The soft brown dust rose slowly off the top of the young green leaves of the soybean plants as the cultivator passed by them, creating mini dust storms behind him. His eyes, stinging with sweat looked out upon the rows, keeping straight, glancing as the boom wheels when down the rows. It was hotter than he had ever imagined.
This was the year that he decided to see if the old way of farming would be better than what he had been doing. It actually started as a joke at the coffee shop one morning. He had the equipment. An old M Farmall along with the saddle cultivator that his grandparents bought when it was new. Forty acres..That wouldn't be so hard, he could do it without using the new 250 horse tractor with comfort control seating, stereo and air conditioning. He wished there was more of a breeze today as the sun beat down on the black rubber coating of the steering wheel, heating it to a near melting point and covering his leather gloves with a sooty black powder. Nearing the end of the row, he hit the trip, bringing the shinny cultivator shoes out of the ground, yanking hard on the steering wheel and swinging the ends around careful not to wind up taking out 10 rods of fencing in the process. He lined up and continued down the rows, looking up once to see her standing there at the far end of the field.
She had busied herself all day around the house. It wasn't what she had pictured growing up a young girl in the big city. She had dreamed of 200 thousand dollar homes, with gardens and cooks. Being the social hit of the town, opera, the theater, the big city life. But she had fallen for him the first time they met. There was something that drew her to him, and slowly the pieces all began to fit. Instead of the new home in the new development she was tending to a 100 year old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. But she loved the charm of the house, with its creaky stairs, doors made of solid wood, and windows that took a crowbar to open when the weather got sticky. She had pleaded with him to install central air, but so far all she had managed to get was a small window unit for their bedroom. It had been stifling hot that day, the kind of day that happens in late August when it is so hot the birds won't sing, and the midday heat had built into the house to the point where it pushed her out into the yard, giving her the encouragement to work in her garden. She looked at her watch and thought she should check on him, he had gone out at noon saying that he wanted to finish up before the day was out. She laughed inside at his stubbornness. If he had used his newer equipment he would have finished two hours ago.