Dad might have expected around 215 under better conditions.
Phil rode in the combine with me throughout the harvest.
When the yield monitor showed the final average, he studied the number.
Then he said quietly, “Those missing forty-four bushels are what my pride cost.”
He opened Dad’s green notebook.
And wrote the number down.
In ink.
With the date.
I didn’t tell him to stop blaming himself.
He’d made mistakes.
So had I.
But now we were learning from them.
And we were doing it together.
The following spring, Phil took a week off from his insurance job.
He arrived at the farm before sunrise.
I checked the soil temperature.
Fifty degrees.
Three mornings in a row.
Exactly the way Dad taught me.
Then I prepared the planter.
Phil climbed into the tractor seat.
I stood beside him for the first pass.
The same way Dad had stood beside me when I was eleven.
