It’s springtime on the colony.

The doldrums of winter are over, the grass is greening, the trees are budding and it’s time for sowing. The early morning air is filled with the chirping and songs of the newly arrived birds of summer. The April and May showers have replaced the cold dry air of winter with the fresh earthy smells of spring. Newness and excitement fills the air and soul alike.

The equipment operators, restless after a winter full of shop and barn work are bursting with energy and anxious to start the annual sowing season. The space in front of the shop has been full for some time now as the sprayers, drills, tractors, trucks and augers have been carefully serviced, checked and rechecked. The equipment is fueled up and ready for action. Everyone is waiting for the field boss to declare ”OK boys, the time is here, let’s go seeding!” Seeding starts in burst of a activity.

High clearance sprayers hit the fields first with a pre-seed burn-off to kill weeds in front of the seeders. (Gone are the days of the cultivator and shovel that manually weeded and tilled and subsequently dried out the all-important seedbed.) Zero-till is the now the order of the day. The gravel roads are busy with trucks that haul fuel, fertilizer and seed to fill the waiting drills. And it’s on!

The second busiest time of year, next to only the finale of what is started now, the harvest. From dawn to dusk these big rigs roll. Sunup and sundown, field in and field out, week in and week out, stopped only by the need to refill the massive seed carts and seemingly always empty fuel tanks. And if enough manpower is available there is a shift change to allow some rest for those long hour operators.

But come Sunday morning everything is quiet. All the rigs have shut down and all the men are at home to attend the Sunday Sermon. The fields aren’t the only things that have to be seeded, and here at Church the Word of God is planted anew.