The Creation of a Cornfield

Have you ever wanted something? But that something is one of those things where it won't happen for so long that it's more or less a dream? You run the pictures of "how it will be" over in your head. You plan and pretend, seeing yourself in your mind's eye of how you will act, how great it will be? I know I do. These little games I play in my head get me through the frustrations of desire, impatience and longing.  The imaginings of a goal keep the spirit alive and moving forward.

The past month has been surreal. I have to stop now and again to remember that this is all really happening. It's happening now. The dreaming, the wishing, the planning...it's no longer wisps of color, the movie motion picture that plays behind our skulls, but tangible and real.

So many times I would think about the musky smell of soil as the plow slices through the earth and flips the ground to the sky. I would read books on farming and think, "one day, I want to live like that." Then all of a sudden, we are!

For us, and for so many of you I'm sure, farming is more than tractors and plows and plants and animals. It's more than something functional, ...a means to an end...it's just more. It's something romantic. A way of being, a philosophy of life inherently human and simple.

I keep looking for qualifiers. For labels. When we get a tractor, then we'll be farmers, When we get a barn, then we'll be farmers. When we get goats, chickens, process our own meat, grow our own food, hay our own field, plow our own land, then we'll be farmers. Perhaps it's because I wasn't raised on a farm. I keep looking to live up to my own romantic ideals. It's probably insecurity, but I'm shocked to see that it's actually working.

Planting a field of corn was one of these romantic goals on the checklist of my own insecurities. We couldn't afford the equipment to do anything worth while, so I didn't think that it would happen anytime soon. We had planned on planting a small 10x10 corn patch by hand, and praying for successful cross pollination.

Then, before I know what's happening, we have tractors and equipment being loaned to us. Old and new friends coming through, and helping our dreams become a reality. The cool thing is that some of this machinery is over a hundred years old, and was once pulled by horses!

Over the next few posts I want to take you through the different steps that we took to plant our corn. (I hate to promise anything at the moment as we have moved onto the process of haying now, which is even more involved than planting...but I will try...) We hit many road blocks along the way, and the corn was late getting in the ground, but it's there, and it's growing, and it's amazing!

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