We never owned one. A tractor was something you borrowed from a neighbor whose soy was already leafing the field. My mother started us young in the garden, with a hoe taller than our heads, its wooden handle knocking our ears. My life started as a good weeding, early in the morning, dew still on the beans and spider webs. There was a mist sometimes like a cotton sea. I remember driving home from college, rounding the bend on 95, seeing the John Deere tractors greening the hill above traffic—it lifted my heart every time to see them. In Old Farm, New Farm, a children’s book, the farm starts as a thing more full of holes than not. Puddles spotting the farmyard, the tractor’s seat missing. The harrow’s teeth gone to rust. The farmer milks the cows first, mends the fences. Repairs the greenhouse panes of glass. Knows he can leave the tractor ‘til spring, and knows he can’t live without it. The end of the book is pots of jam and cream.