I watch in awe as my small-framed, five-foot, seven-inch daughter drives our John Deere 8345R, pulling the 1,050-bushel grain cart like it’s her business. Which is good because that was her job this past weekend. And, when she pulled up next to the semi-truck and trailer that her father and I were in to unload it, I nervously said to her father, ‘She is so close.’ He assures me she is exactly where she needs to be.
I then watched Cassie evenly unload the grain cart into our hopper bottom trailer and quickly make a mad dash, driving away to hustle back to the combine. Once again, she is only a couple of feet away from the 8-row corn head with one hand steering and the other one taking another a call from the combine driver. Her grandfather.
Stubborn and a tad grouchy with rain on the horizon, Grandpa Jim gives her orders on where she needs to go. She sternly replies, “I know where I need to be.” Not too many people get away with talking to my husband’s 68-year-old father like that, but his 17-year-old granddaughter does. After all, she kinda runs the show.
Cassie is reliable and quick, and her driving skills have always turned heads. At age 11, she helped her grandfather haul round bales off a field. Cassie drove the dully and flatbed trailer around the field as her grandfather stacked round bales on the trailer. The twosome did this for hours, and then when they were done, Cassie pulled up around the barn and backed the truck and trailer in between two semi-trailers and dropped the trailer. The men watched her in awe. Soon after she was promoted to grain cart driver.
As a grain cart driver, Cassie must be a great mind reader. She must understand all those hand signals that are hard to interpret and hard to see when the sun is blaring through the window. Grandpa Jim likes to communicate with radios; Cassie does not. The day those radios mysteriously went missing, Cassie received 20 phone calls.
Those who have ever had this job understand all too well that the grain cart driver often is the person that takes all the blame. “Why is corn on the ground?” And demands you to speed up, then slow down and don’t drive through that. And, yells where the heck are you? That’s when my Cassie replies, “Grandpa, I can only drive so fast.”
Over two days, Saturday and Sunday, Cassie clocked in more than 20 hours. Only farmers will understand that isn’t a typo and only a farm kid will appreciate those long hours equal a heck of a paycheck, making it all worthwhile.
Paul Harvey said, “God made a Farmer,” but what he didn’t say, is that God also made a grain cart operator who can stand the toughest situations. Even when the operator is a high school senior, who I remind if you can successfully run the grain cart, then you can do anything.
