It sure has been windy. I was driving to St. Ansgar, Iowa, the day after Thanksgiving and the wind was blowing dried corn husks from the harvested fields onto the road. One husk wrapped itself around my car antenna and it looked like a golden flag whipping in the wind. It clung to the antenna for about 10 miles. I was hoping it would stay on and be an antenna identification for when I parked in a parking lot.

It amazes me how fast the farmers can harvest the corn and beans. My husband and I farmed with draft horses for eight years. Tom cut hay with the horses, planted small grain, and we put up loose hay with rope slings and stored it in the hayloft. We grew five acres of corn each year. Tom would plant the corn in the spring and lay the rows out with wires so he could cultivate in two directions. His favorite corn to grow was called Minnesota 13, as it was self-pollinating and could be saved for seed. In the fall, he would shock a large portion of the corn and the rest we would hand pick. Our team of draft horses was named Nancy and Sadie. The horses pulled a green-painted wagon out to the cornfield every fall. The wagon was hand-built by a shop class from Medford, Minnesota in 1954. It had a high backboard on one side so that when we tossed the corn in as we picked the field, the corn would hit the high side and drop into the wagon. My son, Danny, got very good at pitching the corn into the wagon. When he started to play baseball in Blooming Prairie the kids asked him how he had learned to throw so well. He didn't want to tell them he had been pitching corn into a wagon since he was five, mainly because he didn’t think they would believe him.

It is hard now for me to believe that we farmed with horses, but we did.

The man who owned our farm before us had a dad who had farmed with horses all his life. Our neighbor had draft horses and he cut hay with them. We had lived in the mountains of Ireland before we moved to this area and helped the farmers stack loose hay by hand and we cut turf (peat) with a spade and sheared sheep with hand shears. We were attracted to farming with simple tools and being connected to the land.

We saved seed corn each fall by sticking the ears of corn on nails that were mounted onto heavy boards. We did this so the seed would dry evenly. During the winter months we shelled the corn off the cobs into a large aluminum garbage can while we sat around the wood stove in the kitchen.

One winter, it snowed heavily before we could get all the corn picked and we were still picking it in early April when the snow started to melt. The snow was too deep for the horses to pull the wagon through the drifts. Tom would walk through the drifts and hand-pick corn each day for the animals.

Our neighbor now farms our land with tractors and he does it organically. When my older kids tell people how we farmed when they were young, no one can believe them. People in our area didn't quite know what to make of our lifestyle when we were farming. Some thought we were Amish wannabees and others thought we were Irish immigrants. We were young and we wanted to farm and we had no money. We were not afraid and didn’t know what we were getting into and had nothing to lose. I don't miss all the constant work that we could never get away from. Tom doesn't miss worrying about getting the fields planted and harvested anymore. I still love farming and I worry about the future of it. I see that few people have any connection to the land anymore and I always want to keep this connection.

Sheila Donnelly can be reached at 434-2233 or by e-mail at :mailto:newsroom@austindailyherald.com