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I went over to my neighbor’s farm, seeking agri-advice. This was during that long stretch when it was high time to plant but too wet to try, so he stood in the mud working on a big sprayer.

First we tackled my problem. I described exactly where my aging tractor appeared to be leaking hydraulic oil, and he shook his head ruefully in that way guys do when something sounds expensive and they knew it was coming. He had warned me a long time ago this particular leak might occur. If only economic forecasters had such a clear view of the future.

So he described the repair, predicted it would cost $500 – it did – and then I learned what all the different tanks on his sprayer are for. As an office worker, the knowledge will do me no good whatsoever. But I like to know this kind of stuff anyway; if you’re going to live in Iowa, you might as well have some vague understanding of how Iowa works.

Last spring I got a tour of the planter and a rundown on the prices of the parts he was replacing.

One time I went over and he was building a curved chute out of various pieces of metal that he had lying around. Apparently, for cattle a curved passageway is as thrilling as a visit to Adventureland.

On another recent visit, he was cleaning a hog house with a pressure sprayer. I guess what I learned that time was, don’t go into the hog-production business.

He has started talking about giving up on hogs himself. It’s not like when he was growing up; now a company sends him a load of little pigs, he feeds them as instructed, and after a while a truck comes and hauls away a load of big pigs.

Simple as that. Not as much economic risk and no wasted time at a sale barn, but just as much labor and just as many injuries as ever. Chains break, animals make questionable decisions – it’s always something.

When I drive by on a freezing-cold or steaming-hot morning and see my neighbor hard at work, it looks like a long day he’s got ahead of him. But I’ll bet he sees me go past and thinks about what torture it would be to sit at a desk. This is when civilization works best – when everybody feels lucky to be in the situation they’re in and a bit sorry for everybody else.

Some comparisons really aren’t debatable, though. Once my son was talking about what a tough schedule he had at college, what with the 8 a.m. classes. “Wow,” my neighbor said, but I had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t all that sympathetic. By 8 a.m. on a typical day, he has already solved a mechanical problem and scraped a knuckle.

He doesn’t complain much, though. “It’s not work to me,” he said once, and that’s another example of civilization working as it should. We all have known way too many people counting down the days until retirement.

Still, as he tried to figure out why the sprayer’s foam marker wasn’t working, he said he sure would like to take off a few more days for hunting in the years ahead. He just needs a little more time when he’s not tied down by hungry livestock and broken machinery. Two more years of hogs and that’s it, he said.

It’s pretty clear what the problem is. He talks more and more about getting old, and wonders how much time he has left. He’s not that old, and I pointed out that he does get a lot of exercise in his daily rounds. Actually, he said, a doctor told him his lung capacity isn’t what it should be, probably because he has gotten so much of that exercise inside hog houses.

There’s the familiar catch; we all pay a price for our paychecks. Whether it’s spending a pathetic amount of time sitting and staring at a computer screen or cheerfully selling a product we really don’t believe in, we all make sacrifices to make a living.

But farmers take a beating.

After watching it rain for weeks, waiting for the fields to dry out and warm up, my neighbor fell off a ladder and broke his ribs.

So now here it is spring, the moment farmers look forward to even more eagerly than the rest of us, and he’s on the disabled list.

His young grandson remarked that it shouldn’t be too bad, because “when it’s planting season, all he has to do is sit on the tractor.” The boy’s not paying attention.