In everyone’s day there seems to be a race. It starts off at a young age when mom is warning you that “you’re going to miss the school bus if you don’t hurry up.”
In the morning, many people grab that extra 10 minutes of sleep, then race to get up, get dressed, miss breakfast and race to work.
On a dairy farm it’s a race to get the milking done before the milk truck comes to pick it up from the bulk tank. The milk in the tank has to be cooled to four degrees before it can be picked up.
It’s a race to get your snow tires on in the fall and get the studded tires off in the spring. Then there is that competitive race to be the first on the street to mow the lawn or have the first flower bloom in the garden. Even the birds are in a race: just as the “the early bird gets the worm”, the first hummingbird gets the pick of the sweetest blossom. The first flock of Canada geese to find the corn field gets a pick of the kernels of grain that passed through the combine last fall and were left in the corn field.

There is also a race on the farms to be the first to till a field. When a field is worked up it lets air into the soil to dry it. It also darkens the colour of the field and the sunshine warms it faster. Every day that planting is delayed reduces the grain yield, so being the first to plant is also a race. The farmer also has to estimate when the last killing frost will be because if corn plants are taller than five leaves when that frost arrives, most of those tall corn plants will be killed by frost and then it’s too late to replant grain corn.
It’s always a race to get done planting before the May 24 weekend because, if a machine breaks down after the Wednesday before the weekend, replacement parts for the machine might not arrive until Wednesday of the next week. Many parts suppliers are closed for the long weekend and it often takes a day for the parts order to be sent in and two or three working days for parts to arrive.
The hay crop that produces the cheapest milk must be cut before the hay plants head out or blossom. That is also a race to get the hay cut. It’s also a race to get that hay or haylage in without any rain damage.
In harvest season, it’s also a race to get the oats combined while the grains of oats are still very white. White oats can go for making breakfast cereals at a premium price while oats left in the field too long will darken and go to the animal feed market at a lower price.
In late fall, the farmer also races to get crops off, manure spread before environment regulations make it illegal, get fall tillage done because another long Thanksgiving weekend will mean that any breakdowns might delay work by another week.
Sometimes the boys just cut loose and race! Many of us older folks can remember that late night horse race down Main Street in Shawville. A few years ago while passing through Elmira, Ont. we met two boys racing down a country road driving two black horses pulling black buggies.
In the 1950s, I witnessed two farm lads racing two farm tractors to a field four miles away for more hay. The farm boys knew how to bypass the governors on those old gas tractors and get an extra 10 miles per hour out of them. The little gray Ferguson beat the Farmall. Back then Ferguson used the same engine block as a Triumph TR4 sports car and RPM didn’t bother it. The Farmall was a bit noisy and quite warm after four miles of racing.
Maybe we all get caught up in moving faster than we should in this survival-of-the-fittest, rat race world we live in. Take time to work safe, smell the roses, and enjoy the great world that we live in.

Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com