StillwatersIowa

Baling hay used to consume most every dry summer day. Now it's occasional and most of it is done with a big round baler. However once in a while we get out the old wire tie and bale small square bales. Rachel is 7 and is helping stack bales on the hay rack for her dad BJ. Gideon is 9 and is running the baler. He straddles the winrow and just follows the raked hay around the field. I remember when his dad used to bale as a little guy and we didn't have tractor cabs I used to tie him to the tractor seat with my belt. Wow Adali, you're starting young. Not really. She is helping grandpa drive and is waiting while grandpa is on the rack helping Rachel catch up stacking. This is the real stacking crew. Brad is driving, BJ is stacking, and little John is riding on top supervising and telling his dad stories. Rachel, Adali, and I were just fill ins while the guys went to chase in BJ's wondering bull. This pilot isn't really family or friends but I thought it was a cool ...

Fair week is not so much a week as it is a time of year. It is a time of community. It is a time of relationships. Finally it is a time of accomplished projects. By the time fair week rolls around we are supposed to be finished racing around. So often we are so busy making a living we forget to make a life. It is a time to take time for people and relationships. A lot of times fair week is when we hear what other folks are up to. When others are speaking are we listening or are we just waiting to talk? And when we share our points of view hopefully it doesn't sound like we are blowing smoke. Fair week is the time of year for scattered thunderstorms with the emphasis on scattered. When the heat index is 112 and others are getting rain while you are watering your sweetcorn are you at peace that the crop will be sufficient and God will take care of you? When you have a big project to catch and your job is bigger than your equipment it always pays to work together. Fair week is the ti...

Our family vacationed in southeast Missouri this past week. What a gift to have 26 people spend a week together and actually enjoy each others company. Pictured below the crew is making one last Walmart stop before heading into Ozark country. On our way down we stayed in St Loius at a motel. Our first unexpected memory came around 2 am Sunday morning when the fire alarm went off and fire trucks came with their lights flashing. Everyone in the motel had to hurry down the stair flights and outdoors with alarms wailing and strobe lights flashing. Of course it was a false alarm. We rented all the cabins in Shut-Ins State Park. The park is named after the large rocks in the river called "Shut-Ins". We swam in the river among the rocks. The second day we went down the river quite a ways where it got deep and the big boys jumped off the cliffs of rocks. About mid week we unloaded the motorcycles and 4-wheelers in a small town and rode the sand bars and shallow water in another river...

One of the blessings of living in rural Iowa is having little helpers close. These are cousins Adali and Zachary sitting in Grandpa's office just off the farm shop. Jan always has tons of flowers growing, especially around her garden shed. Since it hasn't rained for awhile she spends quite a bit of time watering. Jan is busy picking peas, green beans, and onions out of her garden. Tomatos, potatos, and squash aren't quite ready yet. As a Dekalb seed dealer July is the month to put up signs on goodlooking fields of corn and beans. Jan uses one of our old cattle bunks to grow flowers in. One of my favorite jobs in July is mowing road ditches and waterways. You can make things look nice and check out the crops at the same time.

Holiday weekends are synonymous with traveling to reach destinations. As a parallel we also travel the road of life. There are days when we go through our daily activities pretty much on our own, minding our own business. Then there are other times that our responsibilities take us on a busy road dealing with lots of people. As we go through life there are bridges to cross and decisions to make that that determine the outcome of our destination. Sometimes as we look around and consider our efforts those decisions we made seem to be working out. However there are those other times that the road we decided to take was definately the wrong one. Looking back it is always easy to see where we should not have gone, that we are in a rut, and that we need some help in getting out. How will folks on this road of life with us remember us? Will they still see us stuck in our rut or will they see we have gotten out, picked up our log chains, and moved on toward our destination. This Fourth of Ju...