The Field Day Tent That Went to Oklahoma
A gust of wind lifts our field day tent off its stakes in Stephenville, and the crowd hangs on to the poles like a very large kite.
Every spring we hold the dairy field day in a pasture just outside Stephenville, and every spring the wind blows. It is a fact of life out there, like gravity or invoices. That year the committee had rented a big white tent, forty feet by sixty, with a stage and sixty folding chairs and a banner that said 'Welcome Dairy Friends.'
We pounded in the stakes around nine. By ten, the speakers had started. By ten-fifteen, I felt a change in the air, and I had the feeling that comes over you when a cow looks at the gate and then at you. A gust came up out of the southwest like it had been waiting for an invitation. The tent rose about four feet off the ground, quite gently, with the chairs still in it.
What happened next I can only describe as a team effort. Twenty-three grown men and women, including the county extension agent, grabbed the poles and hung on. For about ten seconds, we were all airborne, give or take a few inches. The tent hovered above us like a giant white jellyfish, and the speaker at the microphone, a very dignified gentleman from the feed association, kept right on talking about protein levels.
We drifted maybe forty yards toward the Oklahoma line before someone yelled to sit down. We all sat on the grass, and the tent settled over us like a blanket. We held our meeting right there, in the half dark, with the wind snapping above us. The gentleman from the feed association finished his talk. Everyone agreed it was the most attentive audience he had ever had.
Afterward we added forty more stakes and a note in the planning binder that says 'Wind: yes.' If you are planning an event like this, the guidance from eXtension is worth reading before the sky decides for you. And for more of my field day stories, there is a shelf of them on farm.FM next to the songs.