Now I’m not blaming anyone but myself. I should have known better
than to trust an old Georgia farmer, George Brown.
George is a neighbor and dear friend. He lives just down the road
from me and we have been friends and gardened together for several years.
George has quite a bit of land along the river and I have two tractors. A couple of years ago I volunteered to do some bushhogging for him,
clearing the weeds down in the field along the river.
Over time that progressed to the point where George invited me to
garden in his field. I think he felt sorry
for me since my little vegetable garden plot is on the top of a ridge and all
my rows either ran steeply uphill/downhill, or from East to West with the tractor sliding
downhill sideways as I plowed or cultivated.
After telling me about a new kind of watermelon
I should plant so that my melons wouldn’t roll downhill (George is a funny guy!!!), he suggested that “flatland
farming” was much easier and invited me to join him on his land.
I was delighted. The soil in his field is rich and fertile, a
sharp contrast to my rock strewn clay, my North Georgia version of “Rockytop”, and there is good access to the river if it is
necessary to irrigate in midsummer. .
But back to "Wiley George" Brown. Last Spring George asked me to
lay off five or six 150 foot rows for potatoes. Now having grown potatoes I know that it’s
a lot of work. I reminded George that old Ed Vest down at the IGA grocery in town had some really
nice potatoes, and buyin' was much easier than diggin' and plantin', but he insisted. So I went into his area of the field and laid off some rows for
potatoes. Then I went about my business through the rest of summer, but did
have occasional flashes of fear and dread in my thought , wondering just how he planned
to harvest the potatoes and what my involvement would be.
Old Reliable Steiner Tractor |
Well, when it came time to harvest potatoes George called me and
asked if I had a turning blade plow for my Steiner tractor that we could use to turn up the hills
of potatoes. I said I didn’t. Then George,
and this is where the “wiley” comes in, had
a flash of inspiration and told me that he had a “walk behind plow” once used
to plow and cultivate behind a mule in days before tractors and other 20th
century farm devices were available. .
He figured that if we could hook that plow up to my tractor and we could turn
potatoes out of the rows. :::: sigh:::::
On the chosen day I drove old Steiney down to the field and we hooked
up the plow with a chain. Now George, in calendar years, is a little bit
older than I am. Granted, age is not
much of a measure of the man since I
have seen grown men act like babies and young children display the wisdom of
the ages. But being under the illusion of human age and its frailties I looked
at George and said, "This is going to be too hard George, you drive the tractor
and I’ll man the plow.” George replied
that he knew nothing about my tractor, didn’t particularly want to know about
it and assured me that he was perfectly
capable of walking behind the plow.
THERE'S GOTTA BE A BETTER WAY!!!! |
So off we went, very slowly, very slowly, George walking down the
newly turned earth rows, trying to keep from tripping, all the while holding the plow
blade down into the soft earth so that it
would get under the potatoes and dig them out of the hills. I kept looking back
thinking maybe I was going too fast, but George kept nodding approval of our
progress and occasionally motioning to one side or the when I was getting a
little off kilter.
Then disaster struck. At the end of the second row, in an incredibly timely move, and an impressive demonstration of mental telepathy, George said his
wife Louise had made a sandwich and it was now his lunchtime. I was just about to
celebrate when Smokey Brooks, another neighbor and also good friend, showed up and said
that he would fill-in while George was at lunch. My countenance fell, no rest
for this weary guy.
I told Smokey how to do the plow and which rows needed to be
done. At this point he was concerned that he had worn his
good shoes and that he would prefer not to be on the plowing end, walking in the dirt. In a most admirable display of good manners, and knowing Smokey to be an honorable man, I didn't look down to see if he was telling the truth.
Soooo I showed him how to operate the tractor. Now keep in mind that this was all before I
knew that Smokey’s nickname is "Pedal to the Metal Smokey", later confirmed by his wife Janice. Apparently Smokey got his nickname from the
fact that he drives full speed ahead wherever he goes.
In any event, as Smokey mastered the controls, I grabbed the hand
plow and we started down the row, Smokey revving the tractor up to full RPMs
and me hanging onto that woefully inadequate plow.
The Steiner tractor has eight wheels, can move mountains and she is fast. I
found myself running faster and faster to keep from being dragged helplessly. Just keeping the blade in the ground
was a trick since the plow kept jumping and skipping from one side of the row to the other
and we were reaching the point where my feet were flying behind me like a
cartoon picture. I yelled: “Smokey... SLOW DOWN!!! Smokey
SLOW DOWN !!!”. This is the moment that I learned
another fact about Smokey, either he doesn’t
hear well or he concentrates intently when he is driving a tractor!!
I’m not sure if we actually reached 35 miles an hour, or just how fast that
tractor will go, but I’m sure we were maxed out. When we made it to the end of the row some
potatoes were turned up, some areas of the ground were not even touched by the
plow, and I was exhausted, legs trembling and hands blistered.
Time for counseling. “Smokey,
we have to slow down this operation.”
Smokey nodded knowingly and we started off down the next row. Apparently,
unknown to me, "Pedal to the Metal" is an incurable condition and we were soon back up to top speed, hand plow bucking and dancing, sometimes
on the surface of the ground… sometimes
not…me hanging on with my feet barely touching the ground as I tried to keep the plow blade sunk into the
ground.
After an eternity we reached the end of the row and I called the
whole thing to a halt. This is where God intervened and George showed up, took over the plow with me driving and Smokey switching to picking up the potatoes. Once
again we were back on a more acceptable pace.
I won’t elaborate on the amount of work it took after the tractor adventure was over, working on our hands and knees picking up the potatoes and throwing them into piles, so that we could go back later to pick them up in buckets .
I won’t elaborate on the amount of work it took after the tractor adventure was over, working on our hands and knees picking up the potatoes and throwing them into piles, so that we could go back later to pick them up in buckets .
ALL THAT FOR THIS????? |
Of course George gave me some of the potatoes for my effort but we
didn’t eat them all. Even though they were delicious, I decided to keep a few on the kitchen counter as a reminder of how wily Georgia
farmers can get the best of innocent Ohio boys.
No comments:
Post a Comment