Hello from Tennessee ....

We did something this week I have never been able to do before.  We loaded up and went to Jill's ... IN OCTOBER!  Harvest is done, plowing is a couple days from being done, Sue wasn't teaching, I wasn't teaching, no Jr Church because it was the last Sunday of the month, and we had some furniture we had been saving for Jill.  So we loaded up and headed south and east.

Here's Jill's house

 Before you get too impressed it is split into 3 or 4 apartments.  We walked around the neighborhood this evening, I guess it is a common thing.  Either someone buys an old house as an investment or they inherit one and don't want to live in it.  Dad the firefighter was impressed to find this right outside her front door

 Saturday evening we went with her to supper at a friend's house.  It was kind of a treat, having a meal at the home of someone whose writings you have been reading in Christian Standard for years.  We went to Hopwood to church with her this morning.

Even met a couple Farmers... Mr and Mrs Farmer that is.  I think both are Doctors, but one in theological and the other medical.  Nice folks.
Seemed a bit odd my daughter being one of the communion servers. Hopwood is attached to the campus of Milligan.   I'd never been there in the fall  Quite pretty.  Here is the entrance to Milligan from about the same spot I took the Hopwood shot.

 Milligan Chapel

In our walk around town we found several flowers blooming that really shouldn't have been.  Like Iris's

 And Dogwood's!

We also got to visit her office

 Dad was impressed with her desk set

I guess she gets her sense of organization from her Dad

Methodist Church across the corner from her house apparently was having a tailgating Halloween party of some kind, complete with inflatables.

 We had a good time.  We're meeting Jill in the morning and then we'll be heading northwest again.

Sometimes you have to set back, take a deep breath, and look around

It's been "one of those ..." (insert appropriate time frame: days, weeks, falls, etc.)  I was driving down the road this week when I realized those clouds were beautiful.  Sometimes you have to set back, take a deep breath, and look around. So here are a few photos from this fall with a common theme. Look at the sky, often just a background in the photo for what I was trying to shoot.  The sky has been beautiful this fall, we have just been to busy to enjoy it.

Isn't this spectacular?

 And here is a great sunset shot

 Rainbows have been few and far between this fall

 I think this was an accidental button click, but it shows just how clear the sky has been most of this fall.

 Here I was taking a shot of the plot harvest, but notice the clouds in the sky.

and in this photo as well

If you pay VERY close attention you can tell me where this was taken, but you REALLY have to think about it and know where we farm.

Are you familiar with Woot.com ?

Woot (http://www.woot.com/ ) is an interesting site. Most of the time they sell one thing a day, and when it sells out they just don't sell anything else until the next day.  Well, unless they are having a Woot-out when they sell limited quantities of stuff all day.  You have to see it to understand.

One of the interesting things about Woot is the product descriptions of the stuff they're selling. Usually it is more commentary than description.  It's often worth visiting their site every day just to read the product descriptions.  Here is one from today.  If you aren't interested in the media player the commentary is still an interesting viewpoint.

Last Sunday thought it was so cool. But you know what? There won’t be another 10-17-10 for a hundred years, either.

Around here, we don’t believe in privileging one date over another just because of some numerical accident. It’s all a bit arbitrary, ennit? If we were still going by the Julian calendar – don’t laugh, the Russians used it as late as 1918 – that awesome 10-10-10 would be the much more humdrum 9-27-10. Or the Islamic calendar? It renders that day as 11-3-31. The Mayan Long Count calendar says it was 12.19.17.13.18. Yeah, we don’t really get it either. If you bump into any Mayans, ask them for us, wouldja?

So where do people get off designating a certain Sunday as a once-in-a-lifetime event and the next Sunday as barely worth remembering? There are all kinds of incredible things happening today, too. Somewhere, a woman is crying through the first seconds of motherhood, her heart swollen with a love she never knew possible. A man has just broken free of an addiction that had reduced him to something between a robot and a slave: 10-17-10 is the first day of the rest of his life. TV’s Sharon Leal (Boston Public, Guiding Light) celebrates turning 38. And Woot is selling the Sandisk Sansa Fuze 4GB Media Player.

Yes, on this date like no other, Woot salutes a media player like no other. The Sansa Fuze loads files through trusty old drag-and-drop – no need for some bloated proprietary interface. It’ll play just about anything that calls itself a “media file”, from MP3 to WMA to OGG to JPG to AVI to MOV to WMV, including podcasts and audiobooks, plus a bunch more. (You might need to run some video files through Sansa Media Converter, but as The Simpsons said, “Pobody’s nerfect in Australia”.) And its middling 4GB of storage space is expandable with the addition of an SDHC card. It’s the perfect media player for a unique day like today. We think every day is unique and special. And they’re all worthy of celebration.

Except May 24th. No particular reason, really. That date has just always gotten on our nerves.

Hope we never do this again

West Union has always been a little ... different. One former resident commented recently three things about West Union were way beyond a town of its size.  One was the Library, another was the park.  But one thing about West Union that was extraordinary was the ambulance service.
West Union paused this week to honor one of its own who was key in developing that service.  Rick Poorman died as a result of injuries suffered in a traffic accident involving the ambulance he was working in.  No world shattering act, nothing particularly outstanding all, just a traffic accident.
The response has been breathtaking.  The funeral visitation started at 4 PM Wednesday and went on until 11 !  People Rick had touched from literally all over the country showed up to honor him.

 The funeral Thursday was almost as amazing.  Fire departments and ambulance services from all over Illinois and Indiana sent representatives, and equipment to honor Rick

 Marshall sent 2 trucks and crew to man our station during the funeral

It was an honor to have them do this.

Saw something I'd never seen at a burial.  2 medical evacuation helicopters, from different providers, flew over the grave site.

To make everyone's day complete, at 9 PM the Fire Dept gets paged to Chiltons Cafe for a fire.  Fortunately it was a grass fire behind the building we put out quickly.

Lost a friend this weekend

It was a long night last night and today is even longer By now this is all out in the public, so I don't think I am betraying any confidences with it.

Local ambulance with 2 EMT's on board picked up a patient complaining of pain (As I understand it he had been in an ATV accident a day or two earlier) were taking him to the hospital in the ambulance.  They were going up a state highway about a mile north of the county line in non-emergency mode, no lights, no siren, 58 MPH ( there was an off-duty police officer 2 cars behind also northbound in his personal vehicle)


Pickup on a crossroad didn't stop and pulled in front of the ambulance.  Ambulance (I think) hit pickup then rolled. It tore the side off the ambulance, threw the EMT in back and the patient out.  Took one entire wall off the box and scattered ambulance contents a long ways. Driver was trapped and very disoriented.

The off duty officer saw it all and had it called in before the driver find his handheld and do it on the radio.  Dispatch went into a mass casualty mode and called everyone but the National Guard. Because of the location and cell phones accessing different towers we got response from 2 different counties.


We ended up with 4 ambulances from 3 services, 2 different rescue units, 2  fire depts, 2 Sheriff departments, 3 different helicopters, and IL State Police

One helo landed on scene, the other 2 met the ambulances at local hospital.  EMS decided they could get to the hospital before the choppers could arrive.

To further confuse things I believe there was another property damage only traffic accident down the road about 5 miles about the same time.



Rick Poorman was the EMT we lost.  I can't remember not knowing Rick.He did a lot of things in the community and will be tough to replace.

I think I need a rainy day ...

Maybe a couple of them.  It's been a great fall for harvest.  Almost no rain, good running, pretty good yields.  But this many days running starts to wear on you, even if we do generally take Sunday off.  I did something tonight I have never done before.  I parked a plugged up combine in the shed and left it.  I reached the point tonight the best thing to do was go home.

The last few days have had some frustrations.  I had some kind of email glitch last week and it seems some email didn't go out even though on my end it said it was sent.  Like to my insurance agent, the lawyer who is trustee of some ground I farm, a few "unimportant" things like that.

Then the elevator got full of beans ... about the same time the landlady's bean bin got full.

But we are getting by.  I took some to Snyder, and it looks like we'll squeak by. This afternoon I am trying to finish up first crop beans.  Creek bottom fields are dry in the middle, but the field edges are still green.  Do I leave 20-30 ft around 2 fields or cut them?  I cut them ... but the moisture dock I got may have made it an unwise choice.  Have one field left, actually just a portion of a field.  This is one we left the green along the edge and in a low spot a couple weeks ago.  It's dry now.

So I start in.  Turns out to be more area than I thought.  And VERY tough going.  Down and twisted beans,some green weeds and grass, damp ground underneath, just tough cutting.  It's going to be hard to finish by sundown, and if I'm not done by sundown it will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to cut.  So just before sunset ... yep, I plug the rotor.  I get out thr big black ugly awkward wrench and try turning it backwards.  Seems to turn fairly freely.   I get in the cab, start the engine, hit the switch to turn it on and somehow hit the switch to reverser the feeder house.

For those unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of a Case combine, if you reverse the feeder without first raising the reel if can cause the header auger to damage the floor panels on the header.

Did you notice I never mentioned raising the reel?

And the rotor won't turn on.

So back on top with the big ugly wrench..  Then back on the ground and pull the side covers off

Nothing.

It's now dark.  I clean of the combine, put everything back on, and take it in.  We get the truck in, I send Aman home, and then get to thinking about it. I get my handy little pocket flashlight out, open the door on the feeder house and look inside.

And drop my flashlight.  Just out of reach.

I get a little crows foot bar from my truck toolbox, reach in to try and fish it out, and hit the off switch.   Which worked. THAT is when I decided it was time to go home.

Oh, and as I pulled in the driveway I remembered the tractor and grain cart we forgot to bring in setting along the road.  So when Sue got home from church we went after it.  It's in my backyard.

I think I need a couple rainy days to catch up and take a break.

You probably have to be a farmer ....

You probably have to be a farmer to see some of these sights.  Maybe even to appreciate them.

The blaze of corn fuzz as you fill a bin with the fan turned on late in the afternoon

For instance the sound corn makes when it goes through a corn head.

Sunset from the top of a grain truck

A rainbow at an unexpected time

A most unusual weed

Yes, those are cottonwood trees coming up in corn stubble.

I just thought I'd share a few shots you don't normally see.

I guess that means I'm not normal?