Breaking Ground

When Farmers Finally Face the Dark

Everything Will Be OK

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

I’m a pretty nostalgic son of a nutcracker.

Do any of you remember OK Soda?

I know some of you do, ahem, Punky.

For those of you who don’t, either because you’re too young, too old, or damaged your brain banging your head against the stage at Woodstock 94, here’s a lil’ 90s refresher for you’s:

The sons of bees at Coca-Cola caught on to the grunge scene in 1993 and produced a soda they claimed tasted like “carbonated tree sap” and advertised it to nihilistic Gen Xers with messages like:

• What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?

• OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.

• There is no real secret to feeling OK.

It’s not hard to believe such a nihilistic message failed to catch on, even to people into needles, plaid shirts and grunge music. OK stayed on the shelves for only seven months before Coca-Cola yanked it, focusing instead on silly things like Tab, Mr. Pibb, and Surge.

Still, it was a big deal to us small-town boys who hadn’t even seen the movie Speed yet.

And now it’s nothing but a memory.

As obscure 90s country group The Mavericks crooned, “Oh, What a cryin’ shame.” Great, now that’s stuck in my head for the next seven hours.

OK Soda even had an eight-hundred number (1-800-I-FEEL-OK) that we called almost daily from the payphone next to the local news outlet to share our OK stories.

I look back on all of this like it was the greatest thing since sliced pineapple when, in reality, it was somewhere close to OK.

Where on Earth was I going with this?

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Oh yeah, the destruction of the farm economy and the great negativity flood of 2024.

How could I forget?

It’d be nice if the cola lords resurrected OK Soda because it seems folks need to be reminded that it’s going to be OK, especially Ag X (formerly known as Ag Twitter), where people are melting down this week.

It rained in Brazil, the grain markets got monkey-hammered, and the Boomer Generation is apparently ruining our lives while some guy struggles to find a Bluetooth garage door opener that works with his iPhone.

First-world problems.

Good grief. Calm your ta-ta’s.

It’s going to be OK.

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I used to swim in the same negative sea as the rest of these clowns, but I found a way to get out of it…LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT!

Sittin’ in the classroom thinkin’ it’s a drag…

Wait, neither Motley Crue nor Brownsville Station’s Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room applies here. Erase, erase, erase.

I promise I’ll get to my point. Pinky swear.

Wait, can we still pinky-swear in 2024? I have a hard time keeping up with the political correctness of the day.

If I offended anybody, I apologize with the transparent sincerity of Tucker Carlson.

Anyhoo, back to negativity. It’s everywhere and will swallow us whole if we let it, especially if you’re like me and spend too many minutes on social medias.

Negativity is a tractor beam, but you can’t let it suck you in.

Think about the crap you’ve made it through. Droughts. Monsoons. Market collapses. Matchbox Twenty… I kid. 3 am was an OK tune.

All challenges. Most of them negative.

We wage war with these struggles while each battle strengthens us. We learn that a bit of adversity builds calluses that keep the bullshit from sticking.

Without the bad, we wouldn’t recognize the good.

The garbage times are what we reflect upon to remind us that things will be OK.

Dare I say it?

Everything happens for a reason.

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Many of our brains are hardwired to seek negativity.

Not everybody is like my girl Sheri and can look at a world burning around them and be excited about what will be built atop the ruins after the fire is out.

Positivity is hard and rare, but finding the bright side in things is worth it.

I could sit here and poke fun at the people on Ag X saying we’ve entered another 80s-style farm crisis because most crops currently cost more to produce than they are worth, equipment and tacos are pricier than ever, interest rates are too high, and they no longer make OK Soda.

I could rip on the guys saying we’re all screwed because the baby boom generation hasn’t retired and passed the farm down to the kids fast enough.

I could join the crowd in all its misery and despair. It’s easy to do.

I’ve been there. It’s where I spent most of my thirty-nine years.

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In 2013, when Kesha and Carly Rae Jepsen ruled Touch Tunes at the local watering hole (ishta), and Jag Bombs were the drink of choice (double ishta), everybody and their siblings wanted to participate in the big money grab and buy a farm.

It was the good old days. Borrowing money didn’t cost a thing. Wheat was akin to gold, and beans were in the teens.

Farm machinery salespeople danced atop tables and tossed Benjamins around like confetti.

When a farmer I knew was on the fence about buying a used Corvette, his friend prodded him, saying he’d be silly not to buy it because it was only thirty grand, or as the friend quipped, just a couple of loads of soybeans.

It’s only money. Pigs won’t even eat it.

Even my pickup was traded in for a new one every year.

Farming is a cyclical business. Ups and downs are the norm. When the hired man gets his wheels upgraded annually, it’s time to start stuffing coins in the mattress because the peak is close.

The boom times never last.

Neither do the busts.

And that’s the point.

If all we had were new trucks and corvettes and Bluetooth garage door openers on our new shops, we’d turn into a bunch of spoiled buttmunches, shouting at baby boomers on the ol’ Twitter…wait.

Are we there yet?

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The recent farm boom will end.

Maybe it already has. I’m not here to predict the future.

All I can do is recommend that you’re prepared for anything, but at the same time, don’t get sucked into the fear because that’s what this is all about, fear.

It’s scary not to know what happens next. It’s terrifying to think that everything we worked so hard for could be up and gone like dust in the breeze.

But you’ve made it through before, and you will again.

Learn to enjoy the cycles, the roller coaster, the ups and downs.

It’s all part of the ride. Take it from somebody who argued with reality for far too long. When you fight it, you’re going to have a bad time.

Ride the waves. You might get wet. Things could get messy, but I promise you this:

It’s going to be OK.

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New Year Nostalgia

I don’t know about you kids, but I’m pretty durn-tootin’ excited.

You wouldn’t think a thirty-five-year-old John Deere tractor could do that, or, as Tommy Lee Jones in a Texas accent says, somethin’ like at.

I sure do love me a slow Texas accent; yep, I sure do did.

I also love old Square Body K10 Chevrolet Trucks, tacos, traveling through the American West (because taco trucks), the smell of freshly worked dirt in the spring, figuring out a stubborn accounting problem, and an old-fashioned crop tour.

You can’t beat a good crop tour, especially a crop tour through Idaho in a beat-up old K10, watching the boys in the valley prep the ground for sugar beet planting while nibbling on a fist full of tacos.

The American Dream in action.

The only thing left is that pesky accounting problem, but not before we talk about my favorite tractor because, after all, this digital pamphlet is called Farming Full-Time, so I should probably talk about farming now and again.

Are you ready for this?

Entering the ring with a piddly 155 horsepower, the 4555 is it for boys like me.

The sweet, sweet 4555. So innocent and precious.

It was gas.

If you don’t farm, you may wonder what a four followed by three consecutive fives is.

Written out, it’s pronounced forty-five-fifty-five. And it still raises the bumps on my arm. I sure do love that tractor; yep, I sure do.

The cabs are noisy and small and pretty much terrible. A large fellow can barely get in and out of it.

When I was eight, I lost my first fingernail in a 4555.

Pro tip: If you’re climbing into a 4555, watch your fingers when your old man shuts the door.

It’s a lesson you’d rather not learn the hard way.

With barely enough power to drive an espresso machine, the 4555 was the first tractor I ever ran.

I was nine and it was 1993. Plowing ground in the fall was still an accepted practice that wouldn’t get you ripped apart by the conversationalist Ag X crowd.

X wasn’t a thing back then.

Neither was the internet.

It was just us and our SoundGuard cabs, AM/FM radios, an OK Soda, and an open field, and it was terrific.

Speaking of SoundGuard cabs, how did that work, John Deere?

You boys dreamt up a heck of a marketing tactic cause there are several frequencies I will never be able to hear again due to eardrum damage from spending too much time inside the supposedly luxurious SoundGuard cab.

These tractors should have come with a set of earplugs.

Good marketing or false advertising? You be the judge.

Still, it’s what I started with, which automatically grants it a full-time position in my heart, tiny, noisy cab or not.

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Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash

Some people collect toy cars and tractors.

Others collect old beer cans or scores of books.

My buddy John collects waxes and rubbing compounds and all the paint restorative products.

To each their own.

I collect memories. Some of my earliest and best involve Deere’s 4555, even after popping my lost fingernail cherry in one.

The nostalgia of it all gives me the warm fuzzies one gets from sippin’ tequila at Charras and Tequila, the most outstanding eatery Grand Forks has ever seen, and yes, I remember Shakey’s Pizza and The John Barleycorn.

If the farm equipment market regains its sanity and stops valuing tractors like professional sports athletes, I’m buying a 4555, and I’ll get John to wax on and wax off a fresh coat to get it all purdy for the parade.

Even though I don’t have ground to plow or snow to blow, I’ll always have the memories and, one day, a 4555 to call my own.

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In the meantime, you kids keep er’ crankin’.

We’re pert-near halfway through winter, and in thirty-eight days, we’ll see sunlight until seven pm again in our neck of the woods.

Can’t frickin’ wait.

As much as I enjoy the laid-back break that winter brings, I’m beginning to get the itch to scratch some dirt.

It won’t be long, now.

Hang in there, sport.

I’ll see you’s next week.

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1. Do you remember OK Soda? If so, do you remember it tasting more like carbonated tree sap or a mixture of the entire fountain?

2. Are you OK?

3. Is it the 1980s all over again?

4. Do you have a Bluetooth garage door opener?

5. What’s your favorite tractor?

6. If you answered yes to question five, why?

7. Who remembers the John Barleycorn? Hint: For the longest time, it was cleverly hidden in the Columbia Mall.

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