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Readying The Bin: Prologu e
Readying The Bin: Prologu e
into place, the next piece in a floor now nearly half done,
and stomped it again and again with his heel. Each boot fall
roared loud as thunder, shaking the whole structure, until
the section snapped tight. Kyle stepped up, bouncing to test
its soundness. Then, satisfied, he leaned through the open
portal door.
Outside, in the gathering dark, Dave Tyson, the farms
hired man, handed over the next section of floor. Dave wore
a ball cap and round glasses of his own. Easily twenty years
Kyles senior, he seemed to be making a conscious show of
keeping pace. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were torn off,
and the last of the summer heat formed a film of sweat on his
pale biceps, the muscles tensing and flexing as he hoisted the
flooring. Salvaged from an older bin on a distant part of the
acreage, these planks had been laid up in a defunct hog shed
for years. But nothing ever goes wholly to waste on the farm.
Old tractors and field trucks, hay rakes and a faded harvester
all stood tucked away in leaning barns or grown over by tall
grass at the edge of a shelterbelt, dormant but awaiting pur-
pose. For this flooring, it was finally here.
At the end of June 2014, crop counters at the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture had released estimates that the summers
mild weather and increased rainfall would mean a much-
higher-than-expected yield. Its the kind of prediction that
sounds like good news, but for farmers it meant an upcom-
ing glut of grain. One report projected that the national soy-
bean yield would be 3.3 million acres higher than expected at
plantingnot just cutting into profits but actually outstrip-
ping domestic demand. The outlook for corn was little better.
Though acres planted to feed corn were down, the stockpiled
reserves from the record yield of 2013 remained at an all-time
bors), you pray for rootworm in Chile, for hail on the open
plains of Illinois, a late-season catastrophe unforeseen by the
USDA. You hope for what the traders call a market recov-
ery, knowing that what that really means is that, in order for
you to succeed, someone else as careful as you, through no
fault of his own, has to fail.
In the last light of the day, Kyle stretched the tape mea-
sure from one wall of the bin to the other, marked the spot
on the next floor piece with a nub of blue chalk. Then he
was back at the torch. He struck the igniter, and the nozzle
burst again into flame, sparks skittering and bounding across
the concrete as he made another cut. By the time he finally
stopped work for the day and walked back to the house, it
was full dark. Meghan was already in the kitchen, back from
nightly choresfeeding the goats and horses, checking on
cattle, closing up the laying hens until morning. She had
four chicken breasts cooking in the fry pan. Kyle kicked off
his boots in the mudroom and padded quietly around the
kitchen. Worry was heavy in the air. With harvest now two
weeks late, Meghan was on edge too. The smallest provoca-
tion could turn her fiery eyes, usually wide with emphasis,
to a cold stare. She was the first to admit that growing up on
the farm with a twin sister and two other siblings had made
her quick-tempered and sharp-tongued, but those years had
armed her with a winning sense of humor. She could punch
you in the arm hard enough to convey honest frustration and
simultaneously, somehow, forgiveness.
This tension was different. It wasnt nervy but nervous.
Meghan and Kyle both knew that the later in the season the
harvest begins, the deeper in the year you go toward winter
and the chance of yield-loss due to ice or snow. If you suffer