Tag: Soil

Snowless Daydreams

The studio headphones were gently protecting my mind from the cold morning air outside and from the cold realities of sounds that might distract me from the work at hand. Through them were flowing the calming sound of broadcast partner and boss Bob’s voice as he told many people across Wisconsin’s rural countryside that the cold December morning again included no snow in the day’s weather forecast.

His secret was ours within the filtered sound of my headphones and those hearty thousands who rise so early – some to work at everything from morning farm chores to driving a truck; some to sit with their morning cup of coffee; some to hear a broadcast legend and his writer-turned-broadcaster sidekick do their morning radio schtick. And somewhere, I knew that morning, could be a young farm boy listening to his family’s barn radio and praying Bob’s take on the weather forecast was wrong.

That boy, I knew, was hoping for a bunch of snow to fall that day and others between then and Christmas Eve.

“Some people are talking about the possibility of an open winter – no snow – but we have plenty of time,” I heard through my headphones. “It’s not like it’s been terribly cold yet.”

We chatted a little more about the still-uncovered soil and the importance of there being snow-cover to protect farms’ alfalfa and all sorts of other plants when winter’s coldest days settle into our land’s bones.

Secretly, my mind drifted to that little boy listening to us; I drifted back many years.

I heard Bob’s voice in my headphones, him introducing a song before I was to breathe some of the day’s news into my microphone.

“It’s that time of the year: The big guy will be visiting soon,” I heard him saying in my headphones as the music started.

“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why.”

There was a little farm boy on a cold December night – that boy’s young heart and spirit excited about the chance of working in the family’s dairy barn. It was the work the adults and older siblings were doing, and he couldn’t wait to be doing all of it, no matter whether that excitement would last into future years.

“Santa Claus is coming to town.”

The boy was listening to the barn radio playing the song, that one spilling early morning holiday joy into my headphones. And, he stood there in the old Veefkind dairy barn to stare out at the sky and wonder how there could be no snow so deep into December.

“He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, he’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”

The old wood on the barn door the boy leaned his shoulder against had been worn smooth by many years of touch by cattle, humans and weather. The boy, deep in thought, scraped a fingernail along the many pointed nails someone in his family had clenched to hold the diagonal boards in place.

“Santa Claus is coming to town.”

He stared across the darkened farmyard, his eyes through the dull yardlight focusing on the roof of the old farmhouse. That house and its roof had known many Christmases since the boy’s great-great grandfather built it during the mid-1800s; it was about to know another.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”

The roof stood bare. The boy was sure that wasn’t a good thing; his father certainly wouldn’t be happy with anyone parking a sleigh and reindeer on the roof, the same way his father voiced unhappiness when the boy would throw his baseball onto the roof in a one-boy game of catch. How would any gifts be delivered to the house?

“You better watch out, you better not cry, you’d better not pout, I’m telling you why.”

They dejected boy’s head tilted over and joined his shoulder in the lean into that old barn door. December had brought no snow which, to him, that Christmas Eve night was of great importance.

“Santa Claus is coming to town.”

A booming voice startled the boy into the moment. It was his father, sternly demanding that if the boy was going to be in the barn it wasn’t to simply take up space – that the calves weren’t being fed by the boy leaning against the barn door and gawking into nothingness. The boy pulled his stocking cap down to cover his ears, them warmed and reddened by embarrassment that he’d been caught in daydreams about something as childish as Santa Claus, combined with a measure of anger at life demanding he work while there was serious daydreaming to be done.

“And Scott, what’s that big headline again in today’s news?”

Bob’s sure and smooth voice was coming through my studio headphones with that question, catching me unprepared because I’d been daydreaming about that cold and snowless childhood moment from so many years ago. I verbally stumbled around a bit, and started with the delivery of a news story much different than the one Bob was leading me into.

I realized my error a few words into the story, and caught and corrected myself.

Bob looked at me from across the studio and our microphones; he laughed.

“I wondered whether you were going to sleep over there, or what,” came his words through my headphones.

I reached up and adjusted my headphones to assure they were fully covering my ears, them warmed and reddened by embarrassment that I’d been caught in daydreams about something as childish as Santa Claus combined with a measure of anger at life demanding he work while there was serious daydreaming to be done.

— Scott Schultz

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Those of the Soil

Dad’s eyes were closed as though he was in a calm sleep as he lay that evening in the hospice facility’s bed, him finishing the last of his mortal days. I considered how it was one of the few times he’d really looked calm in a few weeks — the pain from the cancer gnawing his bones mixed with pain-killing narcotics and the truth that death was so near feeding him a steady stream of uneasiness.

And then, his right hand lifted from its resting place on the thinned bones of his rising and falling chest, which for most of his life was covered with muscle and sinew of a lifetime of farm work. That hand’s work-gnarled fingers made a somewhat familiar motion, and then his hand started moving as though it was pulling a handle for a short distance up and down.

I watched in wonder for a while until the familiarity of that motion reminded me about what he was doing: He was working the ratchet of a socket, the depths of his subconscious apparently pulling forward some sort of memory of working on one piece or another of our farm’s machinery.

It wasn’t the first time such a memory had roused through the conscious of his unconscious condition. Early that week, in other phase of sleep, he’d asked my oldest brother to harness the team of work horses – work horses that hadn’t walked across our farmyard and fields for more than 50 years.

Those moments came to mind while I was sitting out and contemplating the land on and around our farm on Eimon Ridge. It was World Soil Day that day of my contemplations, and I’d gotten to thinking about different ways folks have treated and mistreated the soil since us two-legged critters crawled out of the water and started treading upon this old terra firma. Most of all, though, I thought about how that soil can change a person’s life if that person is ready and willing to recognize and understand how we’re all really part of that soil, like it or not, and how the soil really is part of us, like it or not.

The soil, more than any other thing that can get into your system, is powerful once you realize it. Watching my father’s mind take him through the day’s farm work even while he was lying on his death bed was a good enough indicator to convince me of that reality.

Folks get other stuff in their blood, of course, and that’s all fine and cute. Some have the sea soaked into their beings; some have flying in their systems. Having spent the better part of my life writing for newspapers, old-timer newspaper folks have told me I have printer’s ink flowing in my veins; I’m proud to accept that claim.

But oh, that land; oh that soil.

We are of the soil; the soil is of us.

I considered how my old bones won’t be returned to a drum of printer’s ink when I’m fully used up and I get called from this life. Instead, it will be that beautiful soil out there that will be absorbing my mortal bones, hide and all.

We always go back to the soil.

Some really smart folks have been pointing out to me during the past decades of my life that there are many people who are a few generations removed from the land. They’re referring to those people who don’t know how food is produced and might even think that it’s somehow made in the aisles of a fancy grocery store. Those smart folks, I suppose, are right in that it would be better if those far-removed from the land would return every now and again to get a little silt loam lodged beneath their fingernails and in their nostrils.

That seems like a grand idea mostly because maybe the people will better appreciate what it takes to feed the hungry masses of critters biped, quadruped, winged and swimming. And then, maybe they’ll push for more care of the soil on which they’re plodding along, assuring that it doesn’t erode and that its caretakers take special measures to assure that all the good and natural biological stuff that makes the soil tick is properly maintained.

On the other hand, though, I figure we might as well simply realize that nobody who lives is any more than the next step away from the grand soil. A soul can deny it as much as wanted, but we can find ourselves headed back to that soil at any minute.

Those of us who’ve had good doses of soil running in our systems throughout our lives know what it’s like to understand the soil’s true goodness – that it isn’t there for our convenience and that it’s only been temporarily loaned its attention. We understand that it was there for a long time before we ever were around and that it will be there for long after we’re gone.

Those of us who are of the soil know all too well that there’s no leaving the land; we always manage to make our way back to work on it or to simply spend our time fawning over it.

Those of the soil will understand why their father is doing farm work while lying on his death bed.

— Scott Schultz

Pick, Pick, Pick, Pickin’ Through the Days

Sometime later during his life, my father quipped that people who raise large patches of cucumbers or tomatoes simply are being cruel to their children.

“People shouldn’t have kids just to pick their damned cucumbers,” he said.

I’m still unsure about what brought that statement out of him, or what memories of his childhood were passing through his mind. It was nowhere near a growing season when he uttered those words.

I’m even more unsure about how he seemed to have forgotten the demands he and my mother put upon me and my siblings where a myriad of farm work was concerned. We might not have had any cucumbers beyond those which our mother managed in her garden, but our diverse old family dairy farm had plenty of daily work put upon us on that farm.

All of that came to mind the other day as I straightened my aching old back after picking a few cucumbers and tomatoes from the gardens I keep at our small farm along Eimon Ridge in Wisconsin’s northern Driftless Area.

Moments earlier, I’d considered the contrasts between pulling spring weeds in a garden and picking cucumbers and tomatoes later in the summer. Each brings satisfaction in its own way, I supposed, but both become somewhat tedious after doing it for a while – a notion especially true after doing the pulling and picking every day for several weeks.

A friend has been raising an acre or two of cucumbers every summer for quite a few years at his place down the road near Independence. He’s gone as far as not letting his wife know how many mounds of cucumbers he’s planted in a year; I’ve graciously found acceptable excuses to not accept his invitations to join what he called fun in picking those cukes.

Even the healthful excitement of a well-grown garden can get old.

None of that even brings into play those times when a well-meaning fellow totes into the old farmhouse too many cucumbers or tomatoes from those daily pickings, particularly when the fellow depends too much – admittedly exclusively, in my case – on his wife to process that bounty.

Maybe a then-young lad whose family had a dairy farm up the road from my family’s farm at Veefkind was much more clear in his cucumber-and-tomato thoughts than I’ll ever be.

That lad, Steven, was 12 years old when he happened into our home farm’s machine shed, the farm by then having been taken over by one of my brothers. That day, I’d stopped by on my travels to say hello to that brother as he did some light work in the shed, Steven quietly lingering to catch our discussions about the day’s news.

My father, returning from his daily morning coffee visit to Harley and Elaine’s Bar and Grill down at Chili, saw my truck in the farmyard and stopped to take one of his late-life stabs at trying to impart some of his wisdom into our craniums.

Dad stopped in one of the shed’s big doorways and momentarily studied Steven.

“Hey Steven,” Dad said. “I just drove past your place, and it looks like somebody dropped a disc harrow into that couple acres of cucumbers your dad planted.”

“Yep,” Steven replied, his chest expanding with the measure of pride a 12-year-old might get when he’s about to tell an old neighbor that he’d hitched the disc harrow onto one of their tractors, drove it across the road and then chopped into oblivion the three-plus acres of cucumbers that were at the peak of production. “I did that.”

“Oh,” Dad replied, stepping farther into the shed.

And then, Dad stopped and turned, brow creased, to again look at Steven.

“Wait. Isn’t your dad visiting relatives in Ohio his week?

“Yep, our folks are in Ohio,” Steven responded, his back seeming to straighten in a measure of defiance.

My father’s next question had to be asked.

“Does your dad know you dropped that disc harrow onto the cucumbers?”

Steven didn’t flinch with his answer.

“Nope, and I don’t care,” the young cucumber-destroyer said. “Every day it’s pick, pick, pick, pick pickles. Well, I ain’t going to be pickin’ any more pickles this year.”

There was a pause in the air before all in the shed burst into laughter – Steven’s a laugh containing some villainous satisfaction; a bit of amazement in the laughter coming from my father and brother.

I chuckled to myself about that old story the other day as I rubbed my lower back before reaching for more of my gardens’ summer bounty. An involuntary groan came from deep within my old joints as I bent, my father’s words about cucumbers and tomatoes seeming to have ridden those groans into the steamy summer air.

There would be no way I’d ever destroy something as beautiful as what I was harvesting from those gardens – that I knew as certainty. But the tone of Steven’s laughter echoed in my memory.

Perhaps it was of benefit right then that I don’t have a disc harrow on our little farm.

I do, however, have a large pull-behind rotary bush mower in the shed; it wouldn’t take that long to hook onto the tractor….

— Scott Schultz

An Overdue Visit from Above

The sky came calling late the other night, and I accepted the chance to have an old farmhouse front-porch visit.

It was a long while since we’d had such a grand summer visit. There had been pauses and looks into the darkness to gaze at the moon for a while or to see whether I could catch sight of a meteorite slashing through this old planet’s outer atmosphere.

I’d looked at the stars but for some reason this summer hadn’t taken the real time to count them.

My eyes had gotten a decent eyeful of the sky earlier that night, a couple of hours before it came calling. The Milky Way lit the darkness above, with other stars twinkling their siren sensuality to beckon me to gaze upon them and spend the night with them lighting my primal self.

The waning crescent moon that night reflected only enough of the sun’s distant light to make me aware it was there – though I paused long enough to smile at my mind’s picture of my love sitting in its curve and teasing me with her swinging leg.

There were things to do inside the house. And, though it was August and the air and calendar still said it was summer’s dog days, the day’s toils reminded me how autumn had crept upon my personal being; I was worn out and opted for a rest in a favorite recliner.

But then a far-away rumble caught my attention.

And then, another.

Though facing into the house, I sensed lights flashing behind me, the lightning-bug clouds flickering above. I turned to look up to see how the clouds had come between me and the life far beyond our planet.

Flashing.

Flashing.

Nearer.

Nearer.

Rumbles, and then more defined roars of thunder kettle-drumming nearer as the clouds thickened.

In the rumbling the sky was asking me to stay outside and visit for a while. It promised to tell me its stories if I heeded its request.

I obliged, closing the farmhouse’s door and taking a seat on a Leopold bench parked under a west-side eave.

The misguided relaxation I thought I’d have in the recliner quickly started on that hard bench, the tales the sky told in flashes of lightning that brightened the clouds’ many shades – it rotating electrically charged jolts of daylight with the night’s deep darkness.

My best moments of relaxation have happened during such visits with the sky, I remembered. How could I have forgotten and allowed so many chances for visits to escape?

The clouds and the show within eventually stretched fully over our small farm’s soil, us becoming more comfortable and hospitable as the moments passed.

I’m not certain what in the atmosphere finally made it happen, but the time finally arrived when the sky started to cry – in happiness about our visit, I think.

The tears came slowly, at first, small spatters landing on the August land’s summer-toughened soil. The tears eventually grew and my old friend above let out a full-on deluge of tearful happiness.

The soil seemed to be in special need of accepting that night’s crying sky. I listened and watched as the teardrops massaged into the soil, easing its burdens.

It worked for the soil, so I stepped from beneath the eave and turned my face to the sky to give my full self over to those tears. They seeped into my spirit; they seeped into my soul, cleaning any darkness from the depths of my being.

And then, the crying stopped.

The sky paused in the chatter of its lightning and thunder and tears, the clouds moving along their way for other visits while the old, familiar Milky Way and stars reappeared.

It’s sometimes difficult to remember that, as time passes so quickly, we don’t get enough chances to have good visits with the sky during a lifetime. I certainly had been guilty of that very misdemeanor. Thankfully, though, the sky asked me for that night’s visit, and I’m happy I obliged.

The visit was long, and without either speaking a word exchanged stories through most of that night.

The time came when we had to bid goodnight to each other. But as we did, the sky made me promise that our visits would be more frequent.

It was a simple request; it was a noble request.

I pledged that I would, and I fully intend to keep that promise.

— Scott Schultz

The Milkhouse Morning Light

The milkhouse window’s glow was something I noticed a few years ago; it’s become an early morning companion.

The glow in that east-facing window first caught my eye when I stepped outside to do a pre-dawn appraisal of the farmyard. Its appearance brought concern about whether I’d left a light on in the milkhouse or whether there was a fire somewhere in the east.

A glance to the east started to put my mind at ease, but not without question. Logic was telling me the glow was a reflection of the morning’s first orange-yellow light peeking over the east horizon, but something in my mind initially didn’t allow me to believe such a dim glow growing in the east could be casting such a bright reflection into the window.

I wondered again whether I’d left a milkhouse light burning the previous day. And then, the brightening glow on the window reassured me that it truly was the morning light’s reflection of that growing sunlight.

The reflected light shined into my being and made my heart glow with a little extra warmth on that cool spring morning.

Such joy has been mine to have a means here on this ridge to see the sunrise whether I’m facing east or – thanks to that milkhouse window – facing west.

The window’s sunrise glow most often greets me while I’m working in the farm’s office on the southwest corner of our old farmhouse.

When the glow appears, I most often wait a couple minutes for it to brighten a bit, and then turn to look to the east as best I can through the office’s south-facing window. Each morning’s opening is a little different than the others on that east horizon, this time of the year making me walk to one of the house’s east windows to get a better view – the earth’s May tilt being such that the best view is farther north than during other times of the year.

No matter the splendor in the east, though, most days I take a few extra glances at the milkhouse window to watch the colors shift and mix in it. And, I watch those colors spread like oil on water, first small on the window and then sprawling to cover the full window and then the entire milkhouse wall and then the barn and adjacent shed.

I figure that I’ll someday mosey into the milkhouse when the morning glow arrives on that window, to have a look out from the inside if only to see what the window sees on that east horizon.

I’d be sure to note what light is cast across the milkhouse’s inner sanctum, wondering whether it might bring to light visions of Erling Eimon or his ancestors working the bulk-tank, milk-cans and milking equipment there in that place made holy in communion with the soil the Eimon family homesteaded.

I’d be sure to note what light is cast on that spot, wondering whether it might bring to light visions of earlier people who borrowed this land before the Eimons or the Larsons or my wife and I borrowed this spot on the ridge.

I fear, though, that the window also would glisten light onto tears the milkhouse cries for memories of what had been – that of bustling activities of cows and people; tears of toil and loss; tears of successes and joys.

There are so many reasons that mornings shining in that milkhouse window are so important to a soul such as mine – reasons that go far beyond the simple beauty and joys found in another sunrise over the grasses, trees and water of such breathtaking rural countryside.

Those who’ve had fortune to know dairy farms in their purest forms understand how the milkhouse is the belly of a farm. It’s the place where the farm’s controls live, and the place to where the white-gold milk flows. It’s the place where meetings are held, elbows leaned on bulk-tank lids to negotiate sales or to spend a good visit with a neighbor.

The milkhouse is the farm’s central gathering place for all a dairy farm was, is, and will be. It’s the farm’s soul and holds the land’s spirit.

Maybe the real reason I occasionally hesitate when I see the milkhouse window’s morning glow isn’t because I’m wondering whether I’d forgotten to flip a light-switch.

Maybe the real reason is because I learned in my youngest age about how the milkhouse is that soul and holds that spirit.

Maybe, in that milkhouse window, I’m seeing the farm’s aura starting to shine for yet another day.

It all makes me look forward to tomorrow, when the milkhouse window glow shines life into me and asks me to join that new day.

— Scott Schultz

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