Jeff was looking at his laptop screen at the kitchen table when his father, Dale, came in the back door.
“There’s coffee on,” Jeff said, not looking up. “Elaine’s at a meeting in the city, but she left some cookies on the cupboard.”
“I’d better pass on the cookies. I just had breakfast in town at Wong’s, and your mother’s been nagging me about eating too much.”
Dale helped himself to a cup of coffee, then poked his head into the living room to see what his grandson was up to.
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“I’m farming, Grandpa!” Connor announced. He was in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by all kinds of miniature farm equipment. “Do you want to help? You could run the combine.”
“Not right now, Connor. I need to talk to your dad. Make sure you have the sieves set right. No point throwing a bunch of durum out under the coffee table.”
Dale turned back to the kitchen table, grinning when he heard five-year-old Connor making engine sounds in the next room.
“We’ve got some decisions to make,” Dale said, putting his cup down on a coaster on the table.
“No kidding. If we’re going to get a full discount on this overpriced canola seed, we’ve got to book it before Friday.”
“Well, you might want to book more than you planned.”
This made Jeff look up from his screen.
“Ron Friesen’s finally pulling the plug. He booked an auction sale.”
This news didn’t come as a big surprise. Jeff, Dale and every other farmer in a 20-mile radius had spent a lot of time considering what might become of the Friesens’ four sections of high-quality farmland. Ron had to be nearing 75, and both of Mary and Ron’s daughters had moved East after graduating from high school. If the Friesens had other relatives waiting in the wings to take over, none of the locals knew about them.
“Geez,” Jeff said. “Are you kidding me? You found out about his auction sale at the coffee shop? I’ve been blowing snow out of that guy’s driveway every blizzard for the past three years, hoping we’d get a crack at that land one day. And you hear about it at coffee row, like every other clown?”
“I didn’t hear about it at the café. Ron phoned while I was in town. Your mom took a message.”
“Oh. Oops.” Jeff was embarrassed. “But it did sound like the kind of intel you’d bring home from breakfast in town. Do you think he wants to sell?”
“He asked your mom if we’d want to rent. Some of it, anyway.”
“That’s a relief,” Jeff said. “I don’t like the looks of land prices around here. Not with wheat and soybean prices falling. And all that fusarium in our bins.”
“Yup.”
“Just one problem,” Jeff said.
“Yup,” Dale said again.
They both knew the problem. Finding time. Rain and breakdowns had kept them harvesting until well after Thanksgiving this year. In September, it seemed like every time it was dry enough to get into the fields, it rained again. Then they’d lost three good days when their one-year-old combine broke down.
“If we add any more land to this farm next year, we’ll have to hang our Christmas stockings up in the cab of the grain truck.”
The men were both silent long enough for them to hear Connor talking to himself while he pushed his toys around. “Get that truck over to the combine,” the boy ordered.
“Greg’s been out here a lot this summer,” Jeff said. Greg was a salesman at the machinery dealership in town. “Kept asking if he could get us a quote on a second combine. He must have seen this coming.”
Dale just shook his head.
“I know,” Jeff said. “We spent most of August and half of September trying to figure out who was going to run just one combine. Beats me how we could keep two of the damn things going.”
“Yup.”
“But it would be handy to have two. We wouldn’t feel quite so sick when one went down.”
“Yup.”
“We haven’t put out an ad in a while. There might be someone we could hire.”
Dale didn’t say “yup” this time. Both of them were remembering the responses they’d gotten the last time they advertised for a farmhand. The long list of impossible candidates included a senior citizen from Ontario who said he’d “always loved gardening,” and a civil engineer from Malaysia who claimed to “have very fine English.” None of the applicants had experience operating any farm equipment — let alone an almost new line of expensive machinery with the latest GPS technology.
Jeff went to the kitchen for more coffee, and topped up both their cups.
“I remember when you were about Connor’s size,” Dale said. “You wore a hole in our living room rug, ‘farming’ the carpet. Just like he’s doing now.”
“That’s why we put in hardwood,” Jeff grinned.
“You couldn’t wait to get in the combine.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “I’d still like to get more time in there. Seems like there’s always so much else to do, just running around from field to field, keeping everything going.”
“That won’t get any different if we rent more land and pick up a second combine,” Dale said. “You’ll be one of those guys out driving around with a cellphone in one hand and a clipboard in the other.”
“Probably an iPad, Dad,” Jeff said. “I don’t think they make clipboards anymore… But… Yeah. The job’s changing. And I don’t know what I think about that.”
“Yup.”
“It would sure be nice to take on the Friesens’ north section. The one that’s right up against ours. He hasn’t seeded canola on that land for years. And it’s high enough, it won’t likely flood this spring.
Jeff’s computer dinged, and he glanced down at his screen.
“Dad, you won’t believe it. It’s an email from Greg. Sending over a quote on a used combine, same make as ours.”
“Huh,” Dale said. “That guy doesn’t miss a trick, does he?”
Dale and Jeff spent the next hour looking at the specs on the used combine, and estimating potential profits from renting more land.
“I don’t even know what to pencil in for hired help,” Jeff said.
“If that gardener from Toronto’s still available, you might get him at a discount,” Dale said, getting up from his chair. “I’d better get home for lunch. I’ll call Ron when I get home. I’ll tell him you want to make a deal.”
“All right,” Jeff said. “I’ll set up a meeting with Greg. Monday?”
“Yup,” Dale said. He poked his head into the living room again on his way to the door.
“Hang on,” Dale said. “Jeff, come take a look at this!”
Jeff went in to look. Connor was still “farming” in the living room. He had two identical combines moving in parallel lines across the floor.
“I thought he just had one,” Jeff said. “Connor, where did you get that new combine?”
“Greg,” said Connor. “He said you need another one too.”
Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan.
