(Photo: Iowa Soybean Association / Joclyn Kuboushek)
Rural Route 2: Pockets full of harvest
October 1, 2026 | Bethany Baratta
I found a kernel of corn nestled in the handle of my dryer lint screen the other day. Apparently, my son didn’t fully clean out his pockets after a day of fun at the pumpkin patch. The clinking I heard during the drying cycle was the kernel, not the metal button on his pants. I smiled, thinking about how often my mom must have found these harvest treasures while doing laundry on the farm. She probably checked every denim pocket twice, but a few always slipped through.
Sometimes the farm mementos showed up in expected places, like the bean dust settling into my dad’s co-op cap, or the baling twine draped over the gate—likely from the bale of straw used to bed the hogs in the outdoor pens.
And sometimes, they weren’t in the first place a visitor to the farm might expect. Take the medicine for the livestock, for example. In the fridge, next to the mayo. (Unless Mom found it first, then it would go in the basement fridge alongside the cold pop.) The bright pink all-weather paint stick used to ID hogs that were ready for market? On the table in the entryway, rolling around next to the notepad, the telephone and the pens and pencils. I recall a red, weathered bowl on Dad’s desk specifically used to store washers, wire connectors and bolts. I thought these were there just in case we needed them indoors, but now I realize the bowl was a catchall for the items found in his pants pockets after a day of working around the farm.
It got me thinking about the farm and the treasures that show up in unexpected places this time of year:
- Grain scale tickets and farm store receipts forgotten in shirt pockets, now dryer-shredded into a gray ball of lint.
- Rock-hard soybeans rolling across the floor, kicked free from the deep tread of boots worn to the co-op.
- A red paisley-printed handkerchief pulled from a back pocket to wipe a forehead, leaving a dusty, brown imprint where field grime met sweat.
I didn’t know one kernel of corn would unlock so many visual memories of harvest time on the farm. And I couldn’t have imagined how much I’d miss seeing those messy, wonderful harvest treasures.
Happy harvest,
Bethany A Baratta
Written by Bethany Baratta.
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