The Saturday Morning Post: Summer Memories

I was raised on a funny farm, 80 acres, How big is 80 acres, 1/4 of a mile by 1/2 of a mile. The house I grew up in is still 1.5 miles from the nearest paved road.  It was not the best of farmland, but not the worst.  It needed better drainage, about 1/3rd of it was covered in hardwood trees and impenetrable underbrush. 

My Grandfather bought the farm during World War II, from one of his co-workers at Ford.  My grandfather had bees in the outer suburbs of Detroit, and his parents were living with him and his mother had chickens in the backyard (the house in the city was on a couple of acres of land.) City officials were insisting that he get the bees and chickens out of the city.  Buying the farm in the middle of nowhere gave him someplace to move the bees, chickens, and his mother. 

There were about 50 of the up to 2,100 colonies of bees he and my father kept, on the farm. The chickens were fried for me great-grandmother's funeral. For a few years the family tried farming.  The end of that was a ten acre field of tomatoes and a late season frost. All hands were called on to salvage a couple of acres of the tomatoes in a backbreaking effort. There was an uprising of family members telling my grandfather that if he couldn't tend it himself, to not plant it. 

Often the fields layed fallow. Several years the government paid him for not growing crops on the farm, kind of easy as he had no plan to do so.  From time to time when grain prices were expected to be high, a neighboring farmer would "sharecrop" the farm.  My grandfather would get a share of the net value of the crop for the use of the land.  Rarely enough to pay the taxes on the land, but it was something. 

And this brings me to a summer memory.  The field just outside my childhood bedroom window was best suited to growing hard winter wheat. It was planted in the fall, sprouted to ankle high, then in the spring it rose to waist high, the grain heads filling out (does it bloom, these are seeds) and ripened by mid July into a golden shade, and then the thrill of the combine harvester.  There is a smell of wheat being harvested that is unlike anything else. It is dusty, and vaguely like the crust of a loaf of bread hot out of the oven.  Then there is the joy of walking thru the stubble field of a recently cut wheat field. The stalks are cut about 10 inches above the dirt.  When you walk the stems snap off under your feet. If you walk with your feet in a sweeping motion, the sound and the feel are unlike anything else. That feeling is only once, and goes away after the next rain. I miss that smell, and those walks.  

The last time I walked in a field of freshly cut wheat was in Normandy one August.  I had diner at the hotel, and enjoyed a large bottle of Norman Cider (a surprising experience.) Next to the hotel was a wheat field that had been cut that day.  I wandered about for half an hour or so, then collapsed into bed without taking a shower and washing off that memorable scent.