The Combine

The Honest Season

Chapter 20: The Combine

The machine weighed 32,580 pounds empty. It weighed 32,580 pounds without grain in the tank, without fuel in the saddle tanks, without the header attached, without the operator in the seat. It weighed 32,580 pounds as a fact, as a number on the specification sheet that John Deere printed and that Tom read in the dealer's office in Sidney in 2019 when he bought the S790, the combine that would be the last machine Tom bought, though he did not know this, the way a farmer does not know which season will be the last season, the not-knowing that is the condition of being alive, the condition of doing the work without the knowledge of when the work will end.

Tom bought the S790 to replace the 9660 STS that he had run for twelve years, the 9660 that had harvested twelve crops and that had accumulated 2,400 separator hours and that was, in Tom's judgment, approaching the threshold beyond which the maintenance cost exceeded the replacement cost, the threshold that every machine reached eventually, the point at which the machine's history became more expensive than its future, the point at which the rational farmer traded the old for the new. Tom was a rational farmer. Tom made the trade. He drove to Sidney and sat in the dealer's office and negotiated the price and the trade-in and the financing, the terms that the dealer offered and that Tom countered and that the dealer adjusted and that Tom accepted, the negotiation that produced the number -- $427,000 after trade-in, financed over five years at 3.9 percent, the monthly payment of $7,842 that joined the other monthly payments in the ledger that Ruth maintained, the column of obligations that the farm carried the way the combine carried the grain, heavily, carefully, with the understanding that the weight was the cost of the work and the work was the purpose.

$427,000 for a combine. The number was the number. The number was the cost of harvest, the price of the machine that performed the essential act -- the separating of the grain from the plant, the extracting of the seed from the straw, the distillation of the season's work into the kernel that was the product, the hard red kernel that weighed one thirty-thousandth of a pound and that was worth, at $6.40 per bushel, one third of one cent, the fraction that multiplied across the millions of kernels that the combine extracted in a single day, the millions that accumulated in the tank and in the truck and in the elevator and on the check.

Ruth knew the machine. She knew the machine the way she knew Section 12, by experience, by intimacy, by the accumulated hours of sitting in the cab and operating the controls and listening to the engine and feeling the vibration of the rotor through the seat and through the floor and through the pedals, the vibration that told her what the machine was doing, whether the machine was working within its capacity or was straining, whether the crop was feeding evenly or was bunching, whether the rotor was threshing cleanly or was slugging, the information that the machine communicated through vibration the way the wheat communicated through color, the physical language of the mechanical, the language that Tom spoke and that Ruth learned and that the combine generated continuously, the ongoing broadcast of its condition that the operator received and interpreted and responded to.

The cab was seven feet above the ground. The cab was the glass box, the enclosed space that held the operator and the controls and the monitors and the air conditioning and the radio that Ruth did not use because the radio was noise and noise was interference, was the intrusion of the external into the internal, the distraction that Ruth did not permit because the work required attention, required the total focus of a person operating a machine that was cutting wheat at 4.5 miles per hour with a forty-foot header and that was processing thirty bushels per minute through its rotor and its sieves and that could not tolerate the operator's inattention, the inattention that produced the missed rock, the missed wet spot, the missed bunching of the crop that could slug the rotor and stall the engine and damage the machine and cost the hours that the season did not provide.

She climbed the steps. She climbed the three steps to the cab platform and opened the cab door and entered the space that was hers for the next three weeks, the space that would be her office and her workplace and her enclosure, the glass box that separated her from the field and connected her to the field simultaneously, the cab that let her see the wheat through the windshield and feel the wheat through the machine and hear the wheat through the rotor, the multi-sensory encounter with the crop that the combine provided, the encounter that was not observation but was engagement, was the physical interaction between the machine and the plant that the operator mediated.

The seat was Tom's seat. The seat was adjusted to Tom's body -- the height, the tilt, the lumbar support, the settings that Tom configured in 2019 and that Ruth did not change because the settings worked, because Ruth's body was close enough to Tom's body in its dimensions that the settings served, the accommodation of one body's configuration to another body's configuration, the fit that was not perfect but was sufficient, the sufficiency that Ruth accepted in the combine seat the way she accepted it in the farm, the imperfect fit of a woman in a dead man's place.

She started the engine. The Deere 13.5-liter diesel turned over and caught and settled into the idle that was the machine's resting state, the 800 RPM that the engine maintained when the machine was not working, the low rumble that was potential, was the stored energy waiting to be released, the 473 horsepower idling, the power that would be needed when the header engaged and the rotor turned and the machine began to do the thing it was built to do.

The monitors came alive. The screens on the right pillar, the GreenStar display and the yield monitor and the harvest documentation system, the digital instruments that converted the mechanical work of harvest into numbers -- bushels per acre, moisture percentage, grain loss, separator hours, fuel consumption, the numbers that the machine generated and that the screens displayed and that Ruth read the way she read the soil, as information, as the honest accounting of the condition.

The yield monitor was the screen she watched most. The yield monitor measured the flow of grain through the clean-grain elevator, the chain-and-paddle mechanism that carried the threshed grain from the bottom of the cleaning shoe to the top of the grain tank, the elevator that was the combine's final stage, the stage at which the grain was separated and cleaned and counted, the counting done by the impact sensor that measured the force of the grain striking the sensor plate, the force that varied with the flow rate and the flow rate that varied with the yield, the yield that was the number, the answer, the season's report card.

She calibrated the monitor. She calibrated it every year before the first cut, the calibration that required running the combine through a test strip and weighing the grain on the truck scale and comparing the weighed amount to the monitor's estimate and adjusting the calibration factor, the factor that corrected for the particular characteristics of that year's grain -- its density, its moisture, its kernel size, the variables that changed from year to year and that the calibration accounted for, the annual adjustment that ensured the number on the screen was honest, was true, was the actual yield and not the monitor's guess.

Tom taught her to calibrate. Tom taught her in 2003, the year he decided that Ruth needed to know the combine, the year he decided that a farm with two operators was a farm that could harvest faster and that harvesting faster was the hedge against the weather, the insurance against the storm that could come on any day in August and that the farmer raced, the race between the combine and the sky, the race that the combine won by cutting as many acres as possible before the sky delivered the rain or the hail or the wind that stopped the harvest.

She learned the machine the way she learned the soil -- by touch, by time, by the accumulation of hours in the seat. She learned the throttle response, the way the engine answered the foot on the pedal, the relationship between her boot and the power that the engine produced, the relationship that was not mechanical but was conversational, was the operator asking and the machine answering, the ask-and-answer that was the operation of every machine and that was, Ruth understood, the same ask-and-answer that farming was, the farmer asking the soil and the soil answering, the farmer asking the weather and the weather answering, the asking and answering that constituted the season and that the combine was the final instrument of, the instrument that harvested the answers.

She learned the header. She learned the 640D Draper, the forty-foot cutting platform that was the combine's mouth, the opening through which the wheat entered the machine and began its transformation from plant to grain. She learned the height control, the automatic system that maintained the header at a constant distance from the ground, the sensors that read the terrain and adjusted the hydraulics and that Ruth overrode when the terrain was too rough or when the crop was lodged, the manual control that the farmer applied when the automatic was insufficient, the human judgment that supplemented the electronic judgment.

She learned the rotor. The rotor was the heart. The rotor was the cylinder that turned inside the concave, the spinning element that rubbed the wheat heads against the grated surface and separated the grain from the chaff, the mechanical threshing that replaced the hand threshing that Arvid performed on this same ground ninety years ago, the replacement of the human body by the machine body, the substitution that allowed one woman to harvest 2,400 acres instead of the ten acres that Arvid harvested with a flail and a winnowing fork.

The rotor turned at 1,100 RPM during wheat harvest. The speed was specific to the crop -- wheat required 1,100, barley required 900, the speed adjusted to the grain's tendency to crack, the fragility of the kernel determining the violence of the threshing, the calibration of force to material that was the threshing art, the art that Tom understood and that Ruth learned and that the S790's electronic controls automated but that the operator still monitored, still adjusted, still supervised because the electronic controls did not know what the operator knew, did not feel what the operator felt, did not hear the change in the rotor's sound that indicated a wet spot in the field or a dense patch of crop that required the operator to slow down and let the machine work through the load.

The sieves were below the rotor. The sieves were the screens that separated the grain from the chaff by size and by weight, the chaff being lighter and larger and the grain being heavier and smaller, the physical properties that the sieves exploited, the screens vibrating, the fan blowing air upward through the screens, the air carrying the chaff out the back of the combine and the grain falling through the screens to the auger that carried the grain to the elevator that carried the grain to the tank.

The tank held 300 bushels. The tank was the reservoir, the container that accumulated the grain as the combine moved across the field, the accumulation that the yield monitor tracked and that Ruth watched and that told her, in the language of numbers, what the field was producing, the number that was the answer, the honest number, the number that the field declared and that the combine measured and that Ruth received.

When the tank was full, Ruth signaled Hector. She signaled by radio, the two-way, the Motorola that sat in the bracket on the right console, the radio that Tom bought and that Ruth used and that connected the combine to the truck, the combine to the farm, the farmer to the farmhand, the two-person operation communicating across the distance of the field, the distance that was sometimes a quarter-mile and sometimes a half-mile and that the radio bridged.

"Tank's full," she would say.

"On my way," Hector would say.

And the truck would come. The Peterbilt would appear at the field edge and drive to the combine and pull alongside, matching speed, the truck and the combine moving in parallel the way two animals move in parallel when one is feeding the other, the combine feeding the truck, the auger extending from the combine's tank over the truck's box and the grain flowing, the golden stream, the wheat pouring from the combine to the truck the way water pours from a pitcher, the gravity doing the work, the grain falling, the truck filling, the season's product transferring from the machine that harvested it to the machine that would carry it to the elevator.

The unloading took four minutes. Four minutes for 300 bushels to flow from the tank to the truck, the flow rate that the auger produced, the rate that was fast enough to be efficient and slow enough to be controlled, the balance that the machine maintained. During those four minutes the combine kept cutting. The combine did not stop. The combine moved forward through the wheat while the grain poured into the truck, the simultaneous operations that the machine performed -- cutting and threshing and cleaning and unloading, the four tasks done at once, the mechanical multitasking that allowed the harvest to continue without pause, the pause being time and time being weather and weather being the thing that the farmer could not control and therefore the farmer controlled the time, controlled the efficiency, controlled the rate at which the combine consumed the field.

Ruth understood the combine. She understood it the way she understood the soil -- not completely, not with the engineer's understanding of every circuit and every bearing and every calibration, but with the farmer's understanding, the understanding that said: this is what the machine does, this is how the machine feels when it is working well, this is how the machine sounds when it is not, and the difference between the two is the difference between harvest and failure.

The combine sat in the barn. The combine sat in the east bay, beside the drill, the two largest machines, the machines of planting and harvest, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of the season, the two machines that bookended the work, that opened the season and closed the season, that put the seed in the ground and took the grain out of the ground and that were, together, the mechanical embodiment of the farm's purpose.

Ruth walked around the combine. She walked around it in August, before the harvest, the pre-harvest inspection that she performed every year, the visual check of the machine's condition, the looking-at that preceded the using, the assessment that the farmer made before committing the machine to the field, the assessment that was not paranoia but was prudence, was the understanding that a machine that failed in the field was a machine that cost the farm money and time and the particular anxiety of a breakdown during harvest, the anxiety that was the farmer's version of the soldier's anxiety before battle, the knowledge that the next three weeks would test every system and every component and that the testing would reveal the weaknesses that the winter had created and that the mechanic had not found.

She checked the sickle. She checked the 640 triangular sickle sections that constituted the cutter bar, the forty-foot blade that cut the wheat stems, each section a small triangle of hardened steel that was bolted to the sickle bar and that reciprocated -- moved back and forth -- at 1,200 strokes per minute, the oscillation that produced the cutting action, the blade passing through the stationary guards the way scissors pass through fabric, the cutting that was the combine's first act, the initial separation of the wheat from the ground.

Fourteen sections were worn. Fourteen of the 640 sections had been dulled by the previous season's cutting, the cutting of rock and soil and the abrasive dust that the wind delivered to the header, the grinding that reduced the sharp edge to a round edge and the round edge to a useless edge, the degradation that was the cost of the work, the price that the sickle paid for the harvest.

She replaced them. She replaced the fourteen sections with new sections from the parts bin in the shop, the bin that held the replacement parts that Tom maintained and that Ruth continued to maintain, the inventory that was the hedge against the breakdown, the stored components that waited in the bin for the moment when the field demanded them, the moment that always came, the moment when the machine required the part that the farmer had purchased and stored and that was available because the farmer anticipated the need, the anticipation that was the farmer's skill, the skill of knowing what would break before it broke.

Hector helped. Hector helped with the combine preparation the way Hector helped with everything -- silently, competently, his hands working beside Ruth's hands, the two pairs of hands doing the work that the machine required, the work that was not one person's work but was two people's work, the shared labor that the harvest demanded and that Ruth and Hector provided and that Tom and Hector once provided and that the providing was the continuity, was the unbroken chain of hands on the machine, the hands that maintained the machine and operated the machine and that were, in the end, the machine's most important parts, the parts that no dealer stocked and no catalog listed, the parts that were human, that were the farmer and the farmhand and the daily application of their knowledge and their labor and their care.

The combine was ready. The sickle was sharp. The rotor was clean. The sieves were adjusted. The tank was empty. The monitors were calibrated. The fuel tanks were full -- 200 gallons of diesel, the fuel that the harvest consumed, the energy that the machine required to do the work, the energy that was stored in the saddle tanks the way the energy of the sun was stored in the wheat, the chain of energy that ran from the sun to the plant to the grain to the machine to the combustion chamber to the crankshaft to the rotor to the threshing and the threshing was the purpose, the purpose that the machine existed to serve, the purpose that the season existed to fulfill.

Ruth closed the barn door. She closed it on the combine and the drill and the tools on the pegboard and the workbench and the floor that Carl poured, the closing that was the end of the preparation and the beginning of the waiting, the waiting for the moisture to drop and the grain to harden and the field to declare itself ready, the declaration that would come in August, in the heat, in the long days of late summer when the wheat finished its work and the combine would begin its work and the work of the one would replace the work of the other, the plant's work of growing replaced by the machine's work of harvesting, the seasonal transfer that was the farm's rhythm, the rhythm that Ruth had been following for thirty-eight years, the rhythm that the combine's engine would keep when the time came.

The time was coming. The wheat was filling. The kernels were forming in the heads, the starch accumulating, the grain adding weight each day, the weight that was the measure of the season's success, the weight that the combine would harvest and that the truck would carry and that the elevator would weigh and that the price would value, the chain of events that began with the seed and ended with the check, the chain that the combine linked, the machine that stood in the barn in August and that waited, as Ruth waited, as Hector waited, as the farm waited, for the season to say: now.