The Tractor That Drew a Heart
My new autosteer tractor spent a whole night sowing wheat in a perfect heart, and I found out from a man in a helicopter.
I did not want the GPS autosteer. I want that on the record. My son talked me into it, saying a modern tractor drives a straighter line than any man who has been up since four. He installed the thing in October, set a program, and went off to a rodeo. That night I was supposed to be seeding the north quarter, but the dust was settling and a hot supper was calling, so I figured I would let the machine do a few passes while I ate.
The tractor did what it was told, which is where the trouble began. My son had loaded a map file for practice, and the practice file was something his girlfriend had made as a joke. I did not know that. All I knew was that the tractor was making long, graceful curves, and I thought it was a new kind of contouring. I went to bed pleased. In the morning the whole quarter was planted, every row curved, and nobody had a clue what they were looking at.
The first I heard of it was from the man who sprays for the co-op. He called at seven and said he had been up in his helicopter, and I should go out and look at my wheat. I stood at the section line with my coffee and thought, that is a pretty field. It had a point at the bottom, two big lobes at the top, and a smaller heart inside it, because the file had been generous. I counted forty acres of heart. Forty acres.
I could not disk it under, because of the cost of fuel, and the wheat came up green and clear by November, and people began driving out from Enid on Sunday afternoons to photograph it. A woman proposed to a man in the road ditch. It was a very emotional moment, and I stayed in the truck. According to the NASS acreage report, that quarter still counted as wheat, and it yielded fine. My son wants to do a clover next year. I told him that I am sixty-one years old, and I will not be told what shape to plant by a machine that cannot even eat supper. Somebody at farm.FM says a country song about the whole thing is overdue.
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