Short Spring Ride

Spring is easing in on the land. After dark personal winter but having mild winter weather instead of the forecasted nasty snow and cold, the pretty weekend felt like all winter was fading. DH needed a break from son #2 kitchen rebuild, and so I drove us to the farm to check on some bulldozing being done there. The air was warm but the furious wind was a March wind for sure.

Winter wheat was making tiny shoots like green spears reaching for the heavens. Yellow and white daffodils hugged farm house foundations waiting for lilac and tulips and forsythia to come. Contented cows rested on grasses mixed with saffron shades of dead growth slowly being replaced by spring greens. Once at the farm, the bulldozer was in action even on Sunday since the coming week is to be all rain. He worked while he could. He had already recovered much land, reshaping berms and dips like a boy with modeling clay. 

The black earth waited for seeds. The whole field seemed to quiver with expectation of growth. It looked still and lifeless, but the farmers knew life rumbled beneath. After a short bulldozing conference, we had time and inclination to drive about the other farms of the area which we had not done in years. DH named people who had once lived there. Even though the Johnsons might have lived on a piece of land for a long while, it might still be called “the Cantor place” or some such.

Nearby was once a tiny town called Kimball. It set as close the railroad tracks as possible without interrupting trains. It had a grocery, a barber, a small school house, a church at one time. Now it is practically a ghost town with abandoned homes and barns falling in on themselves. One house caught my eye, talking to me, calling to me about the woman who lived there once…how she worked flowers at her fence, at her door step, how she gathered eggs from hens that roamed among the flowers eating bugs on summer days.

We hated to cut the reverie short but needed to get on to check in at assisted living for his dad who will be 100 in May and my mother’s for quick visits before heading back to the kitchen job where sheetrock mud was drying. It felt good for a few hours to smell turned earth, feel wind on faces, to know that life rolls on with or without our permission.