Pumpkins, mums, fall festivals, pumpkin spice everything, corn stalks, football, fall calves, and harvesting are the things of fall. We enjoy morning coffee on the deck knowing it will soon come to an end because winter will be upon us. The crisp air is a welcome break from the heat, but a foretelling of the cold that is soon to come.
Equipment is running all over the country bringing in the harvest. Farmers everywhere are working long hours and running ragged trying to get the crops in before bad weather would take it, or it falls on the ground.
Someone asked me what our fall traditions were: pumpkin patches, apple picking, trick or treating, or the like. I tried hard to keep from laughing. You see, our fall traditions include combining and fall calving while also trying to keep the rest of the cows out of the crops since the grass is drying up or has been eaten off.
It’s the culmination of a year of work of preparing the soil for planting, choosing the right seed, planting, fertilizing, spraying, and watching — hoping and praying for the right weather at the right time for favorable growing conditions. It’s feelings of elation or feelings of defeat as fields are harvested and yields are determined.
Fall means hours checking cows and watching new babies being born, watching them grow and learn to play with each other. It’s sunsets in the field and sunrises in the pastures. It’s cold sandwiches for lunch and supper. It’s laundry piled up more than normal, dishes hanging out in the sink because the dishwasher is full, and dirt scattered around the floors.
No, our fall traditions don’t involve most people’s traditional fall activities. Our fall traditions are like everything else, wrapped up in the production agriculture lifestyle — farming first. This is literally our livelihood, harvesting the crops at the right time, ensuring safe delivery of calves and preventing sickness in the older calves as the temperature goes up and down.
So many people, myself included, in agriculture have resented the farm at one point or another. We sacrifice so much for it, only to be attacked by special interest groups and people who just don’t understand what we do. It’s a hard and isolating lifestyle. If it makes you happy to go to a pumpkin patch for a couple hours on a Saturday morning, is not going to break your farm. I hope not anyways. Balance is such a funny word that gets thrown around, but there is no such a thing. There will never be an equilibrium where everything is perfectly measured out.
There is so much we do in the agriculture life that many don’t understand. We’ve heard it all: The crops will be fine in the field, come to the football game with me. The cows don’t need checked every night, come to my birthday party. You’re always working, why can’t you just go out this once with us?
What most don’t understand is what a fine line we walk. How when we do get a few hours off or quit early one night, the last thing we want is to go out. We’re exhausted — physically and mentally. We’re lacking sleep and need the rest knowing we’re not sleeping in the next morning. We will be up bright and early to check the cows, grease the combines, and dump the trucks from the night before.
With all that said, there’s also the mantra of YOLO (You Only Live Once). None of us get out of this life alive. If you want to go to the football game, go. If you want to go to a pumpkin patch or pick apples, go. What I’m learning after a decade of being married (can you tell I’m a slow learner), my husband is never going to think activities away from the farm are more intriguing than the things he can do on the farm. He will never voluntarily go to any activity and often refuses to go at all.
For other folks though, go if it’s what you want to do. Find a friend to go with or go alone. Some are energized by the hours in the combine and some are drained by it. If taking a couple hours on the weekend to go do something fun will keep you from resenting the farm, go do it. There will always, always, always be work to do. Sneak away for little pockets of time when you can.
Fall means different things to different people. My hope is that you soak in the moments, wherever those moments are. Life is short, life is precious and life is hard enough without us making it harder than it needs to be. Enjoy it.
Kelsey Pagel is a Kansas farmer. She grew up on a cow/calf and row crop operation and married into another. Kelsey and her Forever (Matt) farm and ranch with his family where they are living their dream and loving most of the moments.
