A Penny For Your Thoughts

Penny Piper goes against the grain.

The 53-year-old grandmother who is quick to crack a smile farms wheat and barley on 2,000 acres of rolling land near Davenport.

And while most farm women operate grain trucks or help during harvest by cooking and operating the radios from home, Piper takes to the fields each day in a bright red International combine.

She started last week. Her 28-year-old son Mike, who is her business partner, and her husband, Bob, stayed near the house the first few days while Penny was out in the fields alone, one hand on the steering wheel of her tall transport and the other gripping the control arm for the combine.

The ocean of grain outside the combine and the ocean-like roar of noise inside comprise Piper’s August world.

“It’s nice to finally be cutting,” Piper said of this year’s late harvest season. “Everybody’s gotten kind of antsy waiting.”

As the machinery mowed through the wheat, the small white-haired woman concentrated, glanced at either end of the row in front of her, cocked her ear for slowdowns in the machinery and watched for changes in the slope. Teeth and blades spun beneath her, chewing up rows of winter wheat her son planted last fall.

“I don’t do this as fast as Mike does,” Piper said. “There are too many things to do and to think about.”

Mostly she sits silent, watching, steering and thinking.

On Monday, the first day of harvest for her, she concentrated herself into a headache. But as the week progressed, Piper relaxed into the work. She’s eager to get it done.

The grandmother farmer starts cutting when the wheat is dry enough - around 9 a.m. - and comes out of the fields only once a day - at noon for a bathroom break and quick lunch with her family. Then she climbs back into the combine, and, armed with coolers of cookies and Diet Pepsi, heads out to the fields again.

Piper got into this side of farming in 1987, when her husband Bob, who has spinal cord problems, had to start using a wheelchair and could no longer climb into the combine.

The couple had been running the family farm since Piper’s father retired in 1981 and they wanted to keep working the land. They knew Bob’s surgeries were sure to keep him out of the fields, so they started shifting many of the duties to Penny, even before the wheelchair was necessary.

The property originally belonged to Piper’s grandfather who, in 1929, built the red brick house at the edge of the fields in which Bob and Penny Piper now live.

The architecture of the old house allows Bob to get around well: the doors are wide enough for his wheelchair and everything he needs is on one floor. When he first used the wheelchair, the family made a few modifications and put ramps at the front and the back of the house.

When Piper breaks for lunch, it’s in the blue kitchen with the white metal cabinets where she’s had thousands of meals. The house is a big part of her history. She wants to keep it and the farm in the family.

Last year she and son Mike formed a corporation, M & P Farm Inc. Together they lease 1,000 acres from the family and another 1,000 acres from other landowners in the area.

Everyone in the small family, including Mike’s pregnant wife, Jodi, helps out. Jodi and a part-time farmhand run the grain trucks which bring the harvest in from the fields. And though Bob can’t operate a combine, he can get into a customized van and drive off to find the parts and equipment needed on the farm.

Last week both he and Mike stayed close to the house repairing two combines that broke down on the first day of harvest. “Our yard’s the one with all the vehicles all over it,” Mike Piper said.

Solidly built, with a thick shock of dark hair and a grizzly beard, Mike resembles his father. On Tuesday he bent into another International combine trying to repair the gears and wheels that turn the teeth and blades.

When everything’s running smoothly, Mike is in the fields with Penny. But with only one combine working, the best use of their time and skills is to have Penny out cutting and Mike at home repairing the equipment. They’re under some pressure to get everything working and bring in the grain as soon as it’s ready.

“We’re afraid that if it starts raining, we could have some real problems,” Bob Piper said. “But we’re a little bit ahead right now.” Their harvest could last into early September.

Still the summer has been good to them, and the Pipers expect the harvest will be better than average.

Finally surrendering the combine to a mechanic Tuesday afternoon, Mike and his son, Justin, 4, sat on the back deck playing with a coffee can full of wheat kernels. Justin, who hangs around the house while his mother is ferrying wheat in from the fields, put a few grains of wheat into his mouth.

“If they pop between your teeth, then it’s ready to cut,” Mike said.

Justin grabbed a few more grains.

If Penny Piper has her way, her grandson will grow up to further the family farming tradition.

“It’s a small operation,” she said. “The ultimate goal for all of us is to keep it in the family and pass it on.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)