Nine Circles of Planting Hell
A Farmer's Guide to Spring Madness
As I’ve written in previous FFTs, I’m kind of like Rain Man when working a field, mapping out a mental plan to make as few tracks as a possible cause, as they say, soil compaction is the new smoking.
Or something like that.
So when I’m driving on an early-season tour as the crop emerges and I see blank areas, I pert near lose my mind. Seven gazillion dollars worth of new technology, and I still end up with skips.
What is going on in the name of Samantha Snead?
These are the things I think about when I’m out tilling on the old forth and back. Doing a good job and making sure shit looks good, especially by the road. An old boss of mine told me he didn’t care about what I did, but when farming by the highway, I better be on my A-game.
Save your screw-ups for the swamp, he’d say as he occasionally popped out of his Crown Royal pool for a taste of oxygen. You mess up by the highway, and it’s curtains for you. Dead to me. You got that, kid?
In farming, the stakes don’t get much higher.
After a tour of northeast North Dakota last week and seeing guys finally sewing seed after two months of rain delays and cold snaps, a friend and I discussed the roller coaster of emotions a guy deals with each spring.
You go delusional at some points, my friend tells me. And he’s right, especially on a year like this, where it gets just about dry enough to get rolling when another rainstorm toodles along. With all the fits and starts, a farmer needs to practice the patience of an Irish monk to succeed in this business.
It can be enough to drive a guy batty.
I don’t know how to describe it adequately, so join me as we ride through the nine forests of planting season delusions.
As former car-guy-turned-farmer Jeremy Clarkson says, rOight, here we go.
Stage One - Optimism
You’ve prepared all winter, greased your stuff, and calibrated your meters. Visions of two hundred bushel wheat and ninety-ton sugar beets dance in your head.
Hey, who knows? It’s a new year, and anything is possible, especially with that new fufu juice you ordered from the local snake oil salesman.
It’s going to be a great year. The weather is going to cooperate. You couldn’t be more excited to make some dust.
Stage Two - Enthusiasm
With the Alan Parsons Project tickling your Dolbys, toes tappin’, and arms air drummin’, the club can’t even handle you right now.
Neighbors driving past don’t know whether to come party with you or call a medic cause from this far away, those dance moves look awfully similar to a seizure.
Stage Three - Overconfidence
This ain’t gonna take long at all. We will be done by Mother’s Day and have a month off before spraying. I’ll get the whole summer off to fish and golf and goof off…
Forty acres an hour? To heck with that noise, crank the dial, and bump that sucker up to fifty.
Best.
Year.
Ever.
Stage Four - Cracks in the Facade
The first breakdown. Sometimes it’s minor. A broken bolt or blown hose.
But sometimes, well, the wheels fall right off.
Stage Five - Rain Delay
Aside from a dry 2023, when we didn’t see rain until July, each spring usually brings a rain delay or two (or sixty-eight like some areas are experiencing this spring—sorry, guys; I feel for you).
The rain delay is an excellent opportunity to service equipment, catch up on sleep, pay bills, or have a drink. Rain delays are a boon for local bars. If that's your thing, you'll want to get there before all the good parking spots are taken.
When the rain delays get stuck on repeat, and every time it gets just about dry enough to roll, you get another shot of rain until the excitement and optimism finally fade.
Your outlook turns dark, darker than a steer’s tookus on a hot summer night, leading to the next stage.
Stage Six - Discouragement and Doubt
After sixteen breakdowns and a baker’s dozen rain delays strip your dignity and faith in humanity, you enter stage six, the darkest of the six stages.
It’s hopeless. We’re never going to get this done. It doesn’t even pay to try. I should’ve sold this farm years ago.
After venting your frustrations to everyone, from your spouse to your fertilizer supplier, you've had enough and are beginning to search for new careers.
Just as you consider what it would be like to join a circus, things start to look up.
A spark ignites, leading to:
Stage Seven - The Renaissance Hour
Tunes are cranked back to eleven, and the neighbors resume seizure watch as you dip into some two-day-old thermos coffee that, by golly, is somehow still warm.
So now you’re jamming to tunes and socking in a crop while writing an Amazon review about the thermos and how you were wrong—they actually make some stuff like they used to.
What a country.
Stage Eight - The Finish
Tweaked on muddy coffee and Zyn pouches, the stress and excitement mount with each round.
Will the equipment hold together? Doesn’t matter. When you’re this close to the end, you’re not stopping to repair any breakdowns, anyway, so there’s no point in worrying up a mountain destined to remain a molehill.
As you finish up the last few laps, you begin reminiscing on the planting season, with the calls of a circus career fading into the background.
Stage Nine - Sadness and Longing
Diamond Rio’s One More Day oozes you back to the barn, filling you with an emptiness that only more planting could fill.
You wonder how you could’ve said such nasty things to your fertilizer man or considered leaving farming for a life of circus rings and peanuts.
As you tuck the planter into its corner of the shed and read it a bedtime story, the sadness dissipates, and you remember you’ll get to do it again next year, setting the stage for the next battle of the summer and the seven psychoses of spraying.
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of the FFT.
Last week, a loyal pub reader asked me what we do on the farm after planting season is wrapped up.
Aside from trying to appear busy, there are several things to attend to as we pass through summer. The tractors and planting machinery need to be cleaned, maintained, and stored for summer.
The crop must be sprayed, which is an ongoing project from late May through August.
We mow and tidy the grass in the yards and along the field edges. Grains must be hauled from the on-farm bins to the elevator, and equipment needs to be serviced for fall work.
With all these tasks, there’s not as much time for goofing off as a guy would like, but we find a way to squeeze in a few rounds of golf and a Twins game or two.
Hope ya’ll are having a wonderful summer. We’ll catch ya next time. ✌️
As always, thanks for the much needed giggles 🤭