Tractor Seat Therapy: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Planting Season

There’s a certain kind of tired that only comes from spring fieldwork.

The kind where your clothes smell like dust, your hands are dry from dirt and grease, and somehow there are still rocks in the field no matter how many you picked last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that.

The last two weekends have been full of that kind of tired — the good kind, mostly. We spent the days helping finish up corn and bean planting, running equipment, making parts runs, fixing what needed fixing, and doing the not-so-glamorous jobs that still have to get done.

Including, yes, picking up what felt like a million rocks.

It’s funny how farm days can be both exhausting and steadying at the same time. There’s always something to do. Something to check. Something making a noise it probably shouldn’t. Something that needs a wrench, a ride, a second set of hands, or one more trip to town for parts.

But there’s also something about being out there that settles the noise in your head.

I call it tractor seat therapy.

Not because it’s peaceful in the polished, picture-perfect way people sometimes imagine rural life to be. It’s not always quiet. It’s not always easy. There are breakdowns, delays, weather windows, long hours, and plenty of moments where the plan changes five times before lunch.

But sitting in the tractor, watching rows stretch out ahead of you, feeling the rhythm of the field, and seeing another season begin — there’s something grounding about it.

That feeling is a big part of what Buddy Seat Co is built on.

The artwork here isn’t meant to be a decoration pretending to understand rural life. It comes from real places, real field days, real gravel roads, real barns, and real moments that tend to stay with you long after the work is done.

Sometimes that means a sunset from the buddy seat.
Sometimes it’s dust hanging in the air at the end of harvest.
Sometimes it’s the inside of an old barn where light slips through the boards just right.
And sometimes it’s a spring field, a piece of equipment parked along the fence line, and wind turbines standing against an Iowa sky.

Over the last couple weekends, I’ve been taking photos whenever I could — in between helping, riding along, watching planting wrap up, and trying not to slow anyone down too much with a camera in my hand.

Some of those images may become new wall art pieces. Some may become part of the behind-the-scenes story. Some may simply become reminders of this season: the work, the weather, the equipment, the rocks, the repairs, and the small moments that make farm life what it is.

That’s part of the fun of building Buddy Seat Co in real time. The collection grows from actual days lived close to the land, not from a stock concept of what rural should look like.

There’s more coming soon — new field views, new farm photography, and more pieces inspired by the places and seasons that shape the rural Midwest.

For now, I’m grateful for another planting season nearly in the books, for the chance to help where I can, and for the view from the tractor seat.

Even with the rocks.