It was a chilly, gray morning with rain in the forecast as that Saturday harvest session droned on.

Over in the combine, my husband’s phone rang. It was the man who owned the field we were harvesting. He had company from California and wanted to show them a little Iowa hospitality by giving them the chance to sit in the buddy seat in the combine and talk to a farmer as he brought in the bounty that helps feed the world.

They came out and took turns sitting with my husband, who fielded many questions. The man asked about the mechanics of a combine, where the crop goes, how far apart our fields were, how far we drove to the elevator, what machines do what jobs, etc.

When the woman occupied the buddy seat, she asked questions about the corn we were harvesting that day, how the crops are used, the seasons of the crop year as it progresses — things like that. And then she asked ‘the big one.’

“Does your wife enjoy driving the grain cart, or does she feel like she’s just been stuck with it?”

I wonder if my regular expression had matched the gray hooded sweatshirt I had on that day, to cause her to ask such a question. But women are as much about relationships as they are about all the rest of it.

It’s the million-dollar question of the farm, next to, “Can you help load hogs in the morning?” (If you can help, the packer gets the million dollars.)

The answer to the woman’s question is that I actually do enjoy the job and don’t feel like I’ve been stuck with it — even though I guess I have been. There is no one else to do it.

Women of the farm get asked to do a lot of things, as they have since there were farms and people to run them. Seldom is there ever an overrun of men to do all the jobs that need to be done on the farm.

It was a baptism by fire of sorts when I started running the grain cart, not without some headaches for my husband at first. But then, farm hands have for years been given a five-minute tutorial and been sent out to carry on, in the rush of getting it all done in a day.

At least when the headaches come — as they often do following five-minute tutorials – my husband knows which bottle to reach for to take care of them.

While some women in the nation own land outright and some own and run their own operations, your average woman of the farm shares the financials, joys, sorrows and the jobs with her other half. Her husband might be the one to do the greasy repair work, but when it’s ‘go-time,’ she’s right there with him — watching gates, vaccinating livestock, operating the skid loader, driving the seed tender, helping with planting or harvest in an assortment of machines, stacking and unloading hay bales, running the baler, unloading trucks, filling planters and grain bins, cleaning out bins and stalls; working, feeding or loading livestock and cleaning machinery.

All of that while she enters book work into the computer, mends, mows the yard, plants and preserves the garden, keeps the house, looks after young children and hauls teenagers around before they are deemed good to drive themselves. They are charged with the work of birthdays and the holidays, laundry, cheering on her kids at their activities, helping with school work and church responsibilities, feeding people all year long — in the field and at home; making sure there is food in the house, settling a few scores here and there and caring for sick kids.

And sometimes holding down a full-time job in town … along with her husband.

While out speaking one day I asked a woman what she does.

“Oh,” she laughed humbly and shook her head. “I’m just a farm wife.”

“Just a farm wife,” I thought. I knew better.

Her value is beyond measure. God placed an angel on their farm, whom she humbly greets every morning when she looks in the mirror.

That angel is every farm woman. That angel, ladies, is you.

Karen Schwaller writes from her farm home near Milford. She can be reached at kschwaller@evetek.net.