What's Your Gut Feeling?

The ability to immediately understand or be aware of what is going on, or how someone is reacting is a hunch, a first impression. An intuition, a clear understanding, an instinct, a deep knowing with little information is a gut feeling. I think hunches, first impressions, and a gut feeling often have value. 

Last Sunday morning at church I snapped a picture of folks visiting during coffee before the service. When I looked closer at the picture last evening I noticed everyone in the photo had the same last name I have. 😊

The Oskaloosa Student Council kicked off their school year here last Sunday evening. Kudos to the kids serving and the adults willing to lead them.

A big thank you to family and help who worked together Monday morning to set up tables and chairs for our appreciation supper.

The gals did another amazing job with preparing and serving the meal. We had close to 300 guests on a beautiful evening.

 

                                      

A large purpose of the evening is just to get together and enjoy each others company. Including kids, who loved driving all the ride on toys on our shop apron.

The following morning was Iowa's Becknology Days in Colfax. This is when folks start to think about next year's crop. The day was filled with food, conversation, talks, gifts, and planning.

The neat part about selling Becks is matching philosophies. It's not unusual for some of our customers to run into the Becks family and talk about college, farming, family, and life.

I feel blessed to be living in Iowa and I am thankful for our political climate here. However those of you that know me know I'm not happy with national politics. So when I was asked to attend an event and visit with one of our sitting  US Senators I hesitated. Then I remembered how I'm always asking you all to be engaged in our culture. And decided I needed to practice what I preached. Guy, a former state rep, and Daryl, leader for government affairs at Vermeers, joined us in a productive visit. We'll see what happens.

The corn on our poorer farms south of Oskaloosa is dying because of lack of water. My gut feeling is with the damage already done we will have a short crop on corn and beans both this year.

Thanks to Matt who found and soldered a Freon leak on the geo-thermo unit in our home. He then recharged the system to get it up and running so we would have comfortable temps again.

Mike helped Keith move a broken tractor to the repair shop this week for Jay to work on. Thanks for the picture Mike.

We are working on getting our last combine ready. Thanks to Pablo for taking the time in his busy schedule to clean it up.

I got a call on Friday that Mike found some sand clearing trees and needed a pull. He was working just across the Des Moines River. Getting him out went well. Thanks for the picture Mike.

We are unhooking the sprayer tenders and getting our hopper bottoms out. We are looking forward to harvest in just over 3 weeks no matter what the crop size is.

I'm hesitant to share this story however I'm sure you have heard it already. And it's on my mind. A home was raided in Florida of someone who opposed our current politics. A news story also came out saying the government was hiring 89000 agents (more than the total we have now) to go after billionaires. Since there are only 700 of them in our country and that would make 120 agents per billionaire. So they dropped the criteria to those making $400,000. That will change from dollars made to political views. Is there anyone else that has a bad gut feeling about this? It sounds exactly like what the government did to my friend Hennie in Zimbabwe 20 years ago.

 Yesterday Jan stopped in Lebanon, just north of Cantril, for a fund raiser breakfast at an Amish school. While at breakfast an Amish fellow mentioned what a beautiful day it was. Jan agreed and mentioned the forecasted temp was going up to 90 degrees. The fellow had no idea of the forecast. He would also have little to no knowledge of our countries current culture. Thanks for the picture Jan.

So what's my gut feeling moving forward? I think we need to hang on loosely to our things, our stuff. I think we need to value relationships. With God. With family. With others. And be prepared to help each other out.

The parable of the talents Jesus told in the Bible is a story about how God is glorified when we are productive. God also told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. That wasn't just about kids. We need to continue to do our best at the purpose given us. Blessings.