This Is Us: An Overhead Glimpse of Harvest 2022

Thanks to our neighbor, Mark Pike, for these drone images and his permission to share them. What a gift!

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Just like 6.4 million other people, I watched the series finale of a family television drama called "This Is Us" at the end of May. Just by watching my Facebook feed, I know I'm not the only viewer who had a Kleenex box nearby as I watched the finale episode about a family we all got to know and care about during six seasons of Tuesday nights.

I'm not sure how many people then scoured the internet to find quotes from the episode. But there was at least one. (That was easier than starting and stopping the DVR for me to take notes. And since I found a compilation of "This Is Us" quotes, I'm fairly confident that I'm not the only one.)

In it, the mom, Rebecca, is traveling on the metaphorical train toward death after suffering from dementia for several years. And I was struck by the words from her "conductor," William:

"The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. Truth be told, I always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Because everything ends. Everything dies. But if you step back, if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you're brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you'll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing." 

William to Rebecca, This Is Us, series finale

I saved the quote (and a few others). And I thought about it again when our neighbor, Mark Pike, sent some drone photos he'd taken of our harvest - our final one as active producers.

Undoubtedly, the drone gives that wide perspective - a little bigger picture than I'm able to see with my normal "boots-on-the-ground" view through my camera lens.

 

For some reason, the drone pictures - and that different look at harvest - had me pulling out the Kleenex box again.

 

 

Through the years, I've tried to document harvest to the best of my ability. Since I began Kim's County Line in 2010, I've made an even more concentrated effort, but the efforts to photographically show and tell the journey of wheat - beginning to end- have been part of my DNA for long before then.

I've taken some spectacular shots - and a whole lot that weren't noteworthy at all. But, for some reason, these photos taken from a bird's eye view were particularly poignant. 

"The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening."

 

That bears repeating, I suppose. But I also know this process is a little like childbirth. The mom develops a bit of amnesia about the rigors of the birth process itself. Otherwise, the whole world would be single children - or so the joke goes.

 

So, as I look back on 41+ years of farming with Randy (and a lifetime for both of us before that), I have a tendency to remember the good - the rides in the buddy seat on the combine, my book in my hand after the conversation was exhausted. ... The wildlife making a hasty retreat as the mighty machine takes another swath of field ... The vibrant green peeking through brown soil, a yearly miracle. ... The dewy raindrops caught on green wheat. ...The sound of wheat, rustling in the Kansas breeze. God's masterpiece sunsets sinking into the western horizon as the combine rumbles toward it and seems to gobble up the light. And so much more.

You don't wax nostalgic about yet another trip to the parts counter or the third flat tire in a week or your legs sticking to the plastic seat of the truck or the buckets of sweat. You realize that you're not bounding up the steps of the combine like you did when you were that teenaged truck driver. You aren't thrilled with the rash you develop during harvest or the pesky cheat that gets stuck in your socks. You don't fondly remember those phone calls to hire a Caterpillar to come pull both the combine and the tractor out of mud - and the accompanying bill. While Harvest 2022 was pretty smooth sailing the first week, perhaps I needed a reality check - and got one. We had a rain delay, and, when we got up and running again after a day and a half, I got the call that I needed to come help get the truck pulled out. (Plus, since we hadn't used the tractor for awhile, it had to be jumped before it could do its job. Mission accomplished - but it was a circuitous route.)

But those moments of aggravation don't take away from the life and lifestyle that we've lived and loved. It's not for everyone. We didn't do it perfectly. I'd change some things.

But, a bird's eye view helps me remember that it was - and is - a beautiful life. 

Toward the truck, that field finished

 

In another quote from "This Is Us," Dad Jack tells his kids:

“That’s what we’re doing, just collecting these little moments. We don’t recognize them when we’re in them because we’re too busy looking forward. But then we spend the rest of our lives looking back trying to remember them, trying to be back inside them.” 

 

So I find myself doing a bit of that. I think it's natural, as we change directions.

Mark also included a drone photo of Randy's folks' house. It sold on June 4, and a new family will begin building a life and making memories there, beginning in mid-August.

 

I just hope they'll look back - years from now - and have those moments to collect and remember, too. 

And, as for us, we may get done with wheat harvest today, after getting rained out yesterday again. Then it will be time to get things ready for the farm sale coming August 13. 

And, hopefully, just like William told Rebecca: "It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing." 

***

Mark shot drone footage two harvests ago. He didn't send any video from this harvest, but here are some repeats of 2020 videos

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I actually got a pretty awesome still shot from that 2020 harvest night, too. The sky was breathtaking. I enlarged this one to canvas size.

Harvest 2020

A shot I got Saturday night, June 25, reminded me of that one. 

Harvest 2022

For more from the post about the 2020 harvest, click HERE. And, thanks again to Mark!

A Different Perspective: Wheat Harvest from Above

NOTE OF THANKS:

All the drone photos and videos were taken June 18, 2020, by our neighbor Mark Pike. Thanks to Mark for this different look at our 2020 harvest! He gave me permission to use these on the blog today.

"I might need a drone," I told Randy.

My "need" was prompted by the photos and videos our neighbor, Mark Pike, shot by drone of us cutting wheat across from his house last Thursday evening.

I told Mark the same thing. He volunteered to let me come down and try his new toy "any time." But then, I started thinking about that.

He (and my kids) are of the video game generation. Joy sticks, electronics and such are second nature to them.

I, on the other hand, was my parents' "remote control" for the television back in the 1960s and '70s. There was no "clicker" to mindlessly glide through dozens of television stations. In fact, there were only three TV stations. It was a big deal when we added PBS as a 4th station beaming to our rural Pratt County farm home.

And I - or one of my other siblings - was the garage door opener. There was no clicking a button as you turned into the farm drive. It was child labor that heave-hoed the door up after a trip to town.

So I was imagining the damage I could do to Mark's new toy if I took him up on the offer to try it out ... and then promptly crashed it. Hmmmm - maybe not.

But the images were sure fun to see. Mark lamented that he'd tried - and failed - to capture the lightning that was flashing through the sky before a storm blew through. I lamented with him, telling him that it's not easy to achieve with still photography either - at least, by this amateur.

But his maiden journeys with the drone provided a different perspective than my dozens of photos taken on the ground the same night. (See Tuesday's blog, Beauty and the Beast, for those.)

Perspective - It's an interesting concept, isn't it? I've been reading a book this week called "The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness and the Men Who Could Be Me," by Bruce Feiler. A new NBC television show has been airing this summer called "Council of Dads," and I noticed in the credits that it was based on a book by Feiler. I signed up for it, and it was delivered on one of my trips to the Hutchinson Public Library parking lot.

In Feiler's real-life story, he chooses six of his friends who represent different parts of his life and could best speak to the different facets of his being. These friends were to fill the gaps for his young daughters in the event that Feiler would lose his battle with bone cancer. (The TV show has three men assembled for the same purpose, but it doesn't appear that the TV drama storyline has much in common with Feiler himself.)

One of the dad's in the book - the second Ben - says he would share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke with the twin girls:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

Live the questions ...

It seems kind of like looking at things from different perspectives - maybe comparing the drone's photo angles to those taken by still camera on the ground. We're both seeing and photographing the "same" thing, but the perspective changes.

My view of sunset changes if I'm looking ...

west ...

or south ...

or southeast.

I suppose it's because we are all colored by our experiences. We are affected by the direction in which we are looking and the direction from which we've come. Are we stuck looking at past slights and failures or do we look toward the future? What wins out? Is it the memories of the schoolyard taunts or is it the compliment for a job well done?

Perhaps it's a reminder to stop and think. Will we be colored by the positive? Or will the negative win the day? It truly is a matter of perspective, isn't it?

It's kind of like the parable of the six blind men with the elephant, who touch the beast in different places and come up with wildly different impressions because of what they "see."

It seems to me that our world could benefit from a look at different perspectives. No matter which side of the political aisle my friends claim, I would suggest there's some validity in at least listening to another's point of view ... whether it's politics, race or even whether someone plans to wear a mask in public or not.

I loved this quote from "The Council of Dads:"

Confidence comes from the questions. I would tell the girls to live their questions. Throw themselves passionately into the quest for new perspectives, just like their father, who would go anywhere in search of answers to his questions. ...

What I love about the Council of Dads is that if your girls are too young to hear your voice, you can surround them with voices that will, in the totality of symphony, create sounds of their father. No specific instrument does it. Sherwood's drum may be beating too loudly, or maybe Black's or Stier's will screw things up. But Linda (Feiler's wife) will conduct the orchestra in such a way that the girls will hear enough music for you to be always present.

Ben Sherwood from "The Council of Dads"

Who knew thinking about drones and still cameras might be deeper than whether to fork over some money for a new toy?

Maybe our world could heal - at least a little bit - if we all were passionately on the quest for new perspectives. Worth a try?

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By the way, I highly recommend the book. It is beautifully written.

Drone videos are by Mark Pike, Stafford. (It's on my Vimeo Account, so it says Kim Fritzemeier)