Tag Archives: farm

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Driving the Farmall…Just a Little Bit Too Far!

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Driving the Farmall…Just a Little Bit Too Far!

James R. Aist

Growing up on a small dairy farm in central Arkansas in the early 1950s sure had its moments, some more noteworthy than others. I was the youngest of four brothers, and I was, at times, eager to be like my two oldest brothers. They were more integrated into farm operations than I was, and I envied that.

Between our house and the milk barn was a beautiful winged elm tree, in front of which we routinely parked our tractor, an IH McCormick  Farmall. By the time I was about 8 years old, I had figured out that this Farmall was my ticket to farming manhood. Consequently, I looked for every opportunity (excuse) to operate that vehicle for any reason my parents would allow. I started by running errands with it to the corner store and back for some essential food items Mama needed. Mind you, this was safe, because we lived off a dirt road off another dirt road, and any traffic on that road was the talk of the day. Then I graduated to hooking our two-wheeled trailer to the tractor and delivering hay to the cows in the pasture field near the cow lot, in the winter time.

Well, by then I figured I had come a long way toward qualifying for some serious farm work with the Farmall. I had executed countless errands  and chores with it, with nary a mishap. Then I began to observe how my oldest brother, Art, liked to show off his skill with the tractor: he would race down the driveway toward the tree to park it as usual, but then, at the last second, he would stop suddenly, just as close to the tree trunk as humanly possible without hitting it. I was very impressed. And I figured that if I would do the same with the tractor, then I might just get myself that much closer to being allowed to do some real farm work with it. It would be as a right of passage to manhood, I reckoned. I could hardly wait for Mama to ask me to drive the tractor to the store and back again; just wait ’til they see what I can do with it! No need to practice, man, I was ready!

Well, the big day finally arrived, and off I went, head held high. On the way back from the store, I rehearsed in my head exactly how I would pull off this impressive maneuver. So, I turned into the driveway and prepared for my approach: I had to be fast enough to be impressive, but quick enough to stop just in time, like Art. And I pulled it off just as planned…except for one little detail: if you release the clutch before the engine stops turning over, the tractor will lunge forward a little bit. Sadly, that little bit was supposed to be the distance between the tree trunk and the tractor grill when I was done parking! Consequently, I ended up ramming the front of the tractor into the tree trunk, denting the grill and breaking the radiator hose. There was steam everywhere! Thankfully, the tree wasn’t injured, but I can’t say as much for my ego.

Needless to say, my little scheme backfired on me, and it was a good while before I was entrusted with any real farm work. Dag-nabbit!

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Encountering God in the Barn on Sunday

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Encountering God in the Barn on Sunday

by Annette Seybert, Guest Author

God is full of surprises. I never thought I would find myself living on a farm at this stage of my life. I call this God’s unexpected grace.

God is sovereign, He reigns over all, and that would include me, my family and my life. There are things that I don’t understand, secrets that I may never have answered this side of heaven. However, I know there is a purpose in His plans for me. There are unexpected blessings that pop into our ordinary days. I experienced one of these while I was watering the yearlings in the barn on Sunday afternoon.

We have four heifers that inhabit the barn (these would be the babies that were born last spring). You could say they are kinda stuck in the middle, similar to a teenager, too old to have their mama’s attention, yet too young to be mixed in with the rest of the herd, especially with the bull. This foursome of “tweens” will put a smile on your face even on the darkest of days. I do believe they have stolen a piece of my heart. They can be mischievous, like dragging the watering hose around the barn floor and stomping holes into it. But in spite of their awkwardness and ever-increasing size (somewhere between 700 and 800 lbs.!), they have a gentle and sweet disposition.

The watering of such beasts is not an unpleasant task. I rather enjoy the encounter. The atmosphere inside the old barn is pleasant and peaceful. This is a wonderful place to meet with God. A place to stop striving and allow God’s thoughts to permeate my own. Something about this place seems to make time stand still, just for a little while, long enough to let peace settle in and to be reminded of simpler days. There is an old familiarity about this place, like I always have known it. It seems to be somewhere hidden down deep inside of me.

I wonder if God gives us some little sampling of our home in Heaven when we allow the busyness of our crazy world to fly, fly away for a brief time. God gave me a glimpse of this on Sunday, in the barn. He used the soft breath of a yearling at the base of my neck and a rough lick of a tongue across the back of my hand. God is creative; you can count on Him to use what ever resources are available at the time you need to hear from Him the most. The barn is full of useful resources.

Nothing huge happened on this day in the old barn. I do not have the words to describe His overwhelming Presence on Sunday, but it was there, and it was for me, and it was glorious.

I walked away from the barn with a smile on my face, a little lighter in my spirit, and with a deep down assurance that … I am loved.

(To read more, awesome short stories on this website, click HERE and HERE)

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Wait for It, Wait for It…OK, Now!

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Wait for It, Wait for It…OK, Now!

James R. Aist

This true-life experience happened when I was about four or five years old, and my family was living in central Indiana, near Marion. We were living in a large, stately, red brick farmhouse with tall, white pillars in the front and a long driveway lined with stately white pines. Daddy had been hired to manage this attractive farm property, which we called “the Love Farm”, after the original owner. Out back was a large barn used to store hay in the loft and to house animals and farm machinery on the bottom floor.

For some time I had been longing to climb up the ladder inside the barn and explore the hayloft, but I was forbidden to do so, because it was at least 10 feet high above a solid concrete floor. If I were to fall through the large hole that had developed in the hayloft floor, I would surely be seriously injured or even fatally wounded, according to Mama anyway. Then one day I came up with a brilliant idea: I would get my older sister, Carol, to accompany me in my adventure and make sure that I didn’t get close enough to the hole in the floor to fall through it. Voila! Problem solved. (For some reason, Mama agreed to this arrangement.) So out to the barn we went, where I promptly began to scale the ladder, with Carol watching closely. About half way up the ladder I began to get second thoughts about this adventure, because it began to dawn on me just high up 10 feet really is! And that hard concrete floor would not be a particularly hospitable landing pad should I, in fact, accidentally fall through the hole, Carol’s watchful eye notwithstanding. However, I was too far into the plot to quit now and have to suffer the embarrassment of returning to the house a failure, especially with an eye witness present to tell the story. So, I gathered my courage and scaled the rest of the ladder without further ado. At the top I crawled onto the hayloft floor, stood up victoriously, and began to walk around and explore the corners and edges of the hayloft to see what was really up there.

Nothing much of any real interest was there, so I approached the hole cautiously to look down at Carol and tell her I was done and ready to climb down. But, as I looked down over the edge of the hole, I got dizzy from the height, lost my balance and went hurtling down through the hole straight toward the concrete floor 10 feet below; “Carol can’t help me now!”, I thought to myself. As I was falling, I saw myself getting closer and closer to impact. It was terrifying. Then BAM, I hit the floor, landing perfectly flat, belly side down. By this time Carol was running toward me in a panic to see how badly I was hurt and console me until help could arrive. As it turned out, I had, miraculously, suffered only a slightly cut lip – no broken bones, no bruises and not even any scrapes from the impact!

I was so frightened by the fall that I was about to break down into full-blown bawling and crying, with tears, when Carol arrived to console and comfort me. But just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mama running toward me calling out to us in fear of the worst. So, now I had a dilemma: do I start crying now and waste my tears on Carol, or do I hold off until Mama gets here so she can do the consoling and comforting instead. Well, that was a no-brainer. So I puckered up my face, held my breath and waited for Mama to arrive. Then I let-er-rip. Good choice; I was rewarded royally for my patience. After all, Mamas always trump big sisters when it comes to giving consolation and comfort. You just have to muster enough self-control to get the timing right!

Now, you may wonder, as I do, how I could have escaped such a fall with only a slightly cut lip. Think what you will, but I am convinced that, on that day, I put my “guardian angel” to the test, and he passed with “flying” colors (so to speak!).

(To read more of my short stories, click HERE)

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Hush Little Baby…Uh-Oh, Run!

tobacco-barn

Hush Little Baby…Uh-Oh, Run!

James R. Aist

This true story is one of my earliest memories, having taken place when I was just three years old and my older brother, Johnny, about four and a half. We spent a lot of time playing together, so what happened to one of us usually happened to both. The year was 1948, and we lived on a dairy farm in rural Maryland. To supplement the family income, we grew and processed tobacco on the farm and then sold it at a local auction.

It was early Fall, time to harvest the tobacco and hang it to dry in the tobacco barn. For this, it was customary in our region at that time to hire temporary farm help, so this particular year we hired a young “colored” couple, let’s call them William and Mary, who had a small baby boy, probably about six months old. Well, one afternoon this couple drove their black Ford Coupe into the barn to keep it cool while they worked on the tobacco and the baby slept peacefully on the back seat.

Out of curiosity, Johnny and I decided to mosey on down to the barn and find out for ourselves what the heck they were doing. There in one corner of the barn they were, William as skinny as a rail and Mary almost as wide as she was tall. They were standing at a work bench with their backs to us, busily slicing off the green tobacco leaves from the stalks with machetes and hanging the leaves on slender poles for drying. We had never seen such really big, long knives!

After a few minutes of watching them do the same thing over and over again, we got bored and decided to entertain ourselves by playing tag around the car. It was so much fun that we began to laugh and giggle loudly as we chased each other round and round the car. Mary heard our noise and turned around, machete in hand, and warned us to be quiet, because the baby was sleeping in the car. To make sure that we understood the gravity of the situation, she (jokingly) promised to cut off our heads if we wake her baby up. Well, that put the fear of God in us, but we were, nonetheless, confident that we could play quietly enough to keep our heads attached.

After a quick peek into the back seat of the car to verify Mary’s story, we were right back at it, very quietly at first, but gradually louder and louder as we were pulled increasingly into the joy of the game, oblivious to the sleeping baby in the car. Next thing we knew, there came from the car the ominous sound of a baby crying, softly at first, but quickly rising to the amplitude of a full-blown tizzy-fit. Whereupon, we froze in our tracks and looked straight at William and Mary. What was she going to do? By that time she had already swung around, waving her machete in the air, and she was coming right at us scolding angrily, “I TOLD you not to wake up my baby!”

Well, Johnny and I were convinced that we were about to be murdered right then and there, and so, without the need of prior survival training, we instinctively began to run lickety-split out of the barn and toward the house, yelling repeatedly at the top of our lungs, “Mama help, she’s going to cut our heads off, she’s going to cut our heads off!” We ran like the wind all the way up the farm road to the long, wooden gate, at which point we each took a “rut” and dove under the gate. Picking ourselves up, we looked back, only to see Mary in the farm road, chasing after us, (innocently) waving her machete in the air and yelling, “Y’all come back, I was just kidding, I’m not going to cut your heads off, I was just kidding!” Well, that just convinced us all the more that she really was going to cut our heads off (What would you think?). So, we continued our flight toward safety, still yelling, “She’s going to cut our heads off, she’s going to cut our heads off!” By the time we reached the front yard, Mama had heard the ruckus and was out the front door to rescue us. After enjoying the humor of the situation for much too long, she hugged us and reassured us that Mary was not really going to cut off our heads, and that she really was just kidding all along. Needless to say, Johnny and I were very glad to hear that, and Mary was relieved to be exonerated!

And that’s why I survived to tell this terrifying tale. As it turns out, William and Mary were the nicest folks you would ever want to meet, but for a couple of minutes there, it sure didn’t seem like it to Johnny and me!

(For more of my TRUE TALES, click HERE)