Years in the Tractor Seat

In our family, we kids started doing tractor work when we were less than ten years old, and we were trained in a very linear way, first one skill, then another, then another. Always with an emphasis on efficiency, safety, and not hurting the equipment. We were asked to do tasks that went on for hours and hours and hours (mostly mowing) and we were only asked to do it when we were the best person for the job, not because it was fun or because we wanted to. Sometimes it was fun. We didn't always want to do it.

We learned how the tractor is supposed to sound when it is working at its best level, when it is not straining and when it is at maximum output. We learned how to manage on hills, how fast or how slow to go for different tasks, and what to watch for so we didn't cause damage to implement or tractor. Lani spent the most time on tractors, then Charles, then me. Anna was the least interested and the least requested. I did not have to hook up my own implements so often -- I was generally set up and told what to do and I did it. Lani and Charles were much more mechanically adept and they did everything from beginning to end. Hooking up tractors is not complicated but it takes an awareness of many different things, plus a good back and a lot of patience, actually.  

The sequence of learning for me was : pulling something (wagon), raking (a machine that is towed and the gears are related to the wheels, not a Power Take Off, is adjusted by lowering and raising the whole boom by turning cranks), mowing with a rotary mower (PTO, but you don't have to be too terribly precise about perfection because you can go over an area again if you miss something), mowing with a sickle bar mower (much more complicated, PTO, multiple skill sets required), disking with hydraulic disks, baling (never got good at it, just did it because I had to, super complicated). That was pretty much it for the years between 4 and 24 years old. Many, many hours of those jobs. In later years, we got more varied equipment, but the skills I learned in those first 20 years all applied to all that followed. Now, I have been driving tractors for over 50 years. I know that people learn enough to get by in just a few years, but I will say that like anything else, years matter.  

This is all to say that we can't teach anyone very much in a year. We can share the experience of operating equipment of different types in different conditions. But learning to do anything for real will take years. In the last five years, I have learned so much more than I knew before because I have had to become the person who gets ground ready in Loudoun. Before that, I only did it in Vienna. Completely different soil, completely different tractors and even different kinds of spaders. It has been an education, shifting to Loudoun and all the different things we do.

Here is how I think about tractor work, now that it is almost exclusively my realm, due to bad knees and also being in charge of the whole sequence.  I make lots of decisions while I am on a tractor. I decide what parts of the plan need to be changed due to soil conditions. I decide when it is time to do stuff and when it is not time quite yet.  I am in charge of how it all unfolds. This is one of the most interesting and satisfying parts of my job. As Carrie has learned, we have to be ready for the plan to change on a moment's notice, whenever the soil says.  So sometimes I think we will do one thing and instead we end up doing seven things in fast succession. This is just how it goes.

I can help teach someone to be a tractor operator, but not a tractor driver. In my experience, it is like the difference between working on a farm and being a farmer.  I did not claim the title of farmer until I was maybe in my late 40s and possibly even later.  It took that long for me to get from being someone who works on a farm to someone who was a farmer. But part of that is because I was on a farm with other farmers already in place. I took direction for the first 20 years, I did things the way I was taught for the next 20 years or so, accumulating skills, and then finally I was ready to start to think and plan. To me, that’s when I got to claim the title of farmer.

There are much quicker paths to becoming a farmer nowadays. Young people and old people are learning from conferences and workshops and mentors and videos. They get lots of advice from people who have spent years in the tractor seat. But there is no substitute to putting your own butt in that tractor seat and learning what 2100 RPM sounds and feels like when you are mowing or spading. There is no substitute for being in the same boring movie over and over and over, even when you know just how it is going to end. That is how you get to be a tractor driver and eventually a farmer.