Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, was once asked who was his greatest teacher? “Chairman Mao,” he said. “He taught me patience.”

I don’t want to alarm anyone. But based on the current weather, I think the Earth is drifting closer to the sun.

It’s a sound I haven’t heard in a while. Coyotes. I believe it was a pair. The howls and yips were coming from the east, somewhere along the Mazon River. There used to be a mated pair that lived in that line of trees meandering along the muddy stream that is an tributary of the much larger, much dammed Illinois River.

The clank of trace chains and the slow creak of the forecart’s wheels breaks the morning’s silence as they turn around and around, rolling over dew-covered grass. Up front, a pair of Belgian mules – Loretta on my left and Annabelle on my right – doing what draft animals have done for centuries and doing it well, I might add.

The telltale whine of the massive boom sprayer rose in a slow crescendo as it lumbered down our country road, but our mules Loretta and Emmylou gave it no notice. They were too focused on the work at hand. So the big steel machine went past, its engine sound falling away in a Doppler hum, as it disappeared beyond the tall corn plants in our neighbor’s land to spray its chemical payload on some farm field further on.

It is a ritual of sorts. I open the tack room door and take the pair of leather bridles down from the cast iron hook bolted to the pinewood wall and set them down within arm’s reach. Our two big mules, casually chewing their morning oats, quietly watch as I get things ready. I exit the barn for a few minutes to attend to some other tasks outside and when I return, these auburn colored drafts are standing stock still, side by side in their stall, patiently waiting to be harnessed. They know.