(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s)

You can take the boy off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.

Yep, that’s right, I’m getting just a touch homesick for the farm back home.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad if were living in Minneapolis, Chicago or Vladivostok, but here we are right in the middle of Kossuth County, Iowa.  For acres and acres as far as the eye can see, farmers are reving up their tractors for spring planting.

It’s just a little tough for a farm-boy like me to sit inside and peck away at a keyboard while the farmers are getting ready to stir up some dust.

Six months ago I’d have never have admitted that I missed the cows either.  While I was in high school I would have given anything to get rid of those dirty so-and-sos.  I guess I was suffering from just one too many dung-filled tail-slaps in the face.

So here I sit.  No milk buckets to carry, no manure to pitch-I’m getting soft.  For weeks I’ve been telling myself that I’m not gaining weight, but I’m sure getting tired of cutting myself in half everytime I put my pants on in the morning. 

I used to have calluses on my hands too.  I was pretty proud of those.  These weren’t your mere hardening-of-the-skin calluses, but real hard-as-leather-discolored-skin calluses.  When I was a little tyke I couldn’t wait until I had hard dark hands like Dad.  Then I would be a real farmer.

Now I don’t even have dirt under my fingernails.

Every now and then I hop in my pickup and go fir a drive in the country.  Just to pretend. 

There is nothing quite like the thrill you can get from listening to a heavy diesel tractor idling in a field or farm yard.  It’s quite a feeling of power to know that just a the touch of your hand, you can send that tractor roaring off down the field to rip up all those nasty weeds.

The old tractors are fun too.  We had several Farmalls.  An “H,” a “Super M” and a “Super MTA” were the mainstays of power on our little farm You just couldn’t destroy those old tractors- you just recycled the them.  Every 6 or 7 years we would tear them apart, fix them up, and put them back together again and they would be nearly as good as new.  Through the entire process you prayed that you didn’t have any extra pieces left over when you were finished.

Unlike many youngsters, I was no stranger to metal tractor seats.  More than a few evenings it was more comfortable for me to stand than sit day after day in the field.

In order to stop this rambling reminiscence before it gets out of hand, I’ll tell you that since I am no longer a real farm boy, I’m going to pretend in our backyard.

Much to my wife’s growing dismay, I’ve started some plants in a sunny window of our spare room and I’ve got little packets of seeds heaped up in the middle of the dining room table.  I’m just raring to go for “spring planting.”

Next week I’m going down to a hardware store and pick out a shiny new shovel, rake and hoe.  I can already tell this is going to be fun, I think.

Meanwhile, Mary wails in the background, “What are we going to do with all this stuff if it all grows?”

I guess she just hasn’t realized that crop surpluses are a part of farming.