Growing up in Stokes County, North Carolina, I learned early that farming doesn’t start when things turn green.

It starts long before that.

In the early 1970s, when tobacco season rolled around, most folks noticed it in the summer— when the leaves were tall, wide, and sticky, and the work was hot and unforgiving. That’s when outsiders thought the real work happened.

But anyone who raised tobacco knew better.

The real work started months earlier.

In the fall, after the tobacco had been taken to market and the barns were quiet again, the fields were turned. Plowed deep. Disked. Worked until the soil broke open and breathed. Sometimes rows were laid up and left to sit through the winter, exposed to cold rain, frost, and time.

Nothing pretty about it.

Just dirt. Red clay. Rough ground that didn’t look like much of anything.

But that winter mattered.

Freezing and thawing broke the soil down. Rain settled it. Time did what time always does when you give it room to work. By the time spring came, that ground was ready to receive fertilizer and young plants pulled from the plant beds.

By then, the work had already been done.

As a youngster, I didn’t think much about that part. I just knew that when planting time came, things moved fast.

First came the plant beds—carefully tended so those young tobacco plants would be strong enough to survive being moved. Then came planting. Sometimes it was done the old way: one person pushing a planter into the ground, another person dropping the plant in behind it. After a big rain, when the soil was soft and forgiving, we might use a wooden six-inch tool called a peg—punching holes and setting plants by hand.

Later on, Uncle Obie and Dad bought a transplanter that pulled behind the tractor. Two people sat on it, feeding plants into the machine as it rolled along the rows. However it got done, once those plants were in the ground, it didn’t take long.

Before you knew it, the field was alive.

But none of that happened by accident.

That early work—the turning, the waiting, the patience—determined how deep the roots would go. And deep roots mattered when July heat settled in and rain didn’t come when you wanted it to.

By the time harvest rolled around, when we were priming leaves and loading slides, the crop was already telling you a story. You could see which fields had been prepared well and which ones hadn’t. Some plants stood strong. Others struggled.

The harvest never lied.

Looking back now, I see how much that mirrors life.

Sometimes we judge seasons by what we can see—what’s producing, what’s blooming, what’s paying off. But so much of what shapes us happens earlier, out of sight. In quiet months. In hard seasons. In times that don’t look productive at all.

Those are the times when things are being worked into us—patience, resilience, humility, endurance. Rows are being laid down that will support something later, even if we don’t know what that is yet.

We don’t always get to choose the season we’re in. But we do get shaped by it.

And more often than not, the strength you see at harvest was built long before anyone noticed.

At least, that’s how I remember it.

As Best As I Remember It.