The only time that farming commercials appear on TV is during curling matches.

For years, the New Holland commercials began with When the cab is your office, you’ll never get tired of going to work. I always shook my head at that line. While I admired the sophisticated technology of the cabs in the commercials, climbing into the cab almost always meant hours of work.

A few tractor jobs did not take a lot of concentration. Cultivating and disking, for example, did not have to be precise. The equipment just followed the tractor and a few glances in the mirror or over the shoulder were enough.

All the haying jobs, however, required the operator to drive forward and check the machine. You were constantly looking back over your shoulder. Our newer tractor (just twenty years old when we quit farming) had a seat that swiveled so that it could remain at a forty-five-degree angle to the front making those two directional tasks easier. Still – long, long days.

There is a line in this year's commercial about haying equipment that goes Cut, rake, bale, repeat. That is how haying feels. For days, you cut, rake, bale and repeat the whole process.

But, this year’s New Holland commercials begins a bit differently: When the field is your office, you’ll never get tired of going to work.

This resonates better with me. When the work is in the field, you will get tired – but not tired of going to work. There is too much life around you.

I remember watching a kestrel hunt. It hung in the air watching the ground for mice or voles that were easier to spot in the mown field. I recited to myself Gerrard Manley Hopkin’s poem The Windhover, words that captured the energy and grace of the bird I watched.

On other days, I got close up views of ravens. These birds are shy of people, never getting close if I was walking in the field. But they were not afraid of the tractor, would land quite nearby where I could see the rough beak and neck feathers, the finger like feathers at the tips of its wings.

I also got to watch red-winged blackbirds harass ravens. The small red-wing would land momentarily on the raven’s back, then perch on the windrow of hay a meter or so in front of the raven. The bigger bird might give a warning flap, but never tried to tackle the red-wing. Eventually, after being harassed for several minutes, the raven would leave. The red-wing would go back to its own business.

One day, the hay kept jamming at the mouth of the baler. I got down to examine the pick-up and there, wound in a tight circle on the frame of the baler, was a milk snake. I suppose it had been hiding in the windrow, hunting like the birds for mice. But how it had managed to avoid getting caught up by the intake and instead climb onto the machine, I will never know.

Deer and foxes were frequent visitors. Coyotes heard the machines and stayed away.

Groundhogs were just a frustration. They only dug their holes in the middle of fields, never on the edge. Seeing the hole coming when raking or baling was pretty easy but cutting hay was another story.

Our farm was rocky, so if the cutting bar hit the mound around the hole, you would likely break a section. If the groundhog had been there a while, there would be a subtle difference in how the hay looked that would be a clue to lift the haybine. But I did not always see them coming. I eventually got pretty good at replacing these sections out in the middle of the field.

Driving down the lane to the field, I would take note of where wild grapes and choke cherries were ripening. During second cut, there was always an apple snack to be found in the fence rows. With planting, haying, and harvest, I got to watch the progress of the trees in the forest and along the edges of the fields, checking their health, enjoying the changes.

Eventually, as more tasks fell to me alone, it was time to quit farming. But for thirty years, I never got tired of going to work in the field.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.