When my grandson Andrew was a tyke, like a lot of little boys, he loved heavy equipment — tractors, bulldozers and such. One time when the property next door was being logged, I held 3-year-old Andrew up as we stood on a high bank watching the big machinery trundle by just yards away.
Now Andrew is 15 and operating heavy machinery himself, as I got to witness last weekend when he, his father Andy and I planted food plots.
Like a lot of hunters, Andy has limited time to do such work since he lives out of state. So when he does get to do it, he hits the ground running.
Planting food plots is a complicated process, with lots of equipment and supplies. For a couple of the plots, Andy had to load his tractor on an 18-foot trailer and haul it across the county. Loaded on the trailer was his 50-hp tractor with a front-end loader, plus a separate disk and other paraphernalia.
Just finding where to park the rig was no easy matter. You don’t just pull something like that down a logging road and figure things out later.
He stopped in an open area beside the road and unloaded the tractor, then moved the truck and trailer closer to the work area. I rode a four-wheeler followed by Andrew on the tractor and Andy in the truck.
We stopped at an old loading ramp to get organized. Andy used the front-end loader to unload the disk, which probably weighs over 1,000 pounds. Then we hooked it to the tractor and piled fertilizer, seed and other stuff into the front-end bucket.
Andrew jumped right into the middle of things and worked hard, hands-on. He’s come a long way from being held by Grandpa while others operated machinery.
At a food plot, Andrew disked, I spread pelletized lime and fertilizer, and Andy broadcast wheat and clover seed.
Andrew hooked a small chain harrow (a heavy chain mat) to the four-wheeler and dragged it around the plot to break up the clumps, smooth the soil and bury the seeds. (Some call it a side harrow or section harrow; bed springs do the same thing.)
The drawback to our method was that wheat should be buried deeper than clover, and we were burying them all the same.
That’s when Andrew came up with a great idea: Hold off on the clover until after we fertilized, planted wheat and dragged with the harrow. That way the wheat would be deeper and the clover seed would go on top of the freshly pulverized ground.
We applied his strategy to the next patch.
At one point as the three of us spread lime and fertilizer, Andrew said, “We’ll get it, Grandpa.”
In other words, I could stop and rest and let them finish.
I wasn’t sure whether to feel like a relic or royalty. I started to argue, but the fact was I could use a break, so I stepped into the shade and let them complete the task.
When all was done, Andy and Andrew drove off to load the tractor onto the trailer, leaving me to follow on the four-wheeler. I noticed they’d left the chain harrow behind on the ground, so I attached it to the four-wheeler and drove up to join them.
As I was unhooking the pin to remove it, Andrew stepped in. “I’ll get it, Grandpa,” he said with a smile.
At that moment, I felt more like royalty than relic.
