2025 Competition Entry:

Winter Wheat by Jim Pryts

Genre

Folk

Artist

Co-writer(s)

no

Performer(s)

I record all my songs alone. I recorded the song and guitar on one track, then multi-tracked the background vocal in the last verse.

Description

Near the Columbia River, Winter wheat is sown in the fall, lies dormant through the cold months into the new year, greens the warming fields in springtime, and is harvested in the new summer. In the Autumn of 2019, the Winter wheat crop along the Columbia River was sown, and was the first crop in the ground before the Coronavirus pandemic turned our heads. So, in the Summer of 2020, it was the first harvest in the shadow of the virus.
The wheat farmer in my song works the small holding that has been in his family for three generations, and ponders the pandemics effects on their lives. His wife died a few years back, and they never had a son. His innocent eight-year-old daughter is his youngest, and has taken it upon herself to help him in any way she can. In the process, she breaks down gender barriers, without her father even knowing it. She does not yet understand the ramifications of the new disease, and the farmer fears the telling, so instead he will for now focus on the two of them bringing in their 40 acres of winter wheat, in the fields near the small town of Dufur, near the Columbia River, in Wasco County, Oregon.
Jim Pryts
January,2025 – McMinnville, Oregon

Bio

My father taught me to love music. He played the mouth organ, and his musical tastes were all over the charts from Big Band Swing, Hank Williams, Red River Dave, the Inkspots, Louie Armstrong, to the folk music of the late 50’s. When my brother went into the Navy in 1962, he taught me three chords on his Silvertone acoustic guitar, and put it in my care until he came home. I started practicing, and have been playing ever since. I picked up claw hammer banjo in 1973, and two years later won 3rd place at the KSAN FM sponsored 5 string banjo contest at the Boarding House Theater in San Francisco, hosted by John McEuen, of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In 2012, I got a Ukulele for my birthday, and have been enjoying the little Flea since. In the 60’s I was infected with the Rock n Roll bug, and have been in and out of rock bands during my life, but one day in 1964 I heard Paul Simon play, and I learned to finger pick on my Fender Telecaster. Since the mid 70’s I have been playing fingerstyle acoustic guitar almost exclusively, except for the occasional rock gig. In 2022, I won 2nd and 3rd place in the Kauai Mokihana Festival composers contest, performing two of my original songs on the Ukulele. In May, 2024, I was contacted by Bolton FM radio, in Bolton England about allowing them to play some of my original songs on their Folk Show hosted by Ron Armitage. I happily agreed, and have had my songs on the air in that city of about 300k souls ever since. I am a hopeless failure financially, but I am rich beyond measure by my connection with music during my 75 years on this planet.

Lyrics

Winter Wheat © Jim Pryts, 2020 Drop D tuning capo’d at 4th fret Key of F#


The wind was blowing icy in the fields that day, with the winter wheat waving pretty on the land,
A cold sun shown on my worried frown, as my youngest daughter ran to grab my hand.
Her laughter it rang like a silver bell, and sprinkled to the furrows in the ground,
How was I to tell her of the news that I had heard, of the sickness that was loose upon the land.

So, I said that she should help me as she always did, when Daddy hitched the header to the Ford,
Although her little fingers couldn’t wrap around that hitch, she stood her ground, against the tractors roar.
“Gonna be a good crop, Dad”, she yelled as she got on, “we’re gonna move the winter wheat into the barn!”
Her grim determination eased my worry just a trace, as she jumped up there behind me safe from harm.

Now, how was I to tell her that she couldn’t go to school, or swim Huichica creek with all her friends?
While she held tight to me in her office on the Ford, as the header pulled the wheat off of the land.
Well, we sang her songs together through the whining engines noise, her favorite songs I taught her how to sing,
The ones I often sang to her at Lullaby time, when she was still a tiny little thing.

How would I tell her of her Uncle Claude, who died in a hurry, all alone?
Because he picked the virus up at Thompsons Carry Out, and now he wasn’t ever going home?
I can’t tell my little girl, I just can’t bring myself to, so, for now we’ll just bring the harvest in,
My small girl and me, the boy I never had, as she helps me keep the header true and trim.

And, someday away, maybe months and maybe years, she’ll be safe from what she can’t now comprehend,
But, for now any way, we’ll just be movin’ hay, and watch the wind blowing dust across the land.
And when my daughter’s grown, with kids of her own, by then she’ll find a way to understand,
But, for now her and me, we’ll just keep mowing hay, and, feel the wind blowin dust across the land.
We’ll pull the winter wheat from the land.

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