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For years, there were these recurring dreams common for many of us. Being late for the final exam. Being called upon to speak but only gibberish coming from your lips. Being able to fly–but realizing high in the air that you don’t know how to land.

Those seldom occur now since we retired from farming. These days the recurring dreams are mostly agriculture related, but the angst is similar.

When I think back on those 10 years on our organic blueberry farm and recall the countless things that could go wrong–and some did–it’s no wonder those dreams come nowadays.

Most are humorous, and that’s because they were, well, laughable.

Leaving the water running for livestock was a frequent mistake. I was always the dimwit, of course. My wife conserved water as if we were farming in the Sahara, often letting me know that wasting water was tantamount to a sin. I always fancied myself a multitasking person, but what I failed to grasp was the importance of doing all three tasks well. Many a pasture pond were created that way.

So now and then I dream that I am racing from one water hydrant to the next in search of water, with none to be found.

 

I leave to your imagination the foul dreams caused by having to eradicate a family of skunks living beneath the barn. Or the time I unknowingly got the scent of a doe in heat on my jeans and walked clueless into the breeding bucks’ paddock. Or when I was babbling about our amazing crop of crimson clover while not realizing that I was standing on a fire ant mound.

 

Busted knuckles, electric fence zaps, an angry honey bee inside my veil, and nasty hornets caused pain but no dreams—yet.

 

But the credit for perhaps the most bizarre event resulting in a recurring dream goes to a former neighbor. He and his wife owned the little place next door, which they visited on occasion to get away from their Florida home. They had a tractor, a four-wheeler and a pickup truck but no livestock. They wore marvelous runway-ready clothes. And they were sweet people.

 

The “Green Acres” moment occurred one day when I was working in one of our fields on the tractor preparing ground for planting. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a large white object moving quickly in a circle in the neighbors’ field. Stopping in my tracks, I could see their pickup truck zooming. Both doors were open. The hood was up. It appeared to be driverless.

 

I made my way to the fence to get a closer look.

 

My neighbors, as it turned out, had driven up for a Sangria weekend. When he raised the hood of his truck which had sat unattended for weeks, he painfully discovered that wasps had moved into the engine area and the cab of the truck.

 

At that point, perhaps inspired by latent NASCAR urges, he began racing and bouncing through his field hoping to dislodge and discourage the invaders.

 

And that has now become the stuff of my dreams, with driverless Elon Musk-like pickups staying just out of my reach.

 

Larry McDermott is a local retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com