Another update from guest blogger Ashley Reding

Oh, the hard life of a farmer… As you can tell from this picture of my husband, Aaron, farmers do occasionally get to kick back. What might surprise you is that this picture was taken while he was planting corn! Oh, the joys of auto-steer. Kathryn (9) just noticed last night that I could drive our van without pushing the gas pedal. I laughed because she was so amazed at cruise control, yet doesn’t bat an eye at the tractor driving itself across the field. (For those of you unfamiliar with auto-steer, I’ll talk more about it next week.)

Since last week, I am happy to report that we planted the last of our corn – including what was replanted. Kathryn is becoming quite the photographer this summer. She is already working on photographs to enter in the county fair, and took these two great shots of corn fields – one obviously much more mature than the other.We are nearing the end of the soybean planting and will soon be harvesting winter wheat.

This week I had a routine checkup with my doctor (I am diabetic.) We spent much of the time talking about farming which she knew little about. They say most Americans are at least four generations removed from the farm (which is true in my case), so it is no surprise that many people don’t understand today’s farms.

What I found interesting is that my doctor thought farmers owned all of their land. She was really shocked – and I was shocked that she was shocked! I thought I should add this to my mental inventory of things that farmers think that everyone knows, but they really don’t. Here are a couple more:

1. In town, a car with caution lights on usually meansthe person has a flat tire or is trying to carry items in their car that actually require a truck. In the country, a car with its lights flashing probably means there is a big piece of machinery close behind. Slow down and move over! Aaron gets so frustrated when people don’t slow down, but I have to defend those who have no clue what this means!

2. Another misconception is that farmers are busy in the spring and fall, but they relax in the summer and winter. Ha!! I suppose some farms do still operate this way, but we do not. Summer is when we harvest wheat and apply crop protection products to the soybeans. We are also involved with Farm Bureau and various commodity groups that have summer and winter meetings. Additionally, we attend training sessions in both summer and winter to improve our farming processes and learn about new technologies. This past winter, we were out of town four weeks in an eight-week period! And that doesn’t include the additional one and two-day trips sprinkled throughout the winter months. Of course summer and winter are also filled with planning for the upcoming season, which takes many, many hours.

Farming is never a world in which I thought I’d live and I am on the list of those who had many misconceptions about farming. I’m learning new things every day and am so happy that I can teach Aaron and our family new things about business practices that help our farm. For two total opposites, we work well together!