Yesterday I went into the first bean patch of the year to see how close the beans were, and they were beautiful and ready. So I sat down to pick. And that was the moment that needed a blessing.
It feels like it was just a few weeks ago that I planted those beans. It was May 16, two weeks later than usual because of all the rain. There was a brief window of opportunity where the ground was all ready and dry enough and I was desperate to get those seeds in the ground. I got on the tractor (that still had the bean planter on it from last year -- we are so rich in little tractors that we can leave implements on them for one purpose...no one else has so many antique tractors that start right up, I bet) and started it up -- but something was definitely amiss. After a few terrible grinding sessions while I tried to put it in first gear, I determined that there was no working clutch. So I turned it off and I put it into first gear and turned it back on again in gear and shot out of the shed, like Batman. I drove over to the field and turned off the tractor (because there was no clutch to help me stop). I set up the seeds in the planter and pushed the starter button again, careening straight into the field.
This reminded me of my long ago youth (very long ago, when I was about 4) -- my job was to drive the tractor in the corn field, keeping the nose of the Farmall H aimed between two rows of corn. My parents and the workers picked corn on both sides of the wagon that the tractor was towing. I was too short to reach the clutch, and not strong enough anyway. When it was time to start driving, my father would step up behind me onto the draw bar, lean on the starter button with the meaty part at the base of his thumb (I remember this) and the tractor would go. When it was time to stop, someone would yell "HO!" and I would push the little button with my toe and the tractor would shut off. I wonder how many times we really did this -- it doesn't seem very efficient -- but I do remember it, so it must have been more than once.
Anyway, that's why I knew that this was an okay thing to do when I discovered the 140 had no clutch. So I planted six long rows of beans and hoped they would come up.
They came up vigorously, but they huddled for weeks during that long cold spell in May. When it came time to cultivate them, I hopped onto the 1940-something Cultivating B and headed to the field. The engine was not working perfectly: it kept losing power and eventually stalling out. Once again, I was determined to get those beans weeded, and luckily the battery was strong so I could keep starting it again and nursing it along until it finally choked itself to death.
It is never my job to fix the tractors, I just use them, and I came home from both of those near-failure expeditions and told the mechanics (Mark and Jon) that I needed those tractors to work in ten days, when it was time to plant/cultivate again. Because most of my dreams still come true, both tractors were diagnosed and repaired on time. The one with no clutch turned out to be a rusted clutch plate, stuck like glue to the flywheel. Mark Trader said it was because a mouse nest was in the tractor and all that ammonia caused the metal to get welded together. It took him a whole day to wrestle that one apart. The cultivating tractor had a hole in the exhaust manifold, and that wasn't too hard to fix.
This is a very long way of saying that those beans grew in spite of all the hurdles, and they even have many fewer bean beetles than usual. They are glorious. Blessed are You, Creator of the Universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this season. Amen.
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