Beyond that, the farm exists as a part of the natural world that shelters and nurtures us all. The land and the life that it harbors make this farm possible by giving us more than we will ever begin to know and more than could ever be tallied.
Farming is never easy. The relentlessness of the work and the unreliability of conditions can take their toll. Often, there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Farming demands constant attention to some things within our control—what to plant and when and where to plant it—and many things that aren’t—the availability of water and seeds, and weather, weather, weather. Each season starts with a variety of factors that farmers must weigh in their decisions but always with a flexibility to change when necessary. If one crop fails, plant again in hope of better conditions. Or try another variety, different field, more water, less water . . . or again next year.
It’s all a gamble. Sometimes, even the tried and true doesn’t work. Even with our combined farming experience to draw on, each season begins with questions that we do our best to answer and then stake our hard work toward ensuring we are right. Each season carries its own risks of drought that threatens the fields, of machinery that might break, and of injuries that prevent the physical labor demanded each day. The worry of accident is constant in a life that includes tractors, chain-saws, old buildings, and heavy lifting. We’ve both made trips to urgent care for tetanus boosters and stitches with farm injuries like smashed fingers and rusty nail punctures. “Safety first,” we remind each other as we go out to work, meaning take necessary precautions, ask for help when needed, and keep our eyes and ears attuned to each other in the fields.
Relationships are not easy either, and John and I have had our bumps along the way. That first fall together amid stresses of work and family as I drove back and forth from town to the farm, I wondered whether I would be around to reap the garlic we were planting in October in anticipation of a spring harvest. I wasn’t sure that this farm could be my farm too. When the flower garden I planted outside the irrigation pattern dried up and died without me there to water it, I felt discouraged. I didn’t know yet whether I could fit my life into the cycles of the farm or whether my dreams could be joined on one piece of land with John’s. We were both so busy with our daughters and our jobs that finding time to spend together, let alone farm, looked unlikely. Making a commitment to something as simple as garlic seemed a risk I wasn’t sure I wanted to take.
But like relationships, fall crops demand faith. You cannot see their growth until the earth warms again. As John and I placed each clove in the dimpled field, we hoped that, like the garlic, our love would send down roots to nourish and protect it through the cold, dark winter. If we could imagine a time when new shoots would emerge, perhaps the winter wouldn’t be so long.
Promisingly, the garlic did come up in the spring, and John and I made it through the dark winter as well. With each day, we discovered that farming was the perfect way to spend time together. We renovated the farmhouse so that each would be comfortable there. With a sledge hammer and a pry bar, we tore down old walls to open the rooms to light and make a larger space for meals with family and friends. We planted a new flower garden where the irrigation system could reach and we planned projects that combined our interests at the farm. Working day by day, we began to see how we could join our lives on the farm.
One June day, John and I walked hand in hand over the wooden bridge of the irrigation ditch as a muskrat paddled by. In the flower garden we had planted together, he in his handwoven shirt and I in my grandmother’s navy blue wedding dress, we promised our commitment to each other and to the land on which we stood. As a cousin strayed close to the bank of the Highland ditch that marks the east edge of the farm, our minister friend Priscilla Inkpen reminded guests that nature offers its own kinds of gifts: in this case, poison ivy. We laughed with friends and family gathered in the old apple orchard to celebrate our vows as a few drops of rain fell, blessings from the land that would now encircle our lives.
Under the canopy of the leaning cottonwood tree, John and I listened closely as our musician friend Coyote Joe sang “The Stonebridge Wedding Song.” The lyrics he wrote then still ring true:
There’ll be toil, and sweat by your brow
But the challenges you’ll answer somehow
And through it all you’ll grow stronger
And closer on this land.
None of it—the crops, the friendships, the community, and the deep love and respect we have for each other—will come without hard work, but by walking out to the garden together, season after season, we hope to reap a harvest beyond our wildest imaginings.
In her diaries, my grandmother would note signs of the seasons changing.
In my Grandma Smith’s diaries, each sparse entry starts with a weather report. A true farmer, she always recorded the weather, both the high and low temperatures and noteworthy conditions like sheer wind or a blinding snowstorm. Farmers depend on the weather, so marking its changes helped her remember the years, but in rural North Dakota, the weather meant something more: it determined the possibilities of each moment and the strength needed to endure the extremes of life on the prairie.
Some days in July, she would just write “Hot.”
Another series of weather entries in 1966 reads like a poem:
Wed, March 9: 45 degrees above
snow melting
just like spring
Thurs, March 10: No need for a weather report.
Fri, March 11: Weather is fine.
My favorite weather entry reads: Sat, Jan 29, 1966: This morning it’s 40 below so won’t be very warm today. Even in a North Dakota winter, that could be considered an understatement.
In my grandmother’s make-do world, “Won’t be very warm” means “Won’t be going anywhere today.” My grandparents lived in the country, so snowstorms meant no trips to town and no visitors dropping by until the weather cleared. I can imagine my grandmother watching the wide winter-gray sky from the kitchen windows while she baked her weekly loaves of bread. She was a slim woman who in her later years never seemed to get warm. For her last Christmas, we gave her a heavy Scandinavian sweater to take away the chill. After she died, I inherited the sweater but I’ve never worn it; I don’t want to lose the smell of her face powder lingering in the thick wool.
Winter in North Dakota is unforgiving. An incautious mistake—an empty fuel tank, bad tires, turning down the wrong dirt road—can mean death in a blizzard that shrouds the prairie in icy white. And winter stays into spring there, as my grandmother’s diary confirms.
Fri March 4, 1966: 12 degrees above hi for today. It’s nice here today but not so warm. Is close to zero. We were lucky to miss being in the storm the last three days. Some lives lost in S. Dakota. I baked a pie.
Here and on the next page, my grandmother tucked two newspaper clippings about the days-old storm. “Snows Wrath on Our Path” warns one. “Holy Cow! No Snowplow!” exclaims the second.
Luckily,
