With a little time on my hands before a mid day meeting today in New Holland, I soon found myself out on the backroads by Lapp Valley dairy farm, where locals (of which I was one for seven years) will attest that the best ice cream in the world is made. But I wasn't there for a black cherry ice cream cone. I was staring at an old piece of farm machinery, what is now called a forage harvester. This one sat in the middle of a field of alfalfa that had just been cut and chopped, probably by that tractor drawn monster, into what we used to call insulage when I was a boy. I was awed at the violence and power of just such a machine, driven by an uncowled rotating shaft from the power take off of my great uncle Francis Fisher's tractor, with my uncle Van, only a few years older than me and at the wheel of that big beast, me balancing behind him taking care not to let my feet get near the PTO, watching a roaring surging torrent of green blast out of the high, curved chute and into the tall sided wagon. A summer day just ahead of a thunderstorm, visiting relatives long ago in Wapakoneta, Ohio. The smell of fermenting vegetation was almost intoxicating. I remember thinking that the harvester seemed like a nightmarish screaming thrashing steel dinosaur, tearing a wide swath through an impossibly lush field of alfalfa. I remember being terrified and exhilarated. And that all came back to me as I gazed at this inert silent menacing piece of equipment, sitting like a totem, seeming to watch me without watching, out in that field today.
