The road I live on seems a little lonely at times these days. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of traffic heading north and south as people drive to and from work each day. And it also gets pretty busy certain times of the year when the farmers are hauling corn and beans to the elevator to fill their contracts. 

What I miss is the farming activity that used to be nonstop at each of the family farms all over the neighborhood back in the old days. Everybody had the same type of farm chores to do, and the road was buzzing from morning till dark. Each farm had a small herd of Holsteins or Jerseys or some other breed of dairy cows to feed, milk and clean up after. 

Heck, I even miss the little manure spreader spills that used to mark the roads. We all thought that if we loaded the manure spreader with just a little more stuff and if we drove really carefully it wouldn’t spill. It’s just that we never slowed down enough for that bump in the road or we slowed down too fast, and it spilled over the front. The other big spill came when we were going a little too fast as we turned into the field. The result was some of the manure would slosh out of the spreader and onto the road causing the traffic to steer around it for a couple hours until it either dried up or froze. 

Now I know that was a nuisance and kind of made you mad if another car was coming and you had to drive right through it, but still, I kind of miss that up and down the road. 

When I moved back to the farm about eight years ago and milked cows for a few years I inherited a very old and worn-out manure spreader myself. The problem with it was that it had a couple holes in the bottom and if the manure was too soupy it would pour right out and make a huge mess on the road. Now when everybody else in the neighborhood was spilling a little manure on the road it wasn’t a big deal, but I was the only one milking within a several mile radius. Therefore, my messes from that old rickety manure spreader really stood out. After a couple years of that embarrassment, I decided to get a loan and buy a bigger one without any holes in the bottom. That helped a lot.

Sometimes when we were kids and we were cleaning out the feed lot after a long winter, we would load the spreader with too much heavy manure, and the apron chain would break out in the field as we were spreading. That was the worst feeling. We would have to make the drive back up to the barn and grab a couple pitch forks and a couple of strong backs and head back out to the field where we would proceed to pitch out the whole thing by hand, so we could see to repair the chain. We would have been better off to just put a little less in to start with, but it’s hard not to try and load things up to the gills and get done a little faster. I’m amazed at the Amish and how patient they are to do their work at such a slow pace. They don’t seem to be in a hurry whatsoever. Maybe it’s because they aren’t rushing here and there to a million activities like the rest of us stressed out people are. 

We all have heard the scripture from Psalm 46:10 where God tells us to “Be still and know that I am God.” There is an awful lot of good advice to glean from such a verse. I haven’t learned it yet, but I hope to someday. My problem is that I want to be working hard for the Lord right up to the day I’m called home to heaven. I figure I will have eternity to rest. Pray for me. Until next week, God bless.

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Scott Cernek is the pastor of the Peace Bible Church in Browntown.