Independently Speaking By Brent Olson

Walk

Sunday night I took a long walk.

I planned to take a short walk, but the wind was low, the temperature moderate and the mosquitos absent, so when I got to the end of our quarter mile long driveway, I took a right and kept walking.

Since we live in the middle of ten acres of trees, with the grove surrounded by a couple hundred acres of corn, I have no idea what’s going on in the neighborhood unless I wander out to where I have a view. I’d been hearing some noises that sounded like harvest, so I thought I’d go take a look.

When I got out far enough to see, harvest was in full swing — turning and burning, as my dad used to say.

I was vastly relieved. Even though it’s technically not my problem, I’ve been worried about harvest for a month or more. This year we’ve gotten about twice as much rain as the average. The last time it was this wet was in 1957, and that year my Great-Uncle Carl, who lived where we now live, was committed to Willmar State Hospital for electro-shock therapy. My dad told me they couldn’t harvest soybeans until after the ground had frozen. Unfortunately, duck hunters had walked the flooded fields and they’re frozen footsteps raised in the mud and knocked out sickle sections left and right. I can see why Uncle Carl had some anxiety issues. I never went that far down that particular road, but I have vivid memories of rutted fields, stuck combines and vast frustrations. So far this year, I’m not seeing that, at least in this area.

I watched the massive machines trundling up and down the fields and, honestly, I wasn’t a bit jealous. I farmed for 30 years, at a reasonably high level. I paid my bills, paid off the farmland I bought, and put three kids through college. The fact that I came out the other end with my body, mind, and pocketbook more or less intact is a win, but I was ready to try other things. A mile and a half into my walk, I started thinking about a board game we’d played as a family. Players are required to answer various questions, and one of which was about dealing with a job you hated. I was stumped, because I can’t remember ever hating a job. Of course, I grew up on a livestock farm during the not-so-very profitable 1960s, so my standard for a desirable job is pretty low. I mean, I didn’t yearn to cram the last bale up under the rafters of the haymow on a 90-degree day or fix a broken manure spreader in the snow, but I didn’t hate my life when I was doing it either. Maybe my best skill is quitting a job before I hate it.

I’d turned off the road and walked the length of the field toward our slough. After a couple years in the weather, my quartz-topped picnic table set among a group of Ponderosa pines is showing zero wear. I keep suggesting it to people as a lovely place for a picnic, but to my knowledge no one has taken me up on the offer, which makes me a little sad.

The sun was on the horizon, so I headed home. A couple of decades before the government told farmers they needed to put buffers around bodies of water, my dad and I planted some prairie grass along the edge of our slough and put in a two-row windbreak. When planning what to plant, we’d asked to have everything in the windbreak be something wildlife could eat. A third of the trees we planted were oaks, and I’d discovered that the deer weren’t willing to wait for acorns, and instead nibbled the saplings down to nothing every year. Now, a quarter of a century later, I have zero mature oaks, but a lot of oak bushes that serve no purpose at all. I’d complained, and the person who’d done the planning told me, “Yeah, the deer will do that. What are you gonna do?”

I had several suggestions, but nothing I could say out loud. Now I keep thinking I should fence off the surviving oaks, but the windbreak is a mile long — I can’t afford that much chicken wire.

The line of shrubs worked out better. Every other year there’s a good crop of plums, and we usually have a window of about three days between when the plums are ripe before the critters clean them out.

Same deal with the hazelnuts.

I got back home just at dark, closed the chicken coop, and went inside. Sunday was ending and Monday was on the horizon. And that was okay.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson