Earlier this week I was cleaning up a tree that had fallen out from a fence line into one of our fields. Funny thing is, that’s still what I call every farm boundary, even if there hasn’t been an actual fence there for as long as I can remember. And I think most every farmer around here calls them the same thing too.
“Fence line.”
Kind of peculiar when you think about it. Whole conversations about fence lines… with no fences in sight.
Anyhow, when I dragged the fallen tree out into the lane, I noticed something at the base of it. There it was — old barb wire grown right through the middle of the trunk.
Now this particular farm has not had livestock on it in my lifetime. Dad never had any there either. So it’s been at least sixty or seventy years since a hoof touched that land, yet there was that old fence, swallowed by the tree like nature had slowly tried to erase it.
And the first thing I did was head straight into the brush looking for more.
Why?
I got thinking about that afterward. I wasn’t really looking for old barb wire. I was looking for reassurance. Because if that tree held the last piece of fence, and it was now gone, then one of the last visible markers of where that farm began and ended would disappear with it.
Sure enough, a little farther down the ditch bank was another young tree growing up around the same old wire. And honestly, I felt relieved seeing it there.
Now you’re probably thinking… “Rod, aren’t modern farms using fancy GPS technology for all this nowadays?”
Well… yes and no.
Truth is, farming has become incredibly precise. We plant fields now with GPS steering systems that can drive long rows almost perfectly parallel from one end of the field to the other. The equipment guiding today’s farms is amazingly accurate.
But here’s the funny part.
Just last week, one of our neighbours came down the lane in his little side-by-side. He had his tractor GPS system temporarily mounted in it and was out marking some field lines. Over the years, the two of us have always tried to keep our planting lines parallel along one particular tree-less farm boundary. Some years we do better than others. Usually whoever plants first sort of becomes the guide for the other fellow.
But this year he got smart.
He stopped and asked me for the exact GPS heading angle from our system. I pulled it up and gave him the number. A very accurate compass heading calculated from satellites floating around in space somewhere.
And that was it.
No discussion about where the actual line was.
Just an angle.
At first glance that probably doesn’t even make sense, because a heading alone is useless unless you know where to start from.
But we both already knew what would happen next.
We said our goodbyes, and I watched him drive that little machine over toward the old rusty barely-standing fence post in the corner of the farm. One lonely steel post pounded into the ground by somebody’s grandpa — maybe even somebody’s great-great-grandpa.
He stopped beside it, tapped a button on the GPS screen, and marked the line.
That old post became the starting point for all the modern technology.
And standing there watching him, that’s when it hit me.
I had never shook Adam’s hand and agreed where that line should be.
But somewhere along the way, my great-great… honestly who knows how many greats back… grandfather must have. Him and another farmer stood in that field at some point, settled on a line, and shook hands on it.
No paperwork.
No GPS coordinates.
No satellite maps.
Just a handshake between two farmers.
And somehow, after all these years, all the changes in farming, and all the technology we now have…
that handshake still means something.
Farmer Rod