Iron Dreams & Human Thanks
When Machines Meet Mercy
Many Thanks
Patience looks as if it’ll pay the bills this year. It’s been around three weeks since snow mucked up our corn party.
The dirt is finally greying off.
We’re going to get a window.
When things look impossible, somebody’s gotta step up and be Cleddus Snow when the Bandit has his moment of doubt.
That somebody is me.
I try to be the voice of reason, not to let emotions take over and corrupt the decision-making process.
Stay rational.
Don’t freak out.
It’s not always easy.
Some guys blow a gasket when the elevator flubs up. I once watched an employer berate a young intern for transposing numbers on his grain check.
Treated this poor girl like she was the village punching bag. When she started crying, I was so embarrassed I did one of those quiet slide-out-the-door projects so I could sit in his pickup to scroll Linkedin for new job openings.
I couldn’t help but wonder if a minor accounting error sends this guy into a verbally abusive uproar; how will he be in October when we’re kneeling in the mud, battling a seized bearing?
How will he act when facing a real challenge, not just a minor inconvenience?
I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.
My best decision was to peel out of that clown’s farm in exchange for a pay cut. It was the day I decided to stop putting up with angry people’s insecurities, and I had never felt more powerful.
I’m pretty sure my twenty-year-old Lexus smiled with me back to Fargo.
No amount of money is worth answering to a narcissist with a shoulder chip.
Sometimes, you know early on when a relationship is doomed to fail, though you may not realize it. It’s hard to pinpoint it, but some unsettled feeling in your gut tells you to run.
Get out of this place before the misery gets you.
It gives me the willies when thinking about what life would be like had I violated my morals and kept the better-paying gig.
As we wind down another crop season and the stress levels decline, it’s a good time to remember to be grateful. Thank the guys and gals who help you get everything done.
Show your hired hands appreciation.
I’m not talking about taking the car dealership approach to employee appreciation by throwing a pizza party for your sales team because your store made record profits again this month.
Don’t alienate your employees.
Instead, compliment them. Even if they don’t have a ton of strong suits, find something good they do and TELL THEM about it. Let them know they are essential and that you couldn’t do it without them.
Appreciate them.
It doesn’t cost much. People want to know they have value, but that doesn’t mean their paycheck has to increase.
Nobody is asking for a handout here.
Thankfulness.
Appreciation.
Gratitude.
It’s not always about a bigger payday. Showing appreciation to those you depend on will go a long way.
People appreciate your appreciation. And they show it by sticking around, showing up on time, and giving you their best.
You get what you put out into the world.
It doesn’t cost anything to be nice.
The best part? Being nice pays you back.
I don’t care what business you’re in.
You’ll never find a better ROI.
New Holland displayed a new threshing machine at Agritechnica, Germany’s version of the Big Iron Farm Show, and the New Holland lovers are so excited they are replacing the milk in their Lucky Charms with Goldschlager.
Aside from roaring sex appeal, the CR11 harvester has specs that Sir Big Bud himself wouldn’t sneeze at.
Seven hundred and seventy-five horsepowers powering twin, twenty-four-inch rotors.
Are you kidding me?
How Can This Be Legal?
The grain tank on this monster is a whopping TWENTY-THOUSAND liter. How much is that in American dollars, you ask?
Don’t feel silly. Thanks to our reluctance to adopt the metric system and rename the quarter-pounder with cheese, I had to ask Google myself.
When John Deere released its 9600 combines in the late eighties, I remember thinking, this is nuts.
How can anything top this?
Guys older than me say the same about the 760 Massey Ferguson.
I’m sure their pappies felt like ants next to a John Deere 95.
On and On
I used to wonder how far it can go.
Equipment can only get so big, right?
The guys with gold-plated members at the New Holland factory are testing that theory.
With a genetic disposition to John Deere, I’ve never much cared for the yellow and blue. It’s not racism. A feller sticks with what he grew up with; that stuff was always green for me.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best.
Red, green, yellow, or blue. It doesn’t matter to me as long as it works for you…
That said…I want to run this bad boy, even if it does weigh more than a Panamanian ship.
If any of those gold-membered engineers at the CNH factory are reading this, we still have a hundred and forty acres of corn left and will never say no to a demo.
Let’s see what Goldilocks and her white-lettered skins can do.
A few tractors crawled out of hibernation this week to catch up on last-minute fieldwork. The November air surprised most folks and turned pleasant.
We don’t see many years like this.
What a treat.
Last year, it snowed less than ten days into November, and that was it. The snow stuck around for the next six months.
We clocked more miles going backward, blowing snow last winter, than driving forward on the highway.
Gross.
This year seemed like a repeat until Nature Mama caught us off guard and sent sunshine and the upper 50s our way.
2006 was similar. I remember the pumpkin (8030 Allis Chalmers) buried under a foot of snow in the middle of October while we still had beets in the ground.
After shutting down for a couple of weeks, things shaped up. We spread fertilizer and worked ground until Thanksgiving that year.
Though I haven’t seen it all, after forty years, not many things shock me.
2023 and the challenges it delivered are no different.
Memory Rolodex
I remember numbers, dates, and times.
It’s not something I chose, but rather just how I’m wired.
On a rainy October day during the 2008 financial crisis, I remember selling my last bit of John Deere stock as it dipped into the 30s per share.
We thought the world was ending.
Pure panic.
I threw in the towel when I should’ve been shoveling Deere stock off the ground.
We don’t know what’s coming.
Can’t stop it.
The best we can do is adapt.
Live and Learn
We may never know what’s coming, but we can look at where we’ve been to get an idea of where we’re going.
There are some years I can remember finishing up the sugarbeet harvest in seven days and concluding everything early enough to put away all the equipment before Halloween.
I can’t put a time stamp on any of those years. Remembering the tough years when every inch and yard felt like an endless battle is much easier.
The years like 2019, where it rains like we’re in a Vietnamese jungle, forcing many to abandon the best crops they’d ever had.
Or 2012, when we dug beets until they carved the turkey on Thanksgiving.
It’s not only the hard years I remember but the strange ones, too.
During one February in 2000, I worked uptown in seventy-degree weather, gassing up people’s cars in just a t-shirt.
2023 will stick with me.
We went from flood and snowbanks to drought and dust, all in May. Half the crop didn’t come out of the ground until the fourth of July. We got a second round of snowbanks before we were done.
Like in 2006, we will stretch the fieldwork until Turkey Day again.
That’s what I love about this farming business.
It never gets old because even though many years are similar, we rarely see the same thing twice.
In our business and boxes of chocolate, you never know what you’ll get.
Good and bad, I’m grateful for it all.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’ll catch you on the flip side.
Not 5-Day... that should be T-Day.
Thanks, Adam. Love your style (of writing). I especially like your look back over good times, and bad. Have a great 5-Day! Phil