Randi Beckley – Beckley Harvesting Inc.
Normally at this time of year, I’d be writing to you all from Texas: this year however, things are different. Things are drastically, terribly different.
This year I am staying at home, watching my family travel the harvest run without me. This year I will stay home and sit beside my husband’s grave instead of sitting beside him in the combine.
I sit back and reminisce on the good times we had on harvest, and I encourage you ladies to embrace the times you have with your families.
I know, firsthand, the struggles of harvest life, of maintaining a trailer house and a real house, of juggling fieldwork and house work, of tending children while tending crops. I know it’s frustrating to watch all your local friends do typical summer activities at home, while you’re stuck in a trailer house or a tractor or an elevator. It’s so easy to see your own situation and feel discouraged, to feel like you’re stuck in an unusual circumstance while everyone else gets to experience an “ordinary” family life. At least, that’s how I felt sometimes.
While it’s an easy mindset to adopt, it’s also an unhealthy one. I’d like to encourage all you HarvestHERs to, instead, try to recognize some of the unique joys this occupation brings.
A harvesting family lives in very close quarters, thus creating close familial bonds. Kids have to learn how to get along together when they share a few square feet of open flooring in a trailer house. They learn early the value of a hard day’s work and an honest day’s wages. They learn from watching their parents how to deal with unfavorable conditions, how to interact with farmers, how to manage a crew, how to overcome hardships.
When you work so closely with your husband in the fields, you get an opportunity to know each other better than most other couples. You know what the other person is going to say on the radio before they pick up the mic. You know if something has broken down from the way they walk towards the vehicle for supper. You understand that free time is in short supply during the harvest season, so you get imaginative for date nights, bringing a sack lunch to eat together in a combine or sitting in the back of a pickup to watch the sun set behind the field. A husband and wife who can survive two solid weeks of eighteen hour days, with no end in sight, can survive anything.
Harvesting makes you strong enough to overcome financial hardships and inclement weather, independent enough to raise your kids at home while your husband is away in the fields, and humble enough to turn to Christ to be your strength when you are at your weakest.
It is because I am a HarvestHER that I am able to face this next phase of my life as a widow with my head held high. Harvest has made me strong, has made me independent, and, most of all, has humbled me to lean more on Christ.
I pray that as you ladies begin another harvest run, you will be able to view your life with a newfound appreciation for harvest. Please take some time to find the beauty of this life, the importance of your work, and the love in your family. It may not be an ordinary life, but that makes the benefits extraordinary.
May God bless you all in this new harvest season.
1. Be ready to go at the drop of a hat...sometimes without a lunchbox.
2. Has removed the word impossible from her vocabulary!
3. Can hold a baby, take care of a toddler and drive a tractor or combine all at the same time.
4. Must be able to cook for a crew - large or small.
5. Must be able to read minds.
6. Must be able to banter with a parts man until he realizes you DO know what you're talking about.
7. Must be the entertainment director for those rainy days.
8. Be a wife, mom, friend, helper, cook, problem solver, taxi driver or extra crew hand at all times.
9. Can handle the call that makes you react, "You need what? When?" Dropping everything you're doing to make it happen.
10. At the end of the day say, "I really do love this life".
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