As I sit here in my office on this sunny but chilly morning, I relish the sounds of the farm. So often we identify the smells of the farm because they are so distinct, but the sounds are also just as distinct.

There’s the obvious crow of the rooster, the bellowing of the heifer in heat and the dog barking. But then there is that timely arrival of the milk truck backing up to the milk house that signals you to run to the fridge to make sure you have plenty of for the day (but only for those of us who are willing to risk our lives by drinking raw milk, right?)

The sound of the skid steer tells you it’s feeding time, while the hum of the vacuum pump comforts you with knowing that life is as it should be because someone is home and the cows are being milked again, and there’s life in that barn that you expect and cherish.

The rattle of the cattle trailer tells you it’s Monday and the deacon calves are being picked up. And when the tractor goes down the hill, it’s time to clean the gutters. On the farm up the road, I can hear the guinea hens sounding the alarm that someone they don’t know has pulled in their driveway. And if the young shepherd doesn’t feed her sheep on time, the neighborhood knows all about it.

But even with all the technological advances in farming, with the GPS and computerized planting and tractors with temperature-controlled cabs that drive themselves, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: The sound of the disc going over dirt in the field.

You would think with the roar of the tractor you wouldn’t be able to hear anything else. But somehow, you can hear it and, on this day, it brought back a flood of memories.

The round metal discs splitting the earth as it is dragged over the ground is like no other. The clank and scrape of the metal as it hits the big and small stones hasn’t changed at all. It’s a sound I remember from childhood, when riding on the tractor, and then when I was a teenager, when I actually got to prepare a field for planting.

Now I can hear it from my office, as the huge John Deere tractor with its oversized implement prepares the field behind my house for planting. I never thought about that sound until just now.

When you hear it, you can almost taste the dust in your mouth, you can see the birds landing in the fresh-churned soil looking for worms and the farm dog trotting behind in the path, keeping you company as you go back and forth through the field; the diesel smoke that gets in your hair and when you’re done, you’re covered in a layer of dust from head to toe.

Change is good – but sometimes, it’s nice to have the predictability of the sounds on the farm.