I love to follow gravel roads into the countryside, here northeast of Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
FOR THOSE OF US raised on farms, autumn draws us into the countryside like moths navigating toward a porch light.
At the bottom of a steep hill, a grain truck sits beside cornfields, unharvested to the left, and with harvest in progess, right. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
A farm site northeast of Faribault hugs fields. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
Picking corn northeast of Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
A farmer steers his combine toward a grain truck to unload just harvested corn. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
Transferring corn from combine to grain truck. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
Corn flows from combine into grain truck. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
West of Montgomery a tractor pulls a grain wagon along a gravel road near Richter Woods County Park. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
This time of year, parked grain trucks are a common site along fields and roads, this one by a cornfield in the Nerstrand area. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
Northeast of Faribault, a colorful tree line backdrops harvested fields. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2025)
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.
We followed roads west of Faribault toward the Kilkenny and Montgomery areas. I gave up trying to keep track of where we were. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
THE WHEELS KICKED UP DUST as our van moved along back gravel roads in Rice and Le Sueur counties on a recent weekday. Randy and I were on a fall color drive that took us past cornfields and farm sites, past woods and wetlands, past trees blazing orange and those still green.
This farm site sits along Leroy Avenue, just off 160th St. W. between Shieldsville and Kilkenny. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
As we wound our way along winding roads and along straight grids west of Faribault, I felt what I always feel this time of year—a longing for the land. In this season of harvest, this season of leaves coloring the landscape, I yearn to connect with the soil, the earth, the agrarian heritage that roots me.
Corn awaits harvesting. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
I miss the land. I miss the roar of combines harvesting corn and soybeans, golden grain spilling into wagons or trucks. I miss the distinct, indescribable scent of autumn rising from fields. I miss all of it. A country drive in October helps ease the heartache of one who grew up on a farm, but left it fifty years ago.
This curving gravel road took us past wooded hillsides and a wetlands restoration area. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
This is the time of year, whether you’re rural, small town or city-raised, to take a drive into the countryside. Off paved roads. Onto gravel routes.
Some treelines were vivid with color, others not. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
I am always drawn to barns rising above the landscape. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
A rural intersection ablaze in color. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
Gravel forces a slower pace, offers opportunities to stop and appreciate that which unfolds before you. On this drive, it was the coloring of trees, just beginning, aged farm sites back-dropped by woods or surrounded by fields. Just being here in the rural-ness honored my past, filled my soul.
A Czech church and cemetery west of Montgomery. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
And then we paused at an historic country church nestled among cornfields near Montgomery. We walked the expansive cemetery. As I meandered and took photos, I heard the wind rustling the dried corn leaves, a comforting sound in the silence of the land.
Anna and John Frolik are among the early settlers buried at Budejovice. They were born in 1886 and 1887. Their photos adorn their tombstone. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
I wondered about the Czech immigrants who settled in the area, built Budejovice Church in 1868. What were their heartaches, their stories, their hopes and dreams? I expect they longed for the Old Country, for the familiarity of home, for the loved ones an ocean away.
This machine shed, surrounded by cornfields, sits just across the gravel road from the church and cemetery. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
Such thoughts filter through my mind whenever I am among the souls of the departed, my soles touching the land under which they lie buried. I don’t feel sadness as much as a sense of respect for those who came before me, who forged a new life in Minnesota with grit, determination and a whole lot of fortitude.
Cornfields flank a gravel road leading to a colorful treeline. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2024)
Driving the countryside in autumn evokes not only nostalgia and reflection, but also a sense of time passing. Leaves turn color. Crops morph to golden hues, ready for harvest, or already harvested. And dust rises from the land, carried on the wind, coating our van. Miles and miles and miles of gravel roads behind us, we arrive home. I’m exhausted. My shoes are covered in dust. But I feel content. Replenished. I needed this, this country drive that was about much more than viewing fall colors. It was also about filling my soul.
Harvesting corn in southern Minnesota. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
DUST RISES FROM FIELDS, clouding the air as combines rake through rows of dry soybeans.
Barely visible, the top of the same combine featured in the photo above. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
Combines comb corn rows, too, in this season of harvest in southern Minnesota.
Follow country roads, like this one in eastern Rice County, to view fields at a slower pace. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
Take a drive in the countryside these days and you will observe farmers hard at work, bringing in the crops.
A common site, semi trucks parked in fields, awaiting the yield, this one in western Rice County. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
As October moves to mid-month, a sense of urgency presses into long days in the field. By 7 pm, darkness envelopes the land and farm machinery still moves, like a mammoth beast lumbering across acres of corn and soybeans, eyes aglow.
A silo peeks above a cornfield in eastern Rice County. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
It is in this season of harvest that I feel a bit melancholy, missing my once close connection to the land. The scent of earth. The view of acres and acres and acres of crops drying to muted hues, visual evidence of a farmer’s work. The sound of combines roaring. The taste of dust and dirt. Golden orbs of soybeans sifting between fingers spread wide.
A farm site spreads across the land in western Rice County. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
While I once experienced all those first-hand on my childhood farm in southwestern Minnesota, today I feel an outsider looking in. Watching. Remembering. Feeling grateful for the years I lived on a farm, never realizing then just how much those days would mean to me later in life.
Grain bins, like these in eastern Rice County, symbolize harvest as storehouses for grain. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
Each autumn I yield to the call of harvest. I reconnect to the land. Observing. Recalling. Missing my farmer dad and my Uncle Mike, a bachelor farmer who lived the next farm place over to the east. They are decades gone now, their final harvests long-finished.
Acres of wildflowers bloom in a field off Rice County Road 20 between Northfield and Cannon City. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
These emotions rush like a blustery October wind into my thoughts as winter approaches. As harvest continues, as seasons pass and life goes on.
Cornfield to the right, farm site to the left, all part of a Sunday afternoon country drive in southern Minnesota. Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo October 2021.
TELL ME: Do you go for country drives to view the harvest? Or, if you live in a city, how do you celebrate autumn? I’d like to hear, wherever you live. I welcome harvest memories also.
A cornfield fronts a farm site between Faribault and Dundas in rural Rice County, Minnesota.
LIVING IN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA, as I have for my entire life, I feel a strong connection to the land rooted in my rural upbringing.
A barn roof is barely visible over a cornfield, rural Rice County.
Each autumn, I reflect on this time of bringing in the crops. Of gathering the last of the garden produce. Of harvesting corn and soybeans from the acres of fields that define rural areas. I miss the sights and sounds and scents of farming this time of year. Once-green fields muting to shades of brown, Combines roaring down field rows. The air smelling of drying leaves and of earth.
A back country road north of Faribault, heading to Dundas.
For those reasons, I always appreciate a drive through the countryside, especially along gravel roads. The pace is decidedly slower than traveling on a paved surface.
A grain truck awaits the harvesting of corn in rural Dundas.
Although farming has changed considerably with bigger machinery and bigger farms and bigger yields, the basic connection to the land remains. At least for me. It’s part of my creative spirit, of my being.
Grain bins define a farm site along a back gravel road in rural Rice County, Minnesota.
Yes, it’s easy to get nostalgic about rural life. I offer no apologies for that because I shall always feel grateful for the 17 years I lived on a farm. I learned the value of hard work, of living with minimal material possessions, of working together, of recognizing that inner strength and fortitude and resilience are important as are honesty and good character.
Country roads intersect near Cannon City.
I am thankful I used an outhouse during my childhood, pitched manure, picked rocks, walked beans, fed cows and calves, pulled weeds, didn’t get birthday gifts… There’s something to be said for having grown up in such a setting, in a way of life that by necessity requires significant physical labor and living within your means.
Harvest finished in rural Rice County.
A grain truck parked in Northfield.
Corn stalk bales line a Rice County field.
In the winter, my hands cracked and bled from exposure to water and the elements. In the spring, when I picked rocks from fields, dirt sifted into holes in my canvas tennis shoes. In the summer, the hot sun blistered my skin as I pulled cockleburrs. (We didn’t have sunscreen.)
Pumpkins and squash for sale from a wagon parked at a farm site along Rice County Road 1 west of Dundas.
A house in Dundas decorated for Halloween.
A seasonal display anchors a corner of a downtown Northfield floral shop.
And so these are my thoughts as I immerse myself in the season of harvest via a country drive. A drive that takes me from the countryside into town, to seasonal displays and thoughts of Halloween and Thanksgiving and the winter ahead.
The road ahead may not be easy…
I fully recognize that the forthcoming winter will challenge all of us. I am determined to stay the course during this ongoing global pandemic. To mask up, to social distance, to wash my hands, to connect only with my small family circle, to try and stay as healthy as possible, to care about others…to tap into my can-do farm girl attitude of strength, common sense and resilience. For this is but a season of life, one which requires each of us to think beyond ourselves, understanding that our choices matter now, more than ever to the health and safety of all.
ON A SULTRY SUNDAY SUMMER AFTERNOON of oppressive heat and humidity, I needed to get out of the house. Away. Into the country. On a drive. It was too hot to walk, to do anything outside of air conditioning.
Steady rain the night before kept the dust down on gravel roads we drove.
Following back county and township roads in and around Faribault, Randy and I got the rural fix we needed. For me, the crunch of gravel upon tires and the washboard vibration of a road in need of grading.
The corn crop around here looks good.
I needed, too, to see cornfields stretching across the land, tassels flagging fields. My heart aches at the sight, for the missing of living in the country. Memories still root me there.
And then I spotted a barn flashing bold red into the landscape on the edge of Warsaw. I’ve long admired that well-kept barn.
Weaving through Warsaw, Randy reminisced about living there decades ago as we passed his former rental place. At the Channel Inn in Warsaw, we paused only long enough for a photo of the vintage signage.
Without my telephoto lens on my camera, I couldn’t get a good shot of these turkeys. But you can make out two along the treeline and one by the field. The rest went the other direction.
And then we followed more gravel roads, routes not previously taken, but which revealed a PIG HOTEL sign on a house. I missed that photo op, but I promise to return. I almost missed the wild turkeys edging the woods.
A bit further, I saw the cutest little brick barn. Solid. As good as new. Beautifully poetic in its construction.
Past a gravel pit and an unknown lake and farm sites set among fields on rolling land, we aimed back toward town. Past Ableman’s Apple Creek Orchard, a favorite, and a roadside sign reminding us that we are not alone. Ever.
THE FARMER IN THE HOODED sweatshirt and jeans motions from atop the combine to the trucker across the field. He’s ready to unload just picked corn into the grain truck late on a Sunday morning near Sleepy Eye.
Scenes like this repeat throughout southern Minnesota as the fall harvest is underway. I embrace this season as much for the memories as for the sights, sounds and smells.
The farm-raised girl in me emerges, vicariously experiencing the harvest through a camera lens.
I feel this intense desire to return to the land every autumn. And last weekend an annual horseradish making party with extended family took me back to my home county of Redwood. Along the route there and back, I documented the harvest. It is the closest I come now to being part of the process of bringing in the corn and soybeans.
I miss the closeness to the earth that comes with growing up on a farm. Sure things have changed a lot in the nearly 45 years since I left rural Redwood County. But the imprint of harvest remains, still strong. You can take the girl from the land. But you can’t take the land from the girl.
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