My Summer Job: Farming With Dad

This summer flew by as usual and it’s already been gone for almost 3 weeks for me. However, I wanted to give some insight to what my summer job was. Thankfully, my Dad has been the subject of many of my photography projects so he’s used to having me having my camera out when I’m with them. Also, it’s my Dad’s birthday today so is the perfect day to post this!

Every year since I’ve been in high school and maybe younger, my summer job has been working for my Dad on our family farm. Thankfully this summer we got a lot of rain. More than we have the past 4 years since we were in a drought. Rain means I was kept pretty busy.

Most of the time I spent my day on the tractor plowing due to the rain. My Dad and I both agreed that this summer is the most I’ve had to plow and we weren’t complaining about it. So what seemed like every day I would hop onto to one of our “Green Beasts”.

Why do we plow:

We plow after a crop is harvested and before a crop is harvested. After a crop is harvested you want to plow up the ground and whatever is left of the crop so you can prepare it to be planted again. Also for weed control and to keep the ground soft. If you don’t plow the ground it just keeps getting harder and harder especially if it’s not raining. It also starts to blow away if the wind is up. Anytime, you drive by someone’s field and see it blowing away and creating a dirt storm they should likely plow that up.

Anytime it would rain, plowing would start all over again. Once the fields were dry we’d take the tractor out there and start plowing to kill the weeds as soon as we could. Weeds are no good. There’s a reason you’re momma pulls the weeds in her yard. Same for farmers. We don’t want those in our crops. Ain’t nobody got time for weeds.

What I do on the tractor:

Luckily for me our tractors all have GPS steering on them. That means it basically drives itself and all I have to do is turn it around at the end of the field. Every now and then I’ll have to get off and clean stuff off the plow.

Being on a tractor all day can get pretty boring. I listen to the radio. Country stations. Old country stations. Oldies station. I know all the current country songs word for word whether I like them or not. Mostly I do a lot of listening to music and thinking. Being alone on a tractor all day means you get a lot of thinking done.

Sprinkler repair

The other main job I did while working with my Dad this summer was working on a sprinkler. I was honestly very happy to be off the tractor!

Irrigation sprinklers water our field so our crops can grow. This one particular sprinkler had a couple of towers that weren’t moving when they needed to. The crop below is sorghum silage.

My Dad had to repair the gear boxes and motors on both towers. I promise I helped out! I just had to whip out my camera for a few pictures.

In the picture above we took off the tire and replaced the gear box on this one. The gear box is the circular shaped thing on the far right.

Next we had to replace the drive shaft which uses a small motor. This included a bit of electrical work.

My Dad had to climb to the top of the sprinkler tower to make sure everything was hooked up and looking right from up there. Pretty soon we got everything working and the sprinkler was good to go!

Branding

Another task we had this summer was branding. My Grandpa got a load of summer cattle in, so we had to brand them. We gave them their basic shots, castrated the bulls, and branded each steer.

And that just about covers what I did while working with my Dad this summer. I’m so happy that I was able to spend my summer at home working alongside my Dad. It allows me to be grateful for all he does for my family and to appreciate how hard he works to keep his farm running.

If you have any questions about life on the farm please don’t hesitate to ask!! Have a great day everyone!