Would she still be a farmer's wife if they didn't work the farm?

Omer couldn’t hear Noa over the rumble of his tractor. “Hi!” she tried again. She held a tray with two glasses on it against her side and waved her free arm to catch his attention.

Finally, he squinted in her direction and killed the engine.

It took a minute for him to lift out of the seat and hoist himself down the side of the tall yellow beast. There was a time, many decades and children — and grandchildren — earlier, when Omer could get off the seat in a single leap. “Here.” Noa handed Omer one of the glasses from her tray and took the second for herself. They leaned against the tractor, and the sweet, cold limonana cut through the beams of heat that had burrowed into the field.

“How’s your day going?” Noa asked her husband.

“It’s good,” Omer said. But his eyes were locked into the distance. The day was usually good, even if the work was hard. “I’m tired though.”

Noa followed his gaze, taking in the land before them. The uneven ground, covered in greenery grown from toil, stretched for acres. “I know.”

Omer took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I want to take a break,” he said.

“Do you want to come inside?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Not that kind of break,” Omer said. He turned to catch Noa’s eyes and gestured to the fields. “I want to stop all this — for a while.” Noa said nothing, so Omer continued as he had these past few days. “I want to keep shemittah.”

Tension settled into Noa’s shoulders. Shemittah? Thirty years of marriage and Omer had never mentioned the mitzvah. Which self-sufficient farmer did that? She dug her steel-toed boots into the uneven ground. “I want a break too,” she said. “But shemittah? Why?”

“We’re not as young as we used to be,” Omer said. “When I go up there —” he pointed to the sun-filled sky, “I want to have a merit standing with me.”

They were getting older, but everyone was. “We can light candles on Friday nights,” Noa offered.

No, no. Omer shook his head. “We're farmers. This is our mitzvah.”

For a long moment, the two continued to lean against the tractor, squinting in the sunlight. “When do we need to decide?” Noa asked.

“If we keep farming, I need to start preparing for the new season next month.” Omer twisted the strings of his bucket hat around his fingers.

“If we're doing this, we need to decide soon.”