When I was 18 years old, I couldn’t wait to get off the farm. Since I learned how to walk, my dad made me walk beans every summer. I never got paid, it was just another farm chore we had to do. Never in a million years did I think I would be walking beans 20 years later. For one, I never thought I’d come back to farm when I was 18. And two, I thought the latest technology would zap all the weeds by a laser or some sort of apparatus.

So here I am again, in the same field that I walked every summer for 18 years (give or take a few for crawling), walking beans again. The weeds are smart. They live to survive and reproduce, much like all of us and all species on earth. They have adapted to the nasty herbicide that’s been applied since around 1993. My dad didn’t have anymore free labor, so he had to start spraying herbicide the year after I left for college.

Sometimes life is funny. It always comes around full circle. Maybe I need to invent that laser weed zapper…hmmm.