Editor’s Note: Sydney Glasoe Caraballo is a fifth-generation rancher and farmer who manages Glasoe Angus near Wildrose. Her Fair Range column appears monthly in The Journal and Tioga Tribune.

September felt like a gift – warm days saturated in sunshine serve fields of gold as our wheat ripens. The forecast through mid-month is a harvest boon of robin egg skies and evenings of northern lights dancing green streaks below shimmering stars.

Time stretches and suspends into an autumn summer against an uglier backdrop of inflation, rising interest rates and global market interruptions. Commodity prices deflate. I check the Minneapolis Grain Exchange each day and watch hard red spring wheat futures contracts do a slow swan dive on the charts from May until now. Durum wheat, which we grow but isn’t traded on the exchange, sold as high as $17.50 per bushel locally last harvest but is now valued at $8.50.

Frankly, the U.S. dollar itself is a likely reason for the fallout. I listen to Mitchell Hartman’s report, “Why the U.S. dollar is so strong right now,” on Marketplace.org for some straightforward edification. Simply put, when the U.S. dollar strengthens, North Dakota crops lose value in the world (and thus at home).

Hartman’s report notes that the American greenback recently hit a 20-year high and is now on par with the euro. The Federal Reserve is aggressively raising interest rates to tackle inflation, which is attractive to international investors who perceive the U.S. as a safer haven than European countries facing an energy crisis, war and recession. Capital flows in, the dollar strengthens and U.S. products become more (and too) expensive for foreign buyers. Our goods become the least attractive buy in a world marketplace based alone on cost.

American exporters lose on a strong dollar. N.D. farmers export more than 80 percent of our crops.

I scout our crops before harvest calculating gross revenue against inflating inputs. Unfortunately, some of our canola is not just fiscally disappointing but an embarrassment of the ego — the kind of crop you wish wasn’t near a well-driven road showcasing where not just Mother Nature but you went wrong. I strategically stall in a field of our durum wheat before driving to the next field of canola. Stem chest high, I wade into an ocean of gold. Heads fill eight rows of kernels and yield potential to counteract diminishing value.

While we impatiently wait for our wheat to mature for harvest, I convince Kevin to take days with me to prioritize our cattle. We begin earlier than normal to haul bales off our hay fields. The portable corral system and squeeze chute are hauled to each pasture and herd so that we can weigh, vaccinate and take genetic samples of our calves. The samples will be sent to the American Angus Association and genetic laboratory to verify parentage and test the heritability of multiple traits such as calving ease, wean performance, carcass value, docility, milk production and more. We perform ultrasounds on the yearling heifers and cows to check pelvises, confirm pregnancies and due dates.

I excitedly rattle off the results of my heifer ultrasounds to every family member that will listen: All but three of the 60 heifers are due in March, nearly 70 percent were successfully artificially inseminated and my only disappointment is the single high potential heifer that hasn’t been bred yet. There’s always one too good to be true heifer. No one seems all that excited about the minutia of the ultrasound results except my father, who is always good for a long chat about cows with a cup of coffee. Afterward, alone in the house I type out spreadsheets and daydream about the next generations of Colossal Anne, Eriskay and Minabelles in my herd imagining a paired poetry of performance with their sired namesakes: Regard, Raindance, Resilient, Magnify, Shamrock, Storm.

Namesakes. Our son Wyatt’s middle name is Arthur after my father. Wyatt, now a senior, wants to farm and ranch like his grandfather. Wyatt attended grade school in Georgia and New Mexico before our move back to North Dakota, but he – like my dad – will graduate from Divide County and plays football.

My father shuts down his Case IH 9120 combine every Friday night the past five years to attend varsity games his grandsons play. Both my father and uncle, who together established Glasoe Angus, played college football. More than 50 years later they stand together on the sidelines at home games.

When my father and uncle played football, their parents were too busy with harvest to attend most games. Such trips to town cost time and money they didn’t have to spare while hustling to bring in a crop that was the entire year’s income. It was a gift that my grandfather let his sons play football when they were his labor force.

For farm kids, the football field offered respite. A break from the harvest, comradery, a common goal, clarity of assignment and execution, control and a possible path to college scholarship.

For our kids, we have stressed academic commitments first. Lane, our eldest, who is a freshman on academic and football scholarship at the University of Mary, once blithely told me as a fifth grader that his D on a progress report was acceptable. It wasn’t – for his parents or his wonderful teacher who together helped him straighten out such priorities.

I am cleaning out Lane’s items for storage when I find tucked into some books a student scrapbook my mother made and kept for me. Inside are my fifth-grade career goals. Limited options available with a box to check next to them in the antiquated book include fireman, policeman, astronaut, soldier, mother, nurse, school teacher, airline hostess, and model. As a 10-year-old, I checked the two blank boxes available and wrote in rather poor handwriting: vet and quarterback. I find this funny (I probably couldn’t spell veterinarian) and screenshot it to Lane. While my wish to play on a football field never turned out, the fields on which I work suit me better than I ever dreamed.