Minnesota Prairie Roots

FOR THOSE OF US raised on farms, autumn draws us into the countryside like moths navigating toward a porch light.

It is the sights, sounds and smells of harvest that pull me into the land, deep into rural Minnesota this time of year. Here farmers labor to bring in the crops before winter settles in.

For me, this is a sensory experience that takes me back six decades to the southwestern Minnesota crop and dairy farm of my childhood. While farm equipment has changed and most farmers farm much more land than my dad ever did, harvest is still harvest.

Dust flies as combines chomp across corn and soybean fields. Engines roar. Golden kernels of corn and orbs of soybeans flow from combines into trucks and grain wagons. The land smells of earth and drying fields, a familiar scent even now decades removed from farm life.

I can almost feel the pressure farmers experience while they race against Mother Nature to finish the harvest. Long days and nights in the field are all part of harvesting as farmers gather in a growing season of efforts. And then hope for good crop prices.

There’s so much uncertainty in farming. So much hinging on weather, the economy, the market. So many decisions to make about when to sell, when to store, when to invest in new equipment and much more. I couldn’t handle the stress.

Farming is not easy with its risks and challenges and uncertainties. Yet, there’s a certain reward for crop farmers in seeing seeds they’ve sown germinate and grow into thriving plants under the spring and summer sun. There’s a certain satisfaction in harvesting those mature crops each September and October.

And for me, raised on the land and witness to many harvests, I feel memories rushing back as I watch combines move across farm fields deep in the southern Minnesota countryside. I feel reconnected to the land, the place that embraced and helped shape me as a person, writer, photographer and poet.

© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling