Last Dance on Section 17: A Gonzo Odyssey of Land, Loss, and Sturgill Simpson

Farming Full-Time #59

7:32 AM: The Panic Before the Storm

I woke up in a panic—7:32 AM and late as hell for work. But that wasn’t even the real problem. Where the fuck were my Sturgill Simpson tickets? I’d been waiting for this concert for months.

Back in the spring, I thought ordering physical tickets was a brilliant idea—because, well, I’m a sucker for nostalgia. But three months later, we got booted from our place by some spoiled twenty-year-old with an investment property. Classic move.

And me being me, I didn’t bother updating my address with the ticket people.

The result? Panic mode.

No tickets + no concert = the world ending.

Negative Adam Mode engaged—where the slightest hiccup feels like the apocalypse. These funks used to take me out for a whole damn day, sometimes two. But now? I’ve gotten better at reigning in the crazy.

Call it growth. Or call it being a recovering nutjob—either works.

Still, this was Sturgill fucking Simpson. No way I was leaving anything to chance. So I did what any man in a spiral would do: calmed my tits and called the ticket office.

Thankfully, the good folks in North Carolina saved my ass. The guy I spoke to was going to Sturgill in a few weeks, too, so naturally, we bonded.

Crisis averted—two tickets waiting at will-call.

God bless America.

Just as I thought I could finally breathe, my phone buzzed, and what popped up knocked the wind back out of me.

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David’s Farewell to Section 17: A Lifetime in the Fields

A video from Uncle David had popped up in my message feed—there he was, out on Section 17 in Donnelly Township, tilling the land he had worked since 1969 for the last time.

He filmed it himself, the camera shaking slightly in his hand. The tractor rumbled steadily in the background, kicking up dust clouds as always, but this time, it felt different.

This was goodbye.

And for the first time in my life, I saw David cry.

Not just the kind of cry that happens in passing. This was deep, years in the making—an ache that finally found its way out.

Seeing him like that—stoic, resilient David, brought to his knees by a piece of land—hit me harder than I expected. At that moment, the total weight of what was happening settled in.

This wasn’t just the end of a season.

It was the end of an era.

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The Legacy

Section 17 isn’t just land—it’s a thread woven into our family’s fabric. Since 1969, it’s been passed down through my great-grandpa, grandpa, dad, and Uncle David.

But now that thread is unraveling.

This land shaped the men in my family. It’s where David learned to farm as a boy, where my dad put in his time, and where I always thought I’d end up. But farming was never in the cards for me.

The first time I remember being there was on a soggy day when I couldn’t combine soybeans.

Rather than waste the day, I rode out to join David in the beet harvester. Quiet and uneventful—just the hum of the machine lifting beets from the earth. But sitting next to him felt like I stepped into the history of the land.

I watched David work, thinking about all the time he’d spent here. Fifty-plus years, from a kid running tractors to now, still working, still steady. That land shaped him, my dad, and me—even if I didn’t get to farm it. Sitting beside David felt like becoming part of something bigger than myself.

This land isn’t just soil—it’s alive with memories.

I picture young David, working alongside my dad and their cousins, each in their own tractor, maybe hearing Captain & Tennille or Linda Ronstadt drifting through the air, carried on the wind like a soundtrack to their teenage years.

Can you imagine that?

Barely teenagers out in a swamp, becoming men on this land. That’s what Section 17 is. It’s where my family learned the meaning of hard work. I always thought I’d get my turn, but I’ve had to make peace that it wasn’t meant to be.

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Dreams of Farming

Growing up, farming that land wasn’t just a job—it was about carrying on something more significant. The legacy. The pride. I wanted to prove myself, to show I was worthy of what my family had built. But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that dream was never taken seriously.

And that stung.

I spent years feeling bitter—watching others farm and seeing my friends live out the dream I thought was mine. It wasn’t just about missed opportunities but the feeling of being excluded from something I felt destined to do. It took a long time to make peace with that.

But sitting in the beet harvester with David on that soggy September day, something shifted. Maybe I wouldn’t farm Section 17, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t part of the legacy. I was still connected to the land, part of my family’s story, even if it didn’t look how I’d always imagined.

I found peace in a different kind of life—working with John and helping him with his operation. It wasn’t my dream as a kid, but it was a new kind of dream—one I had to embrace, and maybe that was enough.

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Right on cue, Ken dropped a nugget in the family text thread about how, back in 1973, he, his brother Billy, my dad, and David were all in that same field, each in their own tractor, listening to Hall & Oates—working that land, growing into the men they’d become.

That land holds those memories. It’s not just dirt—it’s alive with their sweat, stories, and growth, connected to everyone who’s ever worked it.

So, if you’re wondering how a grown man can bawl his eyes out over a piece of ground, you don’t get it.

The land, music, and memories are intertwined—like roots, bound together through space and time.

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Special thanks to Young Dwight for the photo

David’s Leadership: Calm in the Storm

David isn’t just a good farmer. He’s a hell of a leader. And not the loud, barking-orders type of leader. No, David had this quiet command that came from respect—not just because of his skills, but because of how he carries himself.

No matter how shitty things got, I never saw him lose his head.

That’s rare.

I remember one night in particular, about twelve years ago, when we were out on Section 16. November. Snow, mud, and absolute hell. That beet crop was about as impossible as they come. The kind where every machine breaks and every step forward feels like you’re sinking deeper into the muck.

Most people would lose their minds in this situation. Hell, I was close. But not David. He never let on that he was frustrated and never let us see him panic. Instead, he just kept going. Machine breaks down? He’s on it. Crew getting antsy? He’d give them that look—the one that says, ‘We’re going to finish this, no matter what.’

And finish it, we did.

Then, we hurried over to another farm a few miles away and worked an eighteen-hour shift to help them finish.

All in all, we were at it for more than sixty straight hours.

And David?

Cool as the other side of the pillow. Sleep-deprived yet unshaken by the madness.

Watching David over the years, I learned more about handling stress than I could’ve from a hundred self-help books. He didn’t preach about it, didn’t try to make it a lesson—he just was. You don’t have to be loud or overbearing to lead—you just have to be steady.

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David’s Weakest Moment: The Tampa Motel 6 Schvitz

David has always been a rock. But there was one time I saw him at his absolute weakest. It was down in Tampa, Florida, one winter when we were both running rigs over the road—killing time and making a few bucks while farming was on pause.

We’d just dumped a load—probably potatoes, if I remember right—and found ourselves holed up in a Motel 6 waiting for a reload—a real dive, nestled next to a 24-hour Waffle House that attracted some of Florida’s finest.

The Tampa Motel 6/Waffle House campus off Highway 301 was purified chaos at all hours—like a dystopian carnival of drunks, truckers, and feral energy—the kind of place where the wallpaper sweated more than we did.

David, usually the poster child of stoicism, was falling apart.

Sweating buckets and looking like he’d spent the last week delivering newspapers on a unicycle in Hades. But instead of letting the sickness win, David cranked up the heat with a plan to sweat out whatever demons had taken hold of his immune system.

The man wasn’t just sick—he was waging war against his own body in the Motel 6 sauna from hell.

So there we were—me and David, sitting in a 100-degree inferno with the heater blasting, watching as the air conditioner gasped in the corner, probably wondering what it did to deserve such torture. The room smelled like burnt despair, the Waffle House fights outside kept us company, and the flickering TV added an extra layer of cheap horror-film ambiance.

This was no regular fever—we were in the ultimate schvitz.

The walls were practically melting, the carpet had a texture that screamed “biohazard,” and there we were, locked in a two-day heat battle against David’s fever. The whole place felt like it could fall apart at any second, but David didn’t flinch. He just sat there, sweating it out like some stoic warrior, determined to purge whatever virus had gotten its hooks into him.

I didn’t complain, though. I sat with him, toughed it out, watching Waffle House brawls through the motel window like reality TV. Every hour felt like a fever dream within a fever dream, but somehow, we made it through the madness.

Then, finally—on day two—David sat up, looked at me through bleary, sweat-soaked eyes, and said, “Let’s go to Arby’s.”

And that’s when I knew he was back.

Roast beef, man. It’s the cure for everything.

We stumbled out of that Motel 6 sauna, walked past the Waffle House frenzy, and made our way to the TA truck stop down the road. I watched him devour a Big Montana™️ like a man resurrected.

I’ll never forget that moment—not just because it was two days of Florida’s finest schvitz, but because David never lost his quiet determination even in his weakest moment. Like always, he just cranked the heat, sweat it out, and fought his way through.

David had a way of turning even the shittiest situations into a test of resilience. Maybe that’s why he chose Arby’s. Not because it’s gourmet—God knows it’s not—but because sometimes you need something solid and familiar after everything. Something that doesn’t pretend to be fancy but still fills you up.

David understood that.

Whether it was sweating out a fever in a shitty motel room or finishing off a marathon beet harvest, he knew when to keep moving forward, even if that meant heading to the nearest Arby’s.

That’s the thing about life—it throws many challenges at you.

Watching David battle his fever in that 100-degree inferno made me realize how often we’re forced to face our demons, not by choice, but because life throws us into the fire.

Just like David wasn’t going to let that virus win, I wasn’t going to let my stress, loss, and fear take me down.

But where David had the heat, I had Sturgill.

And I was ready to sweat it all out.

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Just Let Go

I first found Sturgill Simpson’s music through a buddy from Kentucky—back when I was a service advisor, fresh out of my latest separation. My ex-wife and I had just split, and I was grasping for anything to help me hold it together.

With his Southern swagger and a knack for spinning country records I’d never heard of, Jimbo handed me Metamodern Sounds in Country Music and said, “You need this.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Sturgill’s voice hit me like a freight train—the depth, the raw talent—not just in his singing but also in how he played guitar. It was like he was tapping into a part of my soul I didn’t know existed. His music carried a wisdom steeped in pain and resilience.

There’s this grit in Sturgill’s voice that says, "Nobody out here has it easy." It reminded me that life isn’t about avoiding the hard stuff—it’s about getting through it.

That’s what drew me in. Every song felt like a gut punch and a hand on the shoulder. His music became my therapy, my escape, my guidepost during those dark months.

Fast forward to last night—standing in the Bluestem Amphitheater under that perfect September sky—and all those feelings came rushing back.

The raw emotion of the day—from David’s farewell to Section 17 to the ghosts of my unresolved dreams—all collided with Sturgill’s voice. His music has this uncanny ability to crack you open and make you feel where he’s been, and before I knew it, I was in tears.

Six times.

I cried six goddamn times.

Everything I’d been holding onto—my uncle’s connection to the land, the pressure of running the seed business, the weight of missed opportunities—poured out of me.

All those unspoken thoughts about David, the farm, and what the land meant were finally released at that concert. It wasn’t just music. Sturgill was cranking the heat, just like David had in that Motel 6, forcing me to sweat out every bit of emotional gunk I’d been holding onto.

By the time Sturgill played “One For the Road,” I wasn’t just a guy at a concert—I was a man reborn. A phoenix rising from the ashes of everything I’d been carrying. It was the most cathartic moment of my life, like a full-on emotional exorcism.

Then came “Jupiter’s Faerie.” I wasn’t ready for it. It ripped open something inside me—ripped away the scabs I’d let form over years of hurt since my divorce. The ache I felt for my boys, the missed moments, the weight of not being the dad I wanted to be—it all came surging up. I let myself feel it. Really feel it.

Standing there under the sky, it was like Sturgill reached into me and took hold of every bit of pain I’d buried.

And for the first time in a long time, I let it out.

I cried. Hard.

But somehow, in the middle of all that release, I felt a peace I hadn’t known before. Like it was all going to be okay. I didn’t know how, but I believed it.

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The Road to Resilience Runs Through Arby’s

So maybe that’s why, after Sturgill blew the emotional doors off my soul, I ended up at Arby’s with Sheri Oteri. Roast beef has a funny way of bringing everything back down to earth.

After all that night's soul-baring, gut-wrenching, tears-and-snot ugliness, the only logical next step was to scarf down a Double Beef and Cheddar. Roast beef is always the answer. Just ask David, who practically returned from the dead at that Florida truck stop Arby’s.

Sitting there, post-concert, eyes still watery and red, I realized something important.

Life rips you apart and puts you back together in the strangest ways. The land, David, the seed business, Sturgill—hell, even Arby’s—it’s all connected.

It’s all part of the same messy ride.

Maybe that’s why David understood things the way he did.

Whether it was plowing through fields for sixty straight hours or sweating out a fever in a Motel 6, he knew that life doesn’t wait for you to catch up.

You keep moving.

Sometimes, it’s slow; sometimes, you’re drenched in sweat or tears, but you keep moving. That’s what farming, Sturgill, and David taught me: resilience isn’t about the easy days—it’s about pushing through the hard ones.

So yeah, the night ended with greasy roast beef and curly fries, but in some weird way, it all felt right.

After purging my soul in front of strangers, I needed something solid, something familiar to anchor me back to reality. Roast beef hit differently that night—because it wasn’t just about food but about grounding myself after being ripped wide open.

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Something clicked as I wiped the Arby’s sauce from my chin and glanced at Sheri.

Maybe I’ve been farming all along—just in my own way. Perhaps life isn’t about staying on the path laid out for you. It’s about carving your own, even if it’s not behind the wheel of a tractor or on land that carries your name.

David understood that. He didn’t need to spell it out—it was in every quiet look and steady action.

Whether guiding us through sixty hours of fieldwork or sweating out a fever in that godforsaken Motel 6, David moved forward. He didn’t preach resilience—he embodied it.

And now, I finally get it.

Life isn’t about avoiding the storm; it’s about moving through it, finding your footing even when the ground is shifting. Whether on the farm or standing in the wreckage of my own life, David’s quiet strength is there, reminding me to keep moving, one step at a time.

Maybe that’s what the land has always been about—not just dirt and crops, but the connection, the resilience, the ability to keep going no matter what.

And maybe that’s what I’m learning, too.

As I sat there, post-concert, covered in concert sweat and Arby’s sauce, I realized David would have understood all this. He would have shrugged, given me that look, and probably said something simple like, “That’s life.”

And in that moment, I knew—he was right. Life is messy and unpredictable, and it never goes as planned.

But we keep going.

We keep farming in whatever way we can—just like David taught me.