Saturday Tractor Date

On a tractor that is becoming more rust than John Deere green

is where I found myself this past Saturday morn.

Sunny days and fresh mown grass means there is hay to be done,

and July 4th or not, it was time to seize the day.

I walked out in the clear air, breathing deep as the sent of cut grass filled my nostrils. 

I would need a deep breath. You see, Leo was going to re-teach me the basics of Tractor 101. 

It's been awhile. Like "I-don't-remember-when-I-last-drove-a-tractor" kind of awhile. 

If how I climbed onto that JD 4010 is any indication,

 let's just say I was much younger and much more limber the last time I did this. 

After finishing up the field Leo was working on, with me perched on the tire fender soaking in all the how-to's and what-not-to-do's, I decided that maybe a mathematician should be doing this. Or at least someone whose brain is able to process, whilst driving a beastly tractor around a field, that the rake always pushes the hay to the left but if I am going up a row vs. down a row I need to decide which row to take next, so as to push the correct two rows together into one nice neat row. And I have to remember that the next row may not be the one next to the one I am currently doing because my tractor can't turn that sharp. So this means I have to count rows and picture in my head which way the hay will be pushed (which is opposite from the direction I am currently going) because I have to be ready before I get to the end of my row. Got it? I kinda thought I did.

I look confident, don't I? Somehow, with Celtic Thunder playing in my earbuds, the sun giving me a rosy glow (note to self for next time: sunscreen), and sometimes little flocks of birds swooping around the tractor treasure seeking in the mown grass behind me, I felt confident. Maybe it had something to do with actually driving a tractor. I am woman, hear me roar.

Or maybe it is because Leo is one field over (the one in which I accidentally raked an already raked row and hoped he didn't see because I was in the wrong field. I did try to fix it so he couldn't tell. Later, he said he noticed a row that just didn't quite line up right. Hmmm.). One can't help but feel confident when a dust devil comes through the field right in front of you, actually picking up the grass in a spinning spiral and setting it down somewhere else. I had never seen that before and it was amazing to see. Leo remembers trying to run through them when he was a kid. My dad said when he was young, the dust devils would mess up his rows, just like it messed up my rows, and his family wouldn't believe him. It was crazy; you could look across the field and actually see the path it made.










You know, I had other things to do on Saturday; I always have other things to do, but for this day I said "no" to all that and "yes" to helping Leo. You want to talk about setting up the scene for romance? Just drive tractor for your husband and the candles will light themselves. Honest.

Love, Dianne and the JD4010

P.S.  Don't tell my girls (this is often a job they get to do), but maybe I could be talked into driving tractor again. Shhhh.