StillwatersIowa

Good morning friends. When I think back on our past week three thoughts come to mind. This has been a year for being grateful for so many things. Close the top of my grateful list is the family below God has put me in. We had Thanksgiving lunch in our shop across the road since the cabin was hosting another Thanksgiving family. Our families annual clay shooting was dampened some by cold weather and a shortage of shotgun shells. However a few kids braved the cold. Below Gideon is showing Marina, a foreign exchange student from Brazil, how to shoot. Marina is spending the school year with Mark and Stacy. One never knows the outcome of a crop year. One of my answered prayers was that the bills would get paid and that there was enough to share with others. Below our church has a tradition of bringing our Thanksgiving offering to the front of church. Another thing I'm grateful for are the many opportunities to meet folks. For a number of years now I've attended and supported a small...

On Wednesday, September 1 we started harvesting. It was beautiful weather. The equipment was clean, greased, and ready to go. Eddyville was asking for corn. We had several acres to go. Being in the custom work business we had others' acres to do as well. About a third of our workload is helping folks. We rented out our smaller combine on a couple of occasions to help young folks harvest as a family. Malaki helped his father Karl finish some odds and ends yesterday with our grandkids combine. Malaki is in first grade. Thanks for the picture Karl. We've had a few distractions this fall. Another this past Monday was a final drive failure. Thanks Kristin for driving to western Iowa for parts. Thanks Dean for getting us going. Thanks Karl for the picture. On Thursday BJ picked up a log in his cornhead north of Galesburg. It bent a row unit 8 inches wide and it looked unusable. BJ, Karl, and I wanted to find a way to finish so we hooked Karl's pickup to each side of the row unit ...

Autumn is a season of beauty and abundance. Autumn is harvest time. It is contrast and colors. You can feel changes coming this time of year. Heat starts to feel good in our cabs, vehicles, and homes. Because of the feelings of changes coming, autumn has a sense of urgency with it. My favorite time of year is Indian summer. This late fall season, between autumn and winter, is a gift. Indian summer is a time given, to get things done. It isn't dictated by a calendar. Indian summer is a warm, tranquil, productive time in late fall after a killing frost. Thanks to someone. I borrowed this picture. Yes, we are still picking corn. We're not starting quite as early in the mornings as we wait for daylight, however we are still running into the night hours. We're running a little behind, however it's still enjoyable. We've visited about a slow start in September and equipment letting us down. Another reason is there is just a lot of bushels this year. Loren and Jean, thanks...

A story is an account of people, places, and events that happen over a period in time. In our case, over the past week. Add relationships, highlights, vulnerabilities, and heart, and we have ourselves a chapter that is a snapshot of the bigger picture in "His-story" (history). It was a beautiful week and we put in six long days of harvesting. It's interesting how when you get just a little behind (a day or two) early on due to circumstances beyond one's control, it compounds over time. And by the end of the series of chapters in a story, one gets quite behind (a month). In a story the interesting part isn't necessarily the facts, but how one handles the facts. If the characters would say, "Oh me Oh my" it would be a depressing thing to read. This past week we would start very early on corn. Then sometime between noon and early afternoon we would drop the cornheads, switch the combines to soybeans, cut beans until well into the night, then finish off the ...