On YouTube they have instructional videos on how to drive a tractor. Seem ridiculous that driving a tractor could be accomplished by watching a video, or by reading step by step instructions.

With the late start to spring seeding and the late start to summer fallowing, stepping into the tractor to help finish before the rain was exactly what was called for. Being organic means working the soil with a tractor and cultivator with spikes instead of duck foot shovels to break up the soil for the first round of weed control.

I enjoy tractor driving, even for hours at a time. I can see for miles. I enjoy watching the sky change colors. The deer and antelope aren't afraid as you work right past them. It's like having a secret window to their world.

The wind moves the grass and because it doesn't touch you inside the cab you can enjoy the beauty and the power of it. You watch storms approaching and clouds shifting shapes. I like listening to music, all kinds, but spiritual and classical are my favorites. It is a great time for creative thinking and an opportunity for lengthy personal prayer.

I watched a mother deer one evening getting up and immediately laying back down in her bed. I knew she was having her baby. The next morning, I watched as she left her bed to go over to the coulee and graze. I thought for sure she must have left her baby, as deer do. telling it to stay put and she would be back after she finished eating.

I continued to work the field for three hours when I got close miracle of miracles happened. This baby fawn jumped up and showed his place. So, I knew I had to watch for him. The closer I got to the end of the field the more nervous I came as I knew I needed to watch so carefully and then just like that the baby was inches in front of the large tractor's tire. I immediately moved to stop the tractor and at the same time he jumped up and ran, this time to a part of the field that I had already worked. He lived and I am still marveling that he moved at all, because most of the time they just lay wherever their mother tells them to lay.

I was still reliving the moment two days later and learned that many a farmer has killed a baby deer for exactly the same reason they don't move.

I ran through lots of different kind of birds' nest, knowing I was destroying them. Sometimes the eggs make it through, but not for long as the 15 hawks that flew above me dove down and picked up an egg in their pecks. One time I found a mother Hungarian partridges and chicks skimming through the weeds and grass. I think they all made it out safely, but for everyone that lived that time, I probably killed one that I never saw.

I am empowered by nature and love sitting for hours on a tractor watching the world around me. People don't take enough time in their days to just enjoy the creation around us, I know I don't. It takes a balance of needing the power of the tractor to make a living and needing the power of nature to make it worth doing.