“What are you doing out here?” the tractor mechanic queried one morning last week. “Getting my work done before it gets hotter,” I replied. “Same thing you are doing here.” He had come mid-morning with a colleague to sharpen the blade on my five-foot bush hog, the heavy mower that attaches to my tractor.

For the last week, I had begun working at daybreak. By ten each morning, my clothes were soaked with sweat; by 10:30 a.m., I headed for the house and a shower, my body aching from the exertion. This morning, just as I was finishing in the garden, I heard his truck pull down the farm lane.

“Hot enough for you?” he had asked when I called him earlier in the week. We were roughly the same age; we were both suffering through the heat and humidity. He made it clear that he was not leaving the shade of his office late afternoon, though he promised to come soon.

I wondered later if his question was really one of concern for me. We had known each other for ten years. I had moved to the farm in 2004. After my first season, one neighbor confessed that he did not think I would make it a whole season. Three years later, when I decided to expand my garden by three acres, he helped me find the perfect tractor. “Ms. Voris, he said adamantly, “you are going to kiss that tractor every day!” I have not kissed the tractor nor my neighbor, though I treasure them both.

I treasure the local mechanic too. Before I bought the tractor, I asked another neighbor, “How can I service the tractor?” I could not drive it to a shop; I did not have a truck or a trailer that could haul it. He recommended this mechanic. All the local farmers used him: he would come to my farm to service the tractor. Come he did once a year to do basic maintenance. He also came occasionally when my tractor stopped working in the middle of some field. Once the battery died; another time, a fuse blew; another time, an electric wire melted in the heat. Several times, I ran out of fuel.

He was always respectful—the way one would be whose family member had chosen to live a life no one else could understand--but who nonetheless respected their right to choose. I often watched him work, hoping to learn more about the tractor. We talked about his daughter going to the college; about his son who was struggling to recover from an accident. “Do you want to use the factory air filters?” he would ask (or somesuch), giving me the right to say yes. If I did not say yes the first time, he would ask again, until I understood that he was prompting me to say yes to what was best for my tractor. “One of the finest men, “ my neighbor declared about him.

On this morning in late August, we met again. Perhaps we both wondered: what were we doing out here? How much longer could we keep going? Why was I working so hard to maintain a garden on a farm, barely earning any income from my garden? On one level, I was doing my work early to get out of the heat. On a deeper level, I was doing work I felt called to do: creating a place of beauty, bounty and balance, maintaining the heart of the farm, in a fracturing world.

What was he doing? He lay on the ground under a half-ton mower held above him by a logging chain attached to the bucket of the tractor. Sparks flew close to his face as he pressed his grinder against the blade. Perhaps earlier in his life, he may have chosen other work; perhaps not. Now he was supporting his business and his family in his community.

We were each holding the wholeness of our own lives together. At the end of August in blazing heat, perhaps is no small feat--an accomplishment to be acknowledged--if not celebrated. May fall come soon!