The Struggle Continues

Nothing overly noteworthy of news has happened for the old Tugboat lately. I've been putting in long hours at the jorb lately. We're in the harvest season now, full swing. I'm trying to get all the necessary ratings and notes completed before the combine rolls in. We're carefully studying the forecast for all of my locations and mapping out an ever-changing plan of how to get our sites harvested as quickly, properly, effectively as possible. It's a neat puzzle solving exercise. Everyone else continues to generate news but I'll leave that up to them to share. I mean, it's their news after all. Mine is that we're still plugging away at soybean harvest. We were the last of my five colleagues to start. I'm not sure when we'll finish. The forecast is littered with rain, the enemy of field work. The 14 day projection can be a heartbreaking thing. I learned to never trust more than a couple of days ahead. If that. Not many of you dance with Mother Nature the way I do, at least not for as long as I do. It is part of what bonds together the small and tight Agricultural community. A common enemy than can be neither defeated or even challenged. Small victories like a system blowing around you or not getting as much rain as you feared are all you can hope for. But they do feel like things that you could celebrate. Often I find a smile creeping on to my wind burnt lips when something finally goes in my favour. When things turn bad it can feel really disheartening but when it is going well, when things are working and it's all getting done, there is no better feeling. It makes me feel like I'm doing what I was meant to do. There is a certainty to that which is reassuring in a way that words can't describe. I think I'm unique in that, which generally means that you aren't, but for me it might because I knew my path when I was young. Or maybe it was just that I set myself on a path to a place and now that I'm in that place I revel in the satisfaction of having completed that leg of the journey. I don't know. I'm just puking thoughts onto a screen about my personal experience for what I'm thinking more and more has become my own personal online journal. I'm hoping to go back and pull all of this into a file and print out a little leaflet of my journey over these past years to reflect upon as I lay dying in a cabin in the wilderness in my early 60's. But for now, I'll keep at it, there are soybean to harvest so the struggle continues.