Harvest

 I expected the corn harvest to begin at any moment. Last weekend while Tom and I worked in the yard we heard equipment threading through nearby fields. The corn north of the woods (nearest Hemple Road) was picked about a week ago.

 So yesterday morning, while I was reading a book on the sofa, I heard a harvester lumbering up Clayton Road, clanging as they are want to do, turn into the field just to my south. Of course I got up to look and saw the corn between me and Erisman's begin to quiver as the harvester began digesting its first row.

 It was about 10:45 am as D R Coffman began this annual chore of taking in the crop. Corn alternates with soybeans in a never-ending cycle.

 Turning corners with so large of a machine must be a challenge. Once the first rows are down the rest appears easy. There must be the same - or better - satisfaction in harvesting as there is in mowing a yard. Those straight rows appeal to my sense of order.

 Coffman worked all day. Except to take a load to the local market, I never heard him stop. He began with the south field and then moved to the field behind my house (west). Late in the day - about 7:30 pm - as the sun was setting, he still worked. Great clouds of dust rose into the sky on a stiff breeze. How odd is it in the first week of October to have a sunny 85° day with not a cloud in the sky?

 Later still, the combine is hidden by the high corn (it grew to well over six feet this year). It felt like I was living at the bottom of a box, surrounded as I was by high corn, and with its sudden removal, I could now see my nearest neighbor again. While I enjoy the privacy, there is some comfort in knowing others are near, even if that connection is no more than a nighttime light.

 The sun inches ever southward and now sets just to the right of Sam's house. Those large trees serve as a gauge to me, a living graph, and I might know the time of year by watching where the sun sets. The calendar is written there.

 It's getting too late to harvest now and the light sinks quickly. I don't know when the sound quit but I never heard the combine being driven from the field. Likely it is left there all night.

 The next day, though, dawns wet and a steady light rain is falling by 7:30 am. The harvest will not continue until the corn dries again.

 It's an interesting cycle, this planting and harvesting. The crop changes, the dates slide lazily back and forth ... but not by much. The crops grow with the summer sun and the clouds sweep the fields with occasional rain. It seems too perfect to be real.