I stare out the window and, as a writer with a poetic persuasion, try to come up with a unique metaphor for the swath.
We’re into the wheat now. We began with peas; canola, barley, and oats remain. Am I really here, operating this Case International 1666 combine? Are these my hands controlling the speed and the header? I don’t quite believe this.
My first time out, after a test run with Michell Heidecker, who with her husband, Lyal, runs Triple H Farm near Middle Lake, Sask., I wasn’t sure if I was in a dream or a painting. Dust and tree cotton floated across my vision, hawks were continually lifting off the bristled land, and in the distance, the smooth blue surface of Middle Lake – the actual lake, not the village in which I’ve lived for the last two years – offered textural and colour contrast to the acres of swathed fields.
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But as a novice on this machine, I don’t spend too much time daydreaming. The truth is, I could use more than a single pair of eyes for this job. I have one eye on the power monitor, another on the pins that show header height. I watch for rocks. I check on the chaff in my rearview mirror, and intermittently observe the grain as it fills the hopper, ensuring that the separator is doing its job, and that the hopper’s not going to overflow.
I try not to overcorrect my steering and thus leave a wavy line for Taryn Heidecker, 15, who will bale the straw later. I watch for the other combine, almost a twin to this one, with its Saskatchewan flag waving back at my Canadian counterpart.
I listen to how the whole thing works, and if I hear the machinery protest, a sound not unlike the low warning growl of a large dog, I slow down. Sometimes I have to inch through a swath. Sometimes my speed can hit 2.8, or three, where the swaths are particularly thin.
I remain alert, but after a few rounds I feel my body relax a little. I turn on the radio: CBC is good for several rounds, then I tune into the Melfort station and I’m serenaded by the Eagles, Gordon Lightfoot and other 1970s soft rock artists. It’s absolutely perfect.
Occasionally not having much time to make a decision is a good thing. When Lyal asked if I wanted to help with harvest, I decided within seconds that yes, although it was entirely new to me, I very much did.
Given days to consider, I’m certain I would have chickened out. And I did have experience, of a sort. I once worked in an echinacea field. A little lifetime ago, I spent three years behind the till at the Co-op Farm Centre. I’ve long been a gardener. Did it count that my sister married a farmer?
I added up my paltry inventory. It wasn’t much, but hopefully I’d prove a quick study.
I adore the terminology. “We’re going to peel this crop off next,” Lyal says. Even the words themselves – feeder, auger, separator, hopper, rotor – possess an aurally pleasant heft.
Lyal checks the sieves and adjusts the rotor. “There, go make some dust,” he says. And I do.
But after several hours, the feeder chooses not to run. It rolls for a few seconds, then stops. It’s teasing me. I don’t want to call for help, though there’s a cellphone and the Heideckers’ instructions: If you have any concerns, call.
I try the feeder again. Same thing. I let it rest, try again. At last. It’s only been five minutes, but I quickly learn that time has a different value during harvest. A five minute delay feels more like 30.
Everything runs smoothly until after the hopper is emptied again. There’s no way the feeder wants to co-operate this time, so I call.
“It did this a few years ago,” Lyal says, and quads back to his shop. He returns with what looks like, and perhaps is, an extended coat hanger. While he’s addressing the problem, the phone rings and the other driver, Kevin, says his header has a flat tire. Lyal shows me where to plug in a wire if the feeder proves stubborn again, then he’s off.
By my third field I feel some degree of confidence, but I’m miles from being even half as adept as Michell. Born and raised in Vancouver, she works side by side with Lyal, and to see that mother of four take a flawless curve on the combine or empty the grain truck or test grain, is a wonder to my apprenticing eyes.
And there’s something else I’m learning: how the children pitch in, and don’t complain, and make it all seem joyful.
Today they’re in the potato field. There will be a potato pancake feast tonight. The kids make meals and tend the chickens. They weed and pick vegetables and care for their 4-H steers. How different their lives from that of my now grown offspring.
I am beginning to love the way the combine’s shadow chases it, and how, when I turn a corner, the light changes so significantly it’s like a brand new day. How peas shooting into the hopper sound like high-powered popcorn.
I love cucumber sandwiches and homemade cookies delivered to the field in a brown paper bag. I love the hum of it all, and the heat on my arms and back.
I don’t have a metaphor for the swaths. You know they are golden. You know how the light catches the kernels and makes them dazzle. The swaths are what they are. They are swaths, and that is enough. Harvest is a kind of a poetry.
