16 May

The new donkey

by Jon Katz

  Until you have a farm, and I am not a real farmer, you don’t quite grasp how dirty, smelly, hot and messy farming is. It is God-awful work, relentless and always, always, dirty and hard. The tractor is the modern donkey of farm work, doing much of the digging, plowing, planting and hauling around of things. This time of year, the fields are filled with dust and the sound of diesel grunting and roaring as the farms are planted for the big summer crops. They dig, spray, furrow and seed. I rode in a farmer’s tractor for a few hours last week and it was mind-numbing – noisy, vibrating, hot and reeking of fuel and grease. I do not know how they do it. But hats off to them.

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