One day your kids could load your way of seeding into the tractor and go farming with you, in spirit.
Not the best way of seeding in the country. Yours. The way you read a field, where you slow down, the wet corner you always eased through. A few days in the seat can collect it, it is kept under your name, and it passes to your family.
A skill does not have to be the best in the country to be worth keeping. It has to be yours.
Most of this site is about the best hands, the operator a crew asks for by name on the wet job. There is a second kind of skill it has said less about, and it is the kind a farm runs on.
On a farm nobody ranks you. There is no timesheet at the end of the day and no list you could be sorted on. The people who ask for you by name are your own. There is the land, the machine, the weather, and the way you have worked out to get a crop in on that ground. It is not the best way in the county, and it does not need to be. It fits your fields, your tractor and your patience, and it was worked out over more springs than you would care to count.
Uniquely your own means exactly that. Nobody else has seeded that quarter every spring since they were old enough to reach the pedals. Nobody else knows which approach holds after a rain and which one does not. Your way of working those fields is nobody else's, and it does not have to be worth anything to a stranger to be worth keeping.
The best hands.
The rest of this site is about the operator a crew asks for by name on the ground nobody wants, because of what does not happen when they are in the seat. Some of you are that person, and everything on those pages holds for you here.
Uniquely your own.
A way of seeding that fits one farm is not worth much to a stranger, and it is worth a great deal to the people who will farm that land after you. It needs to be kept, under your name, where your own family can find it and choose it.
You own your skill. Always. Forever. Nothing on this page takes it, buys it, or moves it out of you. What is collected is a record of you working, and it is yours.
The joins, not the manual.
Your kid can read the operator's manual. Anybody can. What they cannot read is you: where you slow, where you lift early, the wet corner you always eased through and never said why.
Think about what you would want to hand down, if you could. It is not how to start the tractor or how to set the drill. It is the way you read a field in spring. Which end you start from when the low side is still soft. The headland you take a little wider along the treeline because of what the roots do to the openers. The pass along the slough where you ease off and let the seeder settle before you push on. The corner that has been wet every spring you can remember, and the line you take through it without plugging the drill.
You have shown some of it to your kids by having them ride along. Most of it never got said, because most of it is not made of words. You do it and you do not know you are doing it. Tacit is the word this site uses for the part of a job you cannot write down, and it is the part worth handing down, and the part that has always been lost when the person who had it stopped climbing into the cab.
What your hands did, what the machine did back, what the ground did, and what you were looking at.
A record of you in the seat is not a story about you. It is those four things, on one clock, from the press of start to the press of stop. Where you slowed shows in it. The line you took through the wet corner shows in it. So does the pass you took a second time because the first one was wrong, and nobody grades that, because nothing here grades anything.
Set beside the manual, the record is the other half of running that field. The manual belongs to whoever wrote it, and anybody can read it. The record is of you, and it is yours.
- 01Where you slowThe place you ease off is the place something once went wrong, and you have not forgotten it. A kid who never saw it go wrong has no reason to slow there. The record carries the slowing without the story.
- 02The wet cornerEvery farm has one. You take it the same way every spring, from the same side, at the same pace, and you never wrote it down because who would you write it for. Now there is somebody.
- 03The joinsTurning at the headland, backing off the approach, feeling the seeder settle on the soft side: the moves are easy and the joins between them are where your way lives. The joins are what a record holds and what a manual never has.
A few days in the seat, on your own tractor, on your own land.
Collecting it is a few days of doing what you were going to do anyway. A session, which is the name here for one recording of one person working, runs from one press of start to one press of stop. Seeding is a few of them. Harvest is a few more.
Your name to it
You put your own name to the agreements. Nobody employs you, and nothing changes about who owns the place or the tractor. The kit comes to you by courier, in a case, with a short video to watch on your phone that shows how it goes on and how it comes off.
The morning
You do the walk-around you always do. You fit the kit to the controls the tractor already has, after the walk-around, and you press start. Nobody from us comes to the farm. Nothing is cut, tapped, plugged or powered off the machine, and it comes off afterwards and leaves no mark.
The day
You seed. You work the field the way you work it, and the kit writes down what your hands did, what the machine did back, what the ground did, and what you were looking at. When you have had enough you press stop, and you do not have to say why. You record what you like, and then you ship the case back prepaid.
Built and kept
From the sessions you said yes to, and away from any machine, we build a way of working, which is this site's name for how you run a machine once it is recorded, checked and built. The check is about equipment and paperwork, and no check anywhere grades how you farmed. A named person signs it. It is held under your name, for the family of machine it was taught on, and it goes nowhere else unless you say so.
The record itself is yours. It is kept by us, in Canada, under licence from you and under your name, and it never leaves Canada. It is not on the tractor, not with the dealer, and not with whoever buys the farm one day.
The first recordings come from the crews on the company's own ground, so the awkward questions get found there and not on your farm.
Your kid walks around the tractor, picks your name, and says go.
Years from now, on a morning in spring, one of your kids does the walk-around, climbs up, and starts the tractor. Then they pick a name from what that tractor can run. They pick yours. They write their own name beside it, and they say go.
Loaded is not cleared. Your way of working can sit on that tractor all winter and it runs nothing until a person on the crew clears it on the day, and on a farm the crew is your family. There is no default and no last-used. Choosing is an act, and your kid does it every morning it runs.
A way of working proposes and never authorizes, so a machine running yours still needs a person on the crew to clear the job, on the day, and a person at the machine who can stop it. Whether anyone sits in the seat while it runs depends on the machine and is the owner's call, not ours. What is fixed here is that it runs under your name, wherever it runs, and that you can end it.
On your farm the owner is your kid, so that call is theirs. The tractor's own limits outrank anything it is running, and every person on that field outranks the software. If your kid says stop, the tractor stops by its own means, and nothing of ours is in that path.
- Who says go
- A person on the crew, on the day, by nameOn a farm that is your kid, and it is their name that goes beside yours
- Who can stop it
- Anyone at the machineThe tractor stops by its own means, the way it always has
- Who sits in the seat
- The owner's call, not oursIt depends on the machine, and nothing on this site decides it
- Loaded is not cleared
- It runs nothing until somebody clears itNo default, no last-used, and no morning it starts on its own
- A morning nobody picks your name
- A normal morningNothing runs under your name, and the tractor works as it always has
The tractor knows where you eased off.
Your kid will know whose way that is, and nobody will have to tell them.
What runs is your way of running the machine, and it is not a film of you.
Farming with Dad is the plain name for it: a way to collect and keep your own way of working the fields, not the best but uniquely your own, and hand it to your kids so they can load it into a tractor and work the fields with you, in spirit. Spirit is a hard word to pin down, so the plain version is below.
Your way of running that machine, carried onto that machine again.
What your kid loads is a way of working built from your sessions: how you took that field, checked, signed by a named person, and run under your name. When the tractor comes up on the slough, what it offers is easing off, because that is what you did there. What it takes is still the ground in front of it that morning. Your kid has watched you do that every spring of their life.
In spirit means that, and nothing grander. The machine carries the way you did it. Your kid recognizes it. Nobody has to say whose it was.
What it is not.
It is not a film of you and not a stand-in for you. It does not know your kid's name, it does not tell anybody they are doing it wrong, and it carries nothing of you but the way you ran the machine. What runs on the tractor is the way of working built from the record, and not the record itself. The record stays with us, under your name.
What your kid gets.
A tractor that works that field the way you did, on the mornings they choose it. And the long way, which they still have to walk, because a machine carrying your way of working does not teach it, and nothing here pretends it does.
What you get.
The knowledge that the way you worked that land does not walk out the gate with you. It is collected, it is kept under your name, and it passes to your family with the right to end it.
The skill, the name and the way out, and all three pass to your family.
Three things do not move, in any year, under any owner of the tractor, and after any withdrawal: the technique, the name and the way out. We make the tool. You own the skill, always and forever.
The technique.
What you know is yours, still in your hands tomorrow, on your own land, whatever the paper says. A record of a day's seeding is held under licence. The skill that made the day is not in the record to be taken, and it goes into the house with you every night. We never ask to acquire it, and we would not take it.
The name.
If a tractor is working your way, it says so. Nothing runs under a house name or a number, and no record is sold on to run under somebody else's. Your kid picks your name on the morning, and your name is what goes in the record beside theirs.
The way out.
You can end it on your own say, on any day, for nothing. Give notice and nothing new starts under it. The job already running finishes, and that is the one delay in it. You are told two dates, both true: the day it comes out of service and the day every copy is gone, backups included. After you, your family holds the same right, with the same two dates.
And nothing here stops you farming, teaching your kids the long way, or handing the place on however you were going to hand it on. We never ask for that.
It does not teach your kids. You do.
A tractor running your way of working does not explain why it slowed at the slough. Your kid learns that by riding along, by asking, and by getting it wrong once.
This is a companion to the long way and not a replacement for it. The kid who learned the long way is the one who will know, on a wet morning, whether to pick your name or their own. What is kept is the work, kept tight on purpose: what your hands did, what the machine did back, what the ground did, and what you were looking at. A pass you took twice because the first one was wrong is in the record, and nothing anywhere has an opinion about it.
Ask what your kids would be loading.
If you farm and you want to know what a record of you in the seat would be, whose it would be, and what your kids would find under your name years from now, write and ask.