I’m on the road again, but not too far from where I live. About 9-10 miles as the crow flies, or as my old dependable Toyota flies at 45-50 mph. I don’t like to break the speed limit at my age! But I do get there almost as quick as my grandson, Thomas Bailey, at 70-80 mph.
Wheat or as some scholars call it, the “Bread of Life,’’ is one of the oldest foods on earth. It’s where we get our delicious biscuits from. It is ground up for all kinds of cooking recipes and cereals, and is also used in many other food items. It has been planted and eaten since before ancient Egypt. Some scientists believe that wheat was first cultivated in Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers about 300 B.C., possibly even before that. Wheat and corn are the leading grains over rice and barley and other grains.
My grandson, Thomas Bailey, has been farming almost since he could walk. His daddy, Tim Bailey, would take him to the fields and hold him on his lap to help drive and change the gears on their big John Deere 4020 tractor — a real delight for a growing little boy following in his daddy’s footsteps.
Back in the not-too-distant past, Tim and his neighbors and friends in the Rich Hill community, David Knight and Mike Crimminger, used to plant cotton, corn and even soybeans. I recall several summers when they did some “out-of-the-truck” farming, selling corn for $3 a dozen (25 cents per ear) and they would always provide a “baker’s dozen,’’ adding an extra ear or two for good measure.
Mike, David, Tim and even little Thomas in his own way kept busy keeping the farm running. It was almost like a mini-Amish community. When one piece of equipment would tear up, the other community members would pitch in and help their neighbors gather in their crop.
Did I mention they did all of this while working full-time, 40-plus-hour jobs, some of them even swing-shift-type jobs, with overtime?
But I can’t in good conscience write this article without mentioning their wives — Sherrie, Margaret and Susan, who were all so supportive to encourage the men during challenging years when they had a famine-type year and barely broke even.
I heard one of them say, “Well, it’s really a labor of love. I ain’t in it for profit, and you have to take the good years with the bad years and trust the good Lord will help you endure, but I just love farming. It’s in my blood and been in my family’s blood for years.”
This past spring, Thomas bought an almost new combine harvesting machine as an investment in his farming. It has a 19-foot-long header implement (what we city folk might call an attachment, but farmers call them implements).
The header has reels on it that sweep the wheat, corn or soybeans into the massive combine. It then cuts the grain, threshes it and delivers it into a 200-bushel hopper. From there, it loads the grain into a truck and throws the straw back on the ground to be baled for hay. It is a lightning-fast piece of machinery, whose speed tops out at a whopping 2.5-3 miles per hour in a typical field.
I went with Thomas to Monroe, N.C., where he bought it, to drive it back home to Elgin community here in Lancaster. The header had to be removed because it was too wide to drive on the road. We loaded it on a trailer. I rode with him inside the combine’s cab, as it has a nice passenger seat inside.
We decided to travel the back roads as much as possible through Tradesville at its top road speed of about 12 mph to their farm off Doc Garris Road. It took us about 2.5 hours to get that combine to his house. Gavin Gooch drove behind us with his emergency blinkers on.
On a Friday during June, I knew they were harvesting wheat and I was so excited about helping them with their new piece of equipment, mostly because I knew I could ride along with them in the passenger seat.
Thomas told me, “Come on down, Pop! We will keep you busy.”
He said, “Pop, you can help drive us by driving a truck and we won’t even make you lift any hay bales either. And you can even switch up and ride in the passenger seat in the combine with me when you get tired of driving the truck. We’ll keep you busy because I know you are a good truck driver!”
So he put me to work driving a truck. They had several other of their friends and family working, too.
David Knight brought his accumulator, another piece of farming machinery. Its job is to accumulate (or collect) straw in the field and process it into strapped bales of hay. The hay is then loaded with a grapple hook onto the trailer. It can also unload the hay into the barn for future storage.
That day, Thomas or his daddy Tim were driving the tractor, with the accumulator behind it picking up the straw bales eight at a time. It all sounds easy, but trust me, it is not!
You still have to manually pick up some single bales of hay and stack them on the trailer. Kori Bailey, Thomas’ wife, (bless her heart!) was on back of the trailer picking up and stacking the bales to keep things running as smooth as possible.
It’s all a team effort and everyone pitches in to help.
Sherrie Bailey, Thomas’ mother, brought our supper to us in the field — sub sandwiches, chicken and tea, along with water to keep us hydrated. She also pitched in and drove one of the pick-ups with a trailer hauling the hay. Some of them worked until 10:30-11 that night to finish baling.
As the Good Lord would have it, all went well. Ain’t God good?
Sherrill C. Mullis is a longtime Lancaster resident.
Sherrill C. Mullis is a longtime Lancaster resident.
