Simulator Gives Taste Of Harvest

By: Russ Quinn

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am very rarely at a loss for words. I tell people I had to take speech therapy classes in grade school, and those folks did such a good job I haven’t stopped talking since then!

One of the rare times I was without words was just a few months ago. My cousin celebrated her 50th birthday and I was talking to another cousin’s husband, who has only been in our family for a short amount of time.

He knew we farmed and was asking me how planting was going. Maybe I was not following the conversation very well (there was some adult beverages present), but I quickly realized he had never seen a planter up close working in a field and was asking how the process of planting was accomplished.

I didn’t know what to say — just for a split second. I invited him to come out in the spring next year so he can actually watch a field of corn/soybeans being planted.

Here is a man in his 50s living in the middle of the country with thousands of acres of agricultural land surrounding the Omaha metropolitan area. And he had never once seen crops. This thought blew my mind.