I look forward to tilling on the tractor because it gives me a unique chance to reflect on the season.

To start tilling, I line the tractor up with the bed ahead, drive forward over the bed, and drop the spinning tiller implement into the soil. To make a nice bed, you have to always be paying attention: looking forward to make sure you are straight, and backward to make sure you are tilling at the right depth.

When I’m looking back and forth, I see the old crop in front of me and the colorful, mulched remains behind. It marks the end of that particular crop, and I can’t help but reflect on what it looked like before, the time I spent picking it, the conversations I had, what I was thinking about or what the weather was like that day. I think about how I’ll always remember where the potatoes or the squash were this year, and how my coworkers who have been here longer remember them being elsewhere before.

While I’m up on the tractor, looking at the farm from a slightly different angle, I think about the constant life cycle of farming and I feel grateful to play a part in it.

~Henry