Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
The key clicked, the display lit up and the engine kicked in. It sounded like a smoother version of my first car, a beat up 1972 Chevy Nova that I bought in the early 1980s.
This chugging engine was on a farm tractor. I had of course heard running tractors before, but never while perched in the seat with the steering wheel in hand and foot on the pedal, ready to hit the open field. A very overgrown and daunting field.
It was an unusually warm February day. The high temperature hit 71 degrees. Birds chirped. Just a couple of clouds floated about. It was a springy day in normally cold February. I’ll take that kind of day, or even a few days, any time during winter. That’s one of the joys of living in the south, where a few springlike days are tossed into winter doldrums to keep spirits lifted.
The task at hand was driving the tractor with an attached brush cutter/mower and cutting down several acres of land. You know, make it more manageable, or at least be able to see the land to figure out what we were going to do with it. I had just learned how to use this mechanical beast a few days earlier, when it was delivered.
My wife and I wouldn’t have imagined owning a tractor until a couple of years ago. People downsize their homes as they approach retirement, we decided to upsize, in our case, the land.
Now, with several acres in our domain, wide-open vistas surrounding the house, a tractor was the inevitable necessity for land maintenance.
We haven’t owned a lawn mower in years, preferring to call the lawn guy for our previous home when the grass became too high to attract the prowling eyes of the Home Owners Association.
There was no lawn guy to call today. This was up to me with a tractor at hand. I hopped aboard the shiny new green beast with the big wheels and began making strips of cuts up and down the field, bouncing around on the uneven terrain, getting feel of a tractor’s bulky suspension system, the mower whirling and twirling. The overgrowth had reached five or more feet in height in some places.
The fields on my task were covered in tall dry grasses and an invasive species known as Chinese privet, along with very small trees trying to get a foothold, thorny briars, and many varieties of hulking weeds.
I was now feeling in sync with what farmers do daily – in the cold, the heat, the rain, all types of weather, to cut and till land, and grow food. The chopped hay and weeds floating in the air created a strange mix of irritants in the nose and eyes. It’s usually the stuff that makes you sneeze in spring and summer, not in the dead of winter.
When we had about a third of an acre in the last home we lived in, I used the phone as a mower. Meaning I called my lawn guy every time it needed to be cut, or hedges needed to be trimmed. Now that little plot of backyard and small front yard seem trivial, as easy as clipping fingernails. When you are looking at several acres of land to be maintained, maybe farmed, definitely gardened, life comes into a wider perspective.
It’s a sizeable piece of land, but it’s just a small speck of dust in the bigger ball of dirt and rock we are all riding on, floating through the universe in our little part of the Milky Way. Our upsized space.
I have always disliked yard work. Minor gardening and a small veggie patch were okay, even though they needed to be maintained, weeded, watered and loved. But I always hated cutting grass, a task that reappears every few days in the abundance of spring and summer sunshine, with the assistance of varying amounts of rain.
This day seemed like the land was awaiting the first buds of spring and the ambush of grass that has the ability to reach mowing length seemingly overnight. But this day was a teaser, for the following week promised a return to normal cold this time of year. The tractor chugged along.
Four hours later a big section was cleared with lines in the field opening up its possibilities. The land is surrounded by other farms. A short drive in either direction reveals the work of farmers or landowners who own many acres. This time of year, the fields lay silent, but within a few weeks they’ll be tilled and seeded.
When you own and have to maintain substantial acres, the value of soil and land become more acute, this scent and feel of land and earth we often take for granted. The surrounding farms will be laden with growing corn or soybeans or something else within a couple of months.
So will ours.
Now when I’m munching on summer corn, or placing a slice of tomato on a sandwich, or myriad other food intakes, the work that went into growing the particular food becomes real, my back can attest to that after the jumpy, bumpy ride on the tractor. The raw food items feel even more concrete and the prepared dishes tastier.
This one day in the field, on an unusually warm day in February, with many more to come as we rework this land into our vision and needs, is now stamped on my memory as a marker. Lawn mowers? Child’s play. A tractor mower is the call of the hour and work of the day.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: [email protected]
Twitter/X: @ShuklaWrites
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