Good Morning, Springboro! Crows in a Field of Wheat (Last Installment in This Series)

My original watercolor painting of crows in a field of wheat stubble is an unintended homage to Vincent van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (1890). As I was standing alongside the road and admiring the rich orange of the mowed stalks of wheat, crows flew in to feast on fallen grain. Two landed and eyed me suspiciously while the others rose and fell like umbrellas in the sky. I was not consciously thinking about Vincent’s work, but, synchronistically, I completed my small composition on the 14th of July, only a few days after Vincent finished his. Naturally, he and I were drawn to paint crows and wheat because most wheat in Europe and the United States since the nineteenth century has been harvested beginning in early July.

Crows in a Field of Wheat

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

I have written extensively about threshing wheat. In my book entitled The Harvest Story: Recollections of Old-Time Threshermen (Purdue University Press, 2001), I describe “shocks of bronze-colored wheat stretching across the golden fields of summer.” I explain that, by the late 1800s, wheat threshing had assumed a position of towering importance in many areas of the United States. Eventually, wheat was crowned king of cash crops throughout much of North America. Wheat made Kansas and neighboring states the world’s breadbasket. In the time of my grandfather and father in Indiana, farmers formed threshing rings to go from farm to farm helping one another with machines to separate the grains of wheat from the stalks on which the grains had grown. In those days, children thought of “thrashin’” as “Christmas in July”! Families collaborated in the labor of the harvest and sat down to noonday dinners of epic proportions. Most rural folks who experienced wheat threshing considered the event so positive as to be among their favorite memories.

When I exhibited my Case steam engine at the Will County show in Illinois for several years, I had the opportunity to help load bundles, or sheaves, of wheat in the late afternoons. Even though the work was hot and chaff stuck to my neck, I look back on the work as about the most fun I have ever had! The slanting rays of the evening sun made the entire field golden. It felt good to use my pitchfork to lift the bundles high up to where the bundle loader, standing atop the sheaves that we were piling on the wagon, could reach the bundles of those of us who were handing them up; he snagged them with his pitchfork and positioned them where he wanted them. The task of bringing in the sheaves had real meaning, and I thoroughly enjoyed working with my friends amid the wheat stubble.

Probably the crows were having just as much fun this July. They appeared to be happy as they dined on wheat that the present-day combine had missed.        

If you would like to purchase one of the paintings in this series, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook. Each work of art measures 5″ by 7″ and consists of Cotman Water Colours by Winsor & Newton on acid-free Montval watercolor paper.