I stepped from the age of technology to yesteryear in the space of a couple of days last week. I spent a morning on Skype with a couple of classes of 6th graders in my writer/author skin, answering questions about writing and book covers and what my favorite childhood books were and how long it takes to write a book and a  million other questions. It was fun and, their teacher emailed me later in the day to tell me that I’d inspired the

That’s my ’49 ZA at the end of the line!

students and they wrote in their notebooks for twenty minutes!

Then, we got our antique tractors and one-way disc plows ready to spend a few days farming all the summer fallow. We only get to do this once-a-year, in the spring, to turn the stubble and kill the weed and cheat grass in preparation for the disc and/or chisel readying the ground for wheat drilling in the fall. No tractor cabs, air-conditioning, or computerized systems, just you, the tractor, and the elements. It is heaven. It’s dusty and hot and thirsty, and it is the best way to spend the day.