Seeding can be the most stressful part of the production cycle. So many details must be attended and a lot of activities have to line up before the seeding outfit is rolling down the field.
This goes beyond running the sprayer, treating seed, buying inoculant and crop protection products, hauling water and figuring out quirks in the GPS guidance. More credit should be heaped on those behind the scenes that keep the frontline troops fighting the battles.
Many of those tasks fall upon the women in the farm family. In these times of political correctness, you’re not supposed to assign roles to the sexes, but in the vast majority of cases, the people running the seeders and sprayers are men. The people behind the scenes are often women.
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Whoever fills this back-up role, they often don’t get enough credit.
We run a farm operation without a full time female influence. My long-suffering spouse toils to get the cabin trailers ready for habitation in the spring and cooks a large number of microwavable meals, but she isn’t at the farm full time.
Most of us grew up in a traditional family setting where you never had to worry about a whole host of messy necessity of life details during busy seasons. You don’t really appreciate how much work is involved until you have to do it yourself.
Meals were always prepared and you never had to find time to buy your own groceries. The dishes were always done and you never ran out of milk, bread or drinking water.
With two to four guys going various directions trying to keep the seeding operation moving forward, it’s amazing how fast dirty dishes pile up. Eventually they get washed and put away, but it’s no small task particularly if left to the end of a long day.
Laundry doesn’t magically do itself either and there’s no way to stay clean while working around equipment. In our case, we typically haul laundry into town and hire someone to wash it. The farm isn’t equipped with wash facilities. But it’s still another task that takes time and doesn’t magically happen.
Thankfully, my spouse is the bookkeeper and she keeps on top of that even when she isn’t at the farm. If it was my task, there would be a tremendous backlog of entries before seeding was finished.
People who don’t run the seeder or sprayer and who don’t fix equipment when it breaks down still often serve as couriers to get people and equipment from the yard to the field or from one field to another. And they often end up running for parts and supplies.
For people with young kids, parenting duties fall even more heavily on the mom during seeding. The kids may only catch fleeting glimpses of their dad. He’s out of the house long before they wake up and he may not be back to the house until after their bedtime.
So if you think you’re busy at seeding time as you try to cope with the myriad of details to keep the seeder going down the field, appreciate any behind-the-scenes backup help you may be receiving.
Don’t take meals, laundry, courier service, bookkeeping and child rearing for granted. The seeder doesn’t run if the operators don’t eat and there are only so many waking hours in a day to try to accomplish all the work. Credit the work behind the main action.
