We are in the middle of harvest. Taking time to write this and drink coffee is a great luxury.

There is a grease gun calling my name right now. “Sheesh, I’ll be right out. Can’t a guy have a break?” The answer to that is no, unless it’s raining or you’re broke down.

I did take a day to attend a funeral and a wedding. None of the participants were farmers. So, their lack of timing can be forgiven.

There are about a half million farmers in the United States who grow corn. Many of them are in the fields now, bringing the crop in. Add spouses in support roles, elevator workers, fuel truckers, mechanics, and you have a whole region of people engaged in this seasonal jubilee.

It’s about a six-week adrenaline rush. It is made more enjoyable by good yields, which mostly holds true this fall. Every bit of thought, money, and effort invested in a field comes down to a final number: BPA, bushels per acre. Whatever profit you will or won’t make depends on that number.

I think a lot about corn and soybeans this time of year. The goal is to get as many beans and kernels into a bin or to the elevator as safely, quickly, and efficiently as possible. It’s what we do all day. When I wake in the middle of the night, I think about corn and soybeans. They even creep into my dreams.

Modern harvests are different from my dad’s harvests in many ways. I remember the corn picker wrapped around the 560 tractor that stripped ears from corn plants and conveyed them to a trailing wagon. A “heat houser” to cut the wind from my dad’s face was the only comfort afforded him.

Back then, all our corn went to feed animals. We sold milk, meat, and eggs. We didn’t grow soybeans till my dad bought a self-propelled combine in the mid-60s. Soybeans were sold off the farm. Before that, only a few loads of wheat went to Sleepy Eye Farmer’s Elevator.

Harvest when I was young stretched over all of summer. Baling hay, harvesting grain, chopping silage all proceeded picking ear corn. Field work had to fit around essential and daily animal chores. Hungry animals took priority, understandably so. A pig could squeal whereas a corn plant didn’t let you know it needed attention.

I admire my dad and his generation of farmers greatly. There really weren’t days off. You’d have to say the crop farming we do today fits an industrial model of agriculture that has evolved. The corn and soybeans that I am harvesting are commodities that go to supply a whole processing system.

Much still goes to feed animals. But those are almost all in CAFOs now: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

Was the move from small family farms raising animals to CAFOs inevitable?

That’s a giant topic. There are eight billion of us on this planet. Perhaps the industrial model is the best way to feed them. I’m not sure.

Of course, we are growing these row crops for “food and fuel.” The fuel part of that is ethanol that consumes over a third of our nation’s corn crop. Soy diesel is a small but growing user of our soybeans. My corn goes to Heartland Corn Products near Winthrop where it is made into ethanal. Owning shares in that has been consistently beneficial to our operation.

Is it the best use of the most fertile soil on Earth to put its production into cars instead of mouths?

I’m not sure about that either, but it is another giant topic I’m going to skirt here.

There is time on the tractor and combine to consider big things, but then you have to return to the task at hand.

Another difference from my dad’s harvest is in my pocket. I use my phone to check the markets a couple times a day. I look at the weather forecast hundreds of times. The weather will be what it will be. But subconsciously, I feel I can will it to be what I want if I look at my six weather apps often enough.

Phones are useful for calling people, too. (Duh.) I can call Pam to pick me up here and give me a ride there. I can call my favorite people this time of year, the mechanics at Miller Sellner Implement. “The corn head is making a squealing sound. It’s sort of like ‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRREEEEEEE!'”

I also text farmer friends to compare our days. With one group, we share Pictures of Woe. Things that break down, screw ups we have, machines that get stuck. Grain spills are a favorite of our group. It is a great service we offer. When the rest of us see one of these Pictures of Woe, we immediately perk up. “Gosh, I guess I don’t have it so bad.”

I asked a farmer friend the other day, “So, is this fun?”

We agreed, it can be. There are clear tasks to accomplish on your way to clear goals. Except for those occasional days from Hell that we all experience, the stress can be invigorating. Most of us work with family or a friend, so there’s camaraderie.

An old column came back to me. In 1993, I wrote this:

“This last summer, a radio ad gave farmers a sense of time left. A commercial for some seed or herbicide began, ‘You farm for a living. You only have about forty harvests in your lifetime. You want to do the best job you can.'”

“Forty isn’t very many. Forty corn rows are only a hundred feet over there. Forty pigs aren’t a penful. Forty bales don’t fill half a rack.”

Since then, I’ve pushed past forty. In soccer, they call this “extra time.”

There was an evening last week when a colorful sun was setting in the west. Exactly opposite, in the east sky, a harvest super moon was rising. My texting buddies were on tractors or combines. One of them commented that we are blessed to be doing this.

Yes.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.