"Fall harvest is complete on the farm." Seven words which took what seemed to be a lifetime to accomplish in their being spoken, yet the phrase is true, "Fall harvest is complete on the farm."
It was a bountiful harvest whose beginnings in the rain-filled Spring seemed nearly impossible. Planting in this area did not begin in earnest until in early June, which by most standards is nearly two months tardy. Yet, once begun, everything was planted in one fell swoop: corn, soybeans, and double-crop soybeans, that latter of which only occurs after wheat harvest and in the middle of baling alfalfa. To say the least, the Spring planting was arduous and offered little hope for the Fall harvest: To paraphrase university agronomists, 'Once beyond May 15, with most crops you begin subtracting potential yield.' June 5 was the day we started planting.
Fortunately for most of the farmers in the area, neither God, nor the weather and fields, pay much attention to university agronomists. Periodic rains throughout the Summer, with few 100 degree plus days in a row, mixed with a long-term fertility plan already in place on the farm, and blessed with expanding knowledge and use of newer seed hybrids, proved to be a combination that no university expert could predict. Harvests of corn, soybeans, milo and other more specialized crops in the area were 'bin-busters'. God's abundance for humanity was given just one more expression in the fields and labors of Southern Illinois farmers. Thank you, God.
One aspect alone, though, made the harvest prolonged and tedious, especially of the corn in this region: a wind storm in mid-September. The remnant of a hurricane absorbed on the southern coastal regions of our nation found its way to the mid-section of our croplands, flattening thousands of acres of corn and beans in just a few short minutes of severe blowing. Affecting an area reaching as far north as mid-state Illinois and swooping well into the southern reaches of Kentucky, these winds featured both straight-line force and down-draft destructiveness. Corn fields which, minutes earlier, had stood ten or more feet tall, were nearly instantly reduced to the height of an overgrown lawn. Acres and acres of crops were laid over, some broken, some churned as though pelted with hail and razors. Hearts sank, despair set in, and the grim ordering of reels for combine corn heads began in earnest. What lie ahead did not look good.
Entering the fields this Fall proved to be every bit the challenge farmers anticipated. The reels on the corn heads helped but, working through thousands of flattened acres of material, some of it splayed in multiple directions in the same field, no reel could magically make the harvest go the way farmers hoped it would. Yet, and that is a very BIG 'yet', there was a surprise waiting in the fields that few if any of the farmers could have fully anticipated: The harvest was producing better than any other 'ideal' year before. Soybean and corn yields tipped the scales with numbers far beyond what most farmers had ever seen in their lifetimes. This, with early harvest higher grain prices, proved to be the saving of many a farm family in the region. It was a blessing that waited for those who wept just weeks before. Joy comes in the morning.
In retrospect, the lavish rains throughout the Summer had been both blessing and curse: Blessing in that the crops grew with little challenge or difficulty; Curse in that the crops grew with little challenge or difficulty. Corn plants that, in most years, routinely set large tap roots on the outer base of the plant for stability and extra moisture absorption, this year did not need to, thereby making the heavily laden plants susceptible to the kind of destabilizing effects that a hurricane wind might provide. Additionally, the bounty of full soybean pods and large ears of corn proved too much for narrowly rooted plants to hold up in the face of a blowing crisis. What produced an incredible yield also made the harvest nearly impossible. Just ask the farmers who shelled corn diagonally across the fields in order to pick up the greatest amount of grain.
Talking with my brother and Dad about this phenomenon, it humbled me as to how deep God's wisdom goes. Nearly without fail across the region, the higher the yield in the individual fields, the more likely the greater amount of wind damage. Were it not for the more challenging days in our lives, we would be like the ten foot high corn plants with great big ears of grain: unstable and vulnerable to every wind that blows. Yet, it is the difficulties, the high temperatures and the dry spells, the weeds which compete, and the late planting which impedes, that make us heartier in faith, more prepared for the storm, ready to stand in the faces of the challenges before us. Without occasional hardships, there would be few who kneel in prayer. Without occasional difficulties, stabilizing taproots would not be established in the soil of our soul. Without the competition of weeds that threaten to undo all that is done, our stewardship would become lax, our attitude one of laizze-faire.
The combine is in the shed, the wagons and trucks are put away, the bins are closed and the batch drier is cleaned-up: Fall harvest is complete on the farm . . and I thank God for the lessons learned upon the lap of a very loving, very present Parent, who opens our minds to see that not everything we pray for (in a very protected and challenge-less life) is necessarily good for us. Make me, O God, open to your every wisdom shared that I might walk in all your ways.
Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Don
