Precious memories of the Kansas wheat harvest as time spins ever onward
Each year, Kansas farmers go out to harvest their wheat crops. (Jill Hummels for Kansas Reflector)
My high school class from South Haven has a group text where we share things going all the way back to a time when the world was so different than is the case today.
Yes, that was longer ago than all of us probably want to admit, and my classmates and I have certainly been around the blocks of life between then, and now. I am often reminded of a classic Jim Croce song, 'Photographs and Memories,' when I think of our group.
Recently, one of my classmates posted that he was going to retire from farming and that this would be his last wheat harvest. I remarked that the moment was most likely going to be bittersweet. His decision caused me to think about some of the things that shape us and guide us through the inevitable challenges of life.
When the time came for me to go to college (the University of Kansas), and then on to law school, leading up to the start of my career as a Wall Street lawyer and investment banker, I made a vow to my parents. I promised that in addition to normal periodic visits for the various holidays during the year, I would always return for the wheat harvest.
And so I did. One day, it was the pinstriped suit in New York. The next day it was overalls and a John Deere cap.
I spent that time on a John Deere model 95 combine with a 16 foot header. Air conditioned? Of course — there was nothing like that 20 mph hot wind out of the southwest coating me with chaff. GPS guidance? Hell, yes. My left eye and my right eye could keep a pretty straight line in our fields on the family farm. We harvested around 50 acres on a good day, and my dad would take the wheat to the elevator in Rome with his 1950 Chevy truck, filled to the gills with about 200 bushels.
None of this was work. It was pure joy. My colleagues at the law firm no doubt wondered why on God's green earth I would want to leave a climate-controlled office, and a pretty comfortable lifestyle, for the heat and dust of a Kansas wheat field.
The answer was simple. It was coming home. Those memories will remain with me forever. Now, we harvest wheat fields on other farms that stretch to the horizon, and then some. Now, we sit in air-conditioned cabs and use GPS mapping to guide us through the fields. But what remains unchanged is the connection to the land. It is a source of comfort, especially in troubled times.
There are some lines in a great Van Morrison song, 'Someone Like You,' where he talks about being 'up and down the highway in all kinds of foreign lands,' and being 'all around the world marching to the beat of a different drum.' Those words fit me pretty well.
That said, my heart has always been in those Kansas wheat fields, and they help me to have a perspective on today's world. That connection to the land is a bond that will never be broken.
Ben Palen is a Kansas native and a fifth-generation farmer and agriculture consultant in Colorado and Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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