Cultivating Corn.

  While I was cultivating corn June 1, remembering that I planted on June 10, last year, I was again struck by what a slow process it is.  This year it was almost trouble free, no tractor failure, etc., and yet the rate was 1.25 acres an hour.  At points it seemed forever yet it was only a few hours.  Memories came back of all the hours I spent cultivating during my youth.
  It also made me think of my father.  He was a horse man and came to tractors late. In 1941 he bought his first tractor, all 17 horse power of it, a Farmall B. With this and a team of horses he farmed until after the war he bought a Farmall H...1948 I think.  How did he do it?  By spending hours and hours in the field.
  Perhaps he should never have been a farmer.  Born in 1883 he moved as infant with his parents to a homestead in SD.  The oldest of four children, perhaps farming was assumed.  He was a very intelligent man with wide curiosity and he loved to read.  His education consisted of a few years, maybe 6, of a few months a year, in the same one room school I attended much later.  He did take a short agricultural course as SD State one winter.
  What did he think about during those thousands of hours in the field?  My first bishop, Elmo Agrimson, said not to underestimate farmers who had all those hours to think.  My few hours in the field gave me a renewed appreciation for what he patiently endured to make a living.