By Sarah Lovas
In February, my father-in-law, Pete, and his wife, Twila, went on their annual Florida sojourn to visit family and get away from the North Dakota winter for a bit. Twila is a generous person and always enjoys bringing home gifts. Buying gifts for her grandson is undoubtedly more fun than buying for his mother, but she never forgets me.
This year, she brought back a cap for me. Every year, I tend to become attached to one cap during planting and it usually stays with me through the year. This cap, with Florida origins, quickly became my farming cap of 2019.
Sarah, wearing her pink cap, explains U.S. ag technology to a group of South Korean visitors earlier this summer.
So far, this cap has served its purpose well. The color of the cap really isn’t important. However, I do think it’s fun to have a pink farming cap, and the color does help deter my husband from stealing it. This cap has kept the sun out of my eyes and my hair off my face. It has served as a resting place for sunglasses on cloudy days. On the windy North Dakota days, I have put my sunglasses over my eyes, curved the brim a bit more, and tightened the adjustable back to keep the cap on my head. This has provided me with a bit of protection from the wind and the dust in the air. On hot days, this cap has kept the sweat out of my eyes by catching the sweaty beads with the brim.
This cap has indeed been a good and faithful farmer’s cap for the 2019 growing season; And what a 2019 season it has been so far! We are about half-way through the growing season and most of the spraying is done. Although, there are still some pests to look for and manage if need be. Small grain harvest will probably begin around the middle of August and hopefully finish the beginning of September. We will start harvesting soybeans the end of September and whenever we finish that we will move right into corn harvest. The crop is delayed this year, so we are hoping to be done with harvest by the end of November. We have a ways to go before the 2019 crop is harvested and in the bin. I guess I’d better wash this farmer’s cap and get ready for the second half of 2019.
