The Wheat, The Sky #14932

The Story

This summer wheat field has a place under The Big Sky arcing above the farm landscape from edge to edge. It lies across the top of a broad ridge bordered by green woods down the slopes but only a single tree has been left to stand in the middle, smack on the horizon line. Sometimes farmers will do that if just to have a shade tree way out there. This is a very large wheat field too, well over a hundred acres of yellow tinged with green. A large mechanical sprayer with outrigger booms has left long tracks through it.

It’s late June and the wheat isn’t quite ready. It won’t be more than a week until the men come to clear cut all of it. Soon, big machines will do the harvesting and a fleet of trucks will haul it away downhill. In a noisy dusty whirl, the summer wheat field will be gone and the tree will remain surrounded by dead flat stubble. Then, as always, the rhythm of farming moves on to another job needing to be done.

It’s a younger tree as they go. Without competition, many of these solitary field oaks eventually grow high and spread very wide. You can see them on a ride through the country farm landscape standing large and lofty in fields or as part of a thin but grown up fence line. These trees are large sentinels of the farmlands with an eye on the horizon.

Around a solitary tree in a field, the landscape always changes by the season or a farmer’s intent. Next year, this summer wheat field might instead be in soybeans with the same single tree and The Big Sky above. However, the tree itself doesn’t change much or very quickly. It never complains about being stuck in one spot. The world changes around this single tree like a movie and it seems not only content but wise in silent observation. Steadfast might be the best word for this silent duty.

For more summer farm landscape, two other views of this field exist on the website as To Rise Above #14933 and Touch Me #14934.

Location: rural Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Picture and story © Andrew Dierks