Hard Soil

In my childhood, my Dad planted soybeans.  I can remember cultivating the soybeans before they "shaded out" to keep weeds out of them.  On the rich land behind the old homeplace, the soybeans would grow tall.  Taller than I was at the time and I remembered running down the rows.  It was like a maze.  Once the soybeans shaded out, and provided that army worms didn't infest the crop, soybeans were an easy crop to grow.  Much easier than rice.

In the month of May, when the soil moisture was just right, you would hook up the drill to the John Deere 4630, inoculate the soybeans and begin planting, following close behind the vibre shank and packer that was preparing a perfect seedbed. From daylight to dark you would plant and then pull out of the beautiful field proud of the work you had done.

Immediately, we'd move into the field with the old John Deere 4020 with a ditcher or the power ditcher.  It is very important to ditch out the field.  Soybeans are fickle. When thunderclouds roll in and the rains begin to fall on the freshly planted soybeans that were just beginning to grow, well...

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The crop needed rain, but this was too much of a good thing.  Puddles of water is what you have on your crop.  It is imperative to get the water off.  If the sun comes out and your soybeans are standing in water, they will scald, turn yellow and die. No one wants to re-plant soybeans. There is one thing you can do to save them. We called it "puddling." Puddling was not a pleasant job.  You would get dropped off on one end of a field that ranged between 20 and 120 acres.  Your job was to walk the entire field with a shovel and dig long ditches that connected puddles to the nearest ditch made earlier with the ditching tractor, thereby draining the puddles into the ditches where it would flow out of the field and your soybeans would be saved.  As bad as the job was, I learned several things:

1. Persevere to the end.  The water you'd see ahead of you was no mirage.  It was water that needed to come off the land and it was up to you and your shovel.  You kept digging until the job was done.

2. It was doggone hot.  You had better be prepared and be hydrated before you started, because it was going to be a while before you got to the end of the field where a cold Dr. Pepper would be waiting for you.

3. Keep your eyes open.  There were always treasures to be found in the field like old porcelain marbles and antique bottles that were unearthed by the plows.

4. Appreciate progress.  Later, people frustrated at the back-breaking labor involved in "puddling", invented steel wheels to be put on four-wheelers or tractors where you'd simply drive through the puddles and all the water would sink into the tracks made by the steel wheels and the tracks would lead the water to the ditches.  This made puddling a MUCH easier job.  As they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

There was another issue with soybeans.  If it rained on soybeans that hadn't broken the ground (sprouted) yet, and the sun came out, you had big problems.  The soil would make a hard crust on it and the soybeans would not be able to penetrate the soil.  Many sprouts would break off.

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There was an implement called a Rotary Hoe that we'd hook up behind the tractor. I found a photo of one below:

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The rotary hoe chipped off the top layer of soil so that the soybeans could pop right up. Yes, you sacrificed some of the crop by using this implement as some soybeans would inevitably be killed, but you would be able to save most of the crop.  It was always a joy to see the soybeans "marking the rows," knowing that you had a stand of soybeans and wouldn't have to replant.

My youngest son is about to start working at my Dad's farm.  I want him to understand hard work and the feeling of gratification for putting in an honest day's work and seeing that your labor meant something.  Farming is hard work,indeed, but working together toward a common goal is a beautiful thing.  It reminds me of some lyrics to a folk song by Nanci Griffith called Trouble in The Fields:

You'll be the mule I'll be the plow

Come harvest time we'll work it out

There's still a lot of love, here in these troubled fields