Stinkweed

January 9, 2009 Dear Meg, Our farm sat in the center of a major flyway of migratory waterfowl. Some years the migration of ducks, geese, and Sand Hill cranes was so great the sky turned gray with birds traveling from their nesting grounds in the Arctic to their wintering grounds in the south. Often we could hear the birds before we saw them. While it was breathtaking to see thousands of birds on the wing, they were also a menace. The ducks were especially pesky. I was charged with the mission to ride through the fields on horseback and scare the ducks out of the swaths. It was such fun that I rarely took the time to saddle up. All I needed was a bridle and away we went. I flew up and down the windrows on my sorrel and white pinto pony screaming like a banshee and waving a snowy, white dishtowel. The ducks lifted ahead of me in an immense, dark, raucous sheet then circled and settled back on the swaths behind me. It was much like the Wave at a football game and was only a little more effective than the scarecrows. The birds came through every year, but some years it seemed as if there were more green-headed Mallard marauders than others. The geese were not as great a menace as the ducks. The cranes were pure pleasure. Even the rare, endangered, snow-white Whooping cranes occasionally flew past on their perilous journey from Canada to Texas. Their long, white necks were a perfect balance for their long, black legs. I did not realize how dangerously small their population was when Dad pointed them out, or I would have been more attentive. They looked like white Sand Hill cranes to my young, uninformed gaze so I did not understand why he got so excited. Ignorance is so annoying. When combining got underway, everything else stopped. It was total focus on getting the grain in the bin at its peak. Everything else could wait. For me, that meant occasionally missing school to drive grain trucks. I was twelve the first time I missed school to haul grain, and, because nothing got in the way of going to school, that was a really big deal. The next time I felt that grown up was when I voted the first time. Dad’s farm equipment was primitive compared to the machines used in farming today. By the time I was enlisted to help, he had moved from the world of the threshing machine or separator, which was stationary, to a pull-type combine. Gone were the teams of horses; enter tractors. There was no straight combining when farmers first moved from horsepower to tractor power. With straight combining, commonly practiced now, the combine has a sickle bar and reel built into the machine’s header that allows it to cut and thresh in a single operation. Harvest and haying increased everyone’s workload, but it may have been the greatest for Mom and other farmwomen. In addition to all the usual household tasks, milking cows, baking bread, and canning all the garden produce, she had five meals to prepare every day. Cereal and toast were not enough to get the day started during those labor-intensive times. Meat, eggs, toast, and spuds got the day off the ground. That would hold everyone until about ten o’clock when it was time for lunch. Sandwiches, coffee, and cookies or cake took the edge off until dinnertime at noon. Lunch again about four o’clock consisted of another round of sandwiches and dessert to keep the energy level up until supper was ready between six and seven o’clock. During combining, mom packed everything up in dishtowel-covered dishpans and delivered it to the field where we all sat in the stubble to dine with dirty hands and dust covered faces. Food never tasted so sweet. My job was to carry whatever Mom passed my direction and to do exactly what she said. Harvest was not the time for monkey business. On the farm, there was a miserable double standard for females, who also had to work outside, and I felt victimized by it when I was working in the fields with the men. I stacked bales, drove tractors, hauled grain … everything the men did … but, when we stopped at noon to eat, I had to help mom with the dishes while the men laid down on the kitchen floor, pulled their hats over their faces, and took a nap. As soon as the floor was swept, the men were ready to go back to work and I had to go with them. Neither Mom nor I got a nap. Grossly unfair labor practices! But, Miss Meagen, get used to it: the double standard lives on. Harvest brought other meaningful jobs my way. No more chasing ducks on horseback. This time it was serious. I ran the swather when the men had more pressing duties, but never on a school day. Only combining commanded such drastic action as missing school. Initially, each field had to be swathed before it could be picked up. I was allowed to swath the grain after Dad made the first round to get it set up. It was not too difficult to follow his original path around and around until the spiral petered out in the middle of the field. Tractors pulled the swathers, but later they were self-propelled. I was primarily in the tractor/swather era. The grain had to be cut at just the right time and only a seasoned farmer could detect that magic moment. The grain could not be too ripe or it would shell out from the swather reel when it was cut, but it had to be far enough along in hardness so it would not shrink and lose weight. It had to be dead ripe and dry before it would go through the combine, so it lay in the swaths for the final cure before it could be picked up. That was when it was most vulnerable to those bothersome ducks and a farmer’s worst enemy in the fall … untimely rain. Rain was great after the crop was in the bins. A well-timed autumn rain was always welcome because it started the moisture content in the soil for the next season, but, during harvest, rain was not what anyone wanted The welcome autumn rains did not get in the way of the final big chore before winter … butchering. Our primary meat source was pork because beef was a cash crop. It was not prudent to eat the profits. Dad shipped the calves to market on the railroad out of Hansboro in late October or early November. When the calves weighed about 700 pounds, it was time for them to go, and, when they were gone, he turned to the hogs. Dad raised a litter of pigs in the barn when I was about three years old. Normally, all the hogs lived in the pig barn in the pasture down by the coulee. He fenced off a hog pen in the back of the barn where he kept the sow and her piglets. Those cute little pigs were captivating as they scampered around rooting, snorting, and squealing. I could not resist the temptation to play with them so I climbed into the pen. Kittens and calves were fine to play with so why not little pigs? Dad was milking only a few stalls away when I made that near fatal decision. I picked up a little pig and it began to scream in fear. That alerted the old sow who did not take kindly to someone messing around with her young. She headed towards her distressed baby, ready to make things right, which would have meant the end of me. Dad heard the commotion and instinctively knew the whole story. In an instant, he cleared the fence, scooped me up, still clutching the little pig that continued to howl in terror, and faced the old sow ready to kill for her baby. He knocked the little pig out of my arms and kicked the sow in the head in one movement, which allowed just enough time to get back across the fence and away from a very angry mother hog. The memory of that outraged sow bearing down on me with cold, beady eyes and a quivering, gnashing snout runs through my mind as clear and vivid as if it had just happened. I wasn’t old enough to recognize how close I’d come to sure death, but I do remember knowing something very serious had just happened and I was scared. It seems the instincts of parents are the same for all creatures in the animal kingdom. When their young are threatened, they are ready to fight to the death for them. The sow came to the aid of her baby and Dad r