I spent all that time fertilizing this.” This means two things:
- Money. The inputs of fertilizer, seed, fuel, fungicide, and other associated costs to grow this crop.
- Time. What we take for granted because we wish there were more hours in a day in the spring and summer. Time in equipment cultivating, fertilizing, seeding, applying needed chemicals. Time that took away from family, activities, events, cleaning. Time that I didn’t have that made me irritable, crabby, a crappy mom, and forgetful of things I had to do.
The thing is, with farming, you don’t know if you are going to have hail, rain, fire, drought, snow, loans, bin space, good markets, or anything else you think you might have planned on. I didn’t know any of that when I was planting the field, and honestly, I wouldn’t want to know.
I enjoy each crop year in its own unique way. Each crop year teaches me something, and my kids as well. We can look at this as a loss, or new life for crop 2020. I was able to share so much information with so many people over social media through every step of the crop season. You can never take knowledge away and if one person learned why I do something, I call that a win.
I look at the picture of me and my son in the spring getting the crop started. Do I look angry? No, I am happy and smiling because I’m doing what I love, with my family. I’m doing it for more than time and money. I’m doing it because I have been given the gifts and talents that make it possible for me to farm. No matter what the outcome, I have never heard a farmer or rancher say, “I wish I never would have done it. I never should have spent my life as a caretaker of the land or the animals.”
Use the flames to light a fire and ignite the passion to do what you love and with those who share that desire with you. Sometimes you’ll get burned, but many times you’ll regenerate something in you that far outweighs anything you ever thought possible.
Carie Moore is a farmer and mom from Rocklake, N.D. She loves tractors, coffee and pigs (among other things). Follow her on Twitter at @tractors_coffee.