In our early years farming here, we had several acres of land on the lower end of our farm that had a lot of grass and brush on it along with a few trees. It was a real wet piece of land with a few springs. I always looked at it, seeing it had the potential to be an excellent field to farm someday.

After being here several years and getting established financially, we decided to proceed and make it into our dream field. Sometimes dreams take a lot of work and money to bring to reality. This one certainly did.

I had Jack come in with his big drain tiling machine and two backhoes to install drain tile in the land and clear all the brush and trees. He put the tile in 6 to 7 feet deep. The tile has small holes that allow the excess water in the ground to seep into it and drain out at the lower end of our field into the woods.

One of the springs on the land toward the upper end was a pretty big one that always flowed year-round. I had never seen it dry up, even in a drought year. When Jack came to the springs, he would hook his two backhoes with heavy cables to the front of his tiling machine to get through them so he wouldn’t get his tiling machine stuck. It worked very well.

Jack was hesitant about the big spring though; he wasn’t sure it would dry it out enough for us to farm that particular area. I fully believed it would, so I insisted he put a drain tile line right through it.

After Jack had the tile all in, he finished clearing the brush and trees, then loaded up his equipment and left. Then our work really started – picking up a lot of tree roots and rocks. We enjoyed it; we could see the great potential this piece of land held. After discing and plowing it several times and picking up more roots and rocks, we had it looking beautiful.

There was one slight problem though – the big spring hole area. It had dried out fairly well and looked really nice. It looked like it shouldn’t be any problem at all working that area. And as long as I didn’t have the plow or disc in the ground too deep, it wasn’t. But if I had it in too deep, then I would get the tractor stuck bad. That happened a couple of times and I’d have to get another tractor to pull it out.

Spring came, and we were looking forward to planting corn on our new field to feed our cows. We had to do one more thing to it yet before planting it, and that was to get lime spread on it to raise the soil pH to the right level.

So I called up Bill to bring his big, heavy lime truck loaded with lime out to our new field. I caught him before he got to the field and pointed out the spot that had been the big spring area and told him, “Don’t go through that area with your truck until you have it at least half empty. If you try to go through there with a loaded truck, you will never make it.” He looked at me in disbelief because the area was on the upper side of the field and looked just fine. I went on to explain to him that it had been a big spring hole and how on more than one occasion I had gotten my tractor stuck there. He said OK and drove off. I stood there watching him to make sure it would go well for him. He spread it on the lower side of our new field without any problem.

Then he brought out the second load. To my astonishment, he headed straight for the big spring area, spreading lime as he went. I thought, “Oh no! What’s he doing?” He got to the spot with his heaping full lime truck and it went down fast. By the time I got to the truck, Bill was walking around it surveying the situation. The first thing I said to him was, “What did you do? I told you not to go here with a full truck.” He replied, “Yeah, I know, but I just knew I could make it through here. It looked so good. You know something? You might have a hard time believing this, but this is the worst I ever got a truck stuck in my 40 years of spreading lime.” Seeing the truck sinking how many feet down into the earth, headed toward China, I didn’t have a hard time believing that.

The next thing Bill wanted to know was if I could get my tractor and pull him out. I knew I couldn’t pull his truck out with my tractor and told him so, but he insisted I try. He emptied the lime from his truck and I tried to pull him out. I moved his truck about 2 feet forward and that was it. Bill ended up calling my neighbor, Tom, who lived up the road from us. He brought his big four-wheel-drive International tractor with dual tires on it and pulled him out. It took all the tractor had, but he did get the truck out. Unfortunately, something gave a little in the transmission or rear end; it was never the same again. We all were very glad to see his big muddy lime truck out again, even if the tractor went limping home.

Even though I told Bill not to go into that spot with a full load of lime, he did it anyway. As he told me a number of times over the years, “I just knew I wouldn’t get stuck there.” We laugh about it today. But there’s something a whole lot more that can be said here. Oftentimes, God tells us not to do stuff in His word. He tells us that for our own good because He loves us so and doesn’t want to see us get hurt. Sometimes, we think He’s just trying to keep us from having fun or from getting ahead, but such is not the case. If we will heed His word, we will be blessed. I know when I heed His word I’m blessed, and Bill would have been better off if he would have heeded my word and stayed out of that area with his loaded truck. He still says, “You know, that’s the worst I’ve ever gotten stuck.” And I still believe him.