The Sandwich Generation
Waiting a lifetime to take over the farm
Jim was just going to have to wait for Cliff to die, but his dad looked awful good for 90.
Jim had learned everything about farming from his dad, and he’d learned how to do it right or else. Before he could walk, Cliff was showing him how to find the grease zerks on the ancient tractor. By 5 he could balance the giant grease gun in his small hands, connect the tip to the tiny metal fittings at every mechanical joint and push a lever as big as his arm. On Jim’s 8th birthday, his dad taught him to drive the old red pickup, sitting him on phone books so he could see over the wheel as they lurched over the frozen south field. He was 10 when dad finally let him drive the tractor for the first time. He remembered his terror if he missed any of the instructions his dad barked ferociously over the rumbling diesel engine.
Jim was a teenager the day he was baling hay, distracted about how he was going to ask Kate to the prom, and drove the baler too close to the barbed-wire fence. Dad gave him a…