Seeing some of the season’s first snow on the corn leaves the other day had me reminiscing about the romance of being a young farm boy seeing my father — his hats ear-lappers down — pull on his insulated coveralls and yellow chore gloves. He was preparing to crawl aboard our Farmall Super M and hook onto our corn picker to hit the fields on similar cold and snowy October days of yore.
It happened that we had one of the only corn pickers on the road, giving Dad the chance to pick up a couple of extra dollars and neighborhood favors by doing some limited custom harvesting.
Little did I realize during my youngest years how challenging that was for him, wrapping it all around our own fall harvests and all that was involved with the daily chores on a Wisconsin farm. It would be years later when I realized the stresses he and the neighboring farmers were feeling about fighting the late-October chill and even snow to get the harvest all buttoned up before winter set in.
Perhaps such reality started sinking into my mind on one of the cold fall days when I talked Dad into allowing me to ride the wagon behind the corn picker. I had warm thoughts about the fun of the ripe cobs of corn being flung from the picker’s elevator-chute and onto the wagon — thoughts that turned to harsh coldness as a couple of the cobs slapped into my head and body.
Many times later in life took me onto the fields during the harvests, me being responsible for much more than taking up space on a hay rack-turned-corn-wagon.
Today, I raise a glass of chocolate milk in a toast to all of those ear-lappered folks are slipping into insulated coveralls and pulling yellow chore-gloves onto chilled fingers to finish this year’s harvest.
— Scott Schultz
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