A long first day in a tractor

It was around halfway through the dusty, hot slog of my first day on the job – a 14-and-a-half-hour shift – when the crew boss’ truck pulled alongside the tractor I piloted and motioned for me to stop. 

Don’t forget! Clutch and then brake. I came to a halt and opened the door. 

“How’s the first day going, Ryland?” he asked. 

“Pretty good,” I replied. And then in a goody two shoes, new hire sort of way: “I’m making mistakes, but I’m learning.” 

He chuckled. “That’s good. Just make sure they’re not big mistakes.” 

I sure came close, though. 

My tractor and rake

For starters, I was more or less in that tractor against my will. It was my decision, but the only available option for my first summer job. The age-old teenager paradox: needing money to buy a car, but needing that car to get to work. 

So I got the same job as my older sister, and she graciously let me tag along every July morning to the headquarters of Boshart Trucking’s custom baling operation just outside of Tangent, Oregon. Once at the field, she’d start up her Versatile 260 tractor hauling a Krone Big Pack 290 baler – conservatively over $100,000 worth of farming equipment. 

I, the new guy who hadn’t even earned my driver’s license yet, turned the key on a New Holland 8770 towing a Vermeer hydraulic rake – a few tens of thousands less, but still a staggering amount of responsibility. I sat in an air-conditioned cab several feet above the ground, unfortunately without the Bluetooth speakers of my sister’s Versatile. 

My experience up to that point? Driving my dad’s old minivan on country backroads and one training session in the Boshart parking lot. I was proud to have hit just one cone on a shaky loop around the property in a little Kubota. 

But today was the real deal. To my relief, an experienced employee sat in the cab with me for the first field I was assigned, directing me how to use the hydraulic levers to extend the arms of the rake. My job was combining two rows of straw into one large, fluffy snake that the baler behind me processed into 800-pound, tightly-bound rectangles. 

I had never hauled a trailer before, and watching the rake attachment react to every turn I made felt like growing a tail I couldn’t yet control. And the size of the tractor made my 6-mph speed feel like the Indy 500. 

The nightmare that had kept me up before my first day came true on my first lap around the field, with the implement nudging a farmer’s fence as I tried to reach a pile of straw on the very edge of the field. 

My heart stopped. But all there was to see was a slight bulge in the wire grate; my instructor laughed, radioed in the mistake, and taught me how to shift into reverse. Crisis averted. 

Then came the road trip to the next field. I was on my own in the cab at this point, with my tractor taking up half a lane and threatening to slide into the ditch whenever there was oncoming traffic. 

I made it, and with shaky hands made a painfully slow turn into the new field. My next assignment: a thin strip of field barely two rakes wide. 

The first row was easy enough. I turned at the end, miscalculated the rake’s width, and watched the tongue of the implement inch closer to my rear wheel. Soon, they touched. 

Clutch. Brake. Call the crew boss. 

He drove out, gently reminded me to turn wider, and got me out of my mess with some nifty maneuvering. 

Not long after, I took a break and checked my phone to realize I was just seven hours into my first day. The oppressive heat and dust were starting to seep into the cabin. I was already dead tired, and there were seven more hours to go. That’s farm work. And I wasn’t built for it. 

Thankfully, the weekend was waiting for me. I made it through that first day, slept for about 10 hours that night, and dreaded Monday the entire time. 

The new week dawned, and it turned out 14-and-a-half hours of experience, even all crammed into one shift, still meant something. The tractor got just a little easier to drive each day, and soon I felt like I wasn’t just earning my paycheck, but having some fun in the process. 

I stuck with the job, made some money that summer, and bought my first car the following winter. It was a $2,000 used PT Cruiser that’s older than I am. It even came with the check engine light already on. But I bought it with my own money, which was the only thing I cared about. Even better, it’s somehow still running today. 

The next year, I too was helming a Versatile 260 and Krone Big Pack 290. And I made sure to turn wide every time.