Minnesota Prairie Roots

WOULD YOU PICK rock, walk beans, clean up pig or cow muck? Joe and his crew will.

I can, too, as I’m experienced. But I have no desire to return to those farm tasks that are now only long ago youthful memories.

Recently, I saw a sign, more like a note, posted by Joe on a convenience store bulletin board in Redwood Falls, deep in the heart of southwestern Minnesota farm country. I grew up in that area, on a crop and dairy farm.

Like Joe, I worked the land and labored in the barn. I picked rock, which is exactly as it sounds—walking fields to pick rocks from the soil and toss them onto a wagon or loader. Rock removal is necessary so farm equipment isn’t damaged during crop prep, planting and harvesting. It’s hard, dirty work when done by hand.

Likewise, walking beans is hard, dirty, hot work. That job involves walking down rows of soybeans to remove weeds and stray corn plants, either by hand or by hoe. At least that’s how I walked beans back in the day. Today that may involve spot spraying herbicides.

And when I worked corn fields, it was to detassel corn for the Dekalb seed company. I arose early, boarded a school bus with a bunch of other teens, arrived at a corn field and proceeded to walk the corn rows pulling tassels from corn plants. Dew ran down my arms, corn leaves sliced my skin, sweat poured off my body as the day progressed under a hot July sun. Of all the jobs I’ve had, detasseling corn rates as the most miserable, awful, horrible, labor intense work I’ve ever done.

I’d rather shovel cow manure. And I did plenty of that along with other animal-related farm chores.

If Joe and his team are willing to take on tasks that are labor intensive, hot and smelly, then I applaud them. We need hands-on folks who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, to break a sweat, to do those jobs that place them close to the land. Jobs many other people would not do.

I don’t regret my farm work experiences. I learned the value of hard physical labor, of working together, of understanding that what I did was necessary. Certainly farming has changed, modernized in the 50 years since I left the land. Machines and computers make life easier.

But sometimes it still takes people like Joe and his crew to plant their soles on the earth, their feet in the barn, to make a farming operation work, even in 2024.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling