StillwatersIowa

I remember my excitement as a child, when after Thanksgiving, Mom would go to the store room and bring out our 1960s aluminum Christmas tree. My folks got the tree from a Holiday or Erickson store on A Ave West with green stamps. The value was $25.   We kids could help pull the silver tinsel branches out of the paper sleeves they were stored in. This summer Mark's family was cleaning up an abandoned farm building site. The only value left on the property were memories. One Sunday on a Ranger ride, Jan and I went to check on cleanup progress. The roof of the house had rotted. There were canning jars, a 1971 calendar on the kitchen wall, and metal or wooden skeletons of furniture. Upstairs was a rodent filled bedroom with material that showed the wife must have been a quilter. And a store room filled with racoon manure and strewn boxes. I noticed a silver tinsel branch. Then another. I started digging. And found most of the parts to the aluminum Christmas tree in the above picture wi...

As we roll into the fourth quarter of our fall season, we have so much to be grateful for beyond acres per hour, bushels per acre, square footage, and horsepower. Despite the times we're reminded that we live in an imperfect world, we as a country have had a blessed bountiful year. We have food in abundance, jobs for those who choose to work, and a majority of folks that still love this country. I'm grateful I have a front row seat watching our future generation grow and plan. Lane (above) helped his Dad, Kurt, a number of days this week. Ethan and Emily (below) announced their engagement and their plan to spend the rest of their lives together. Thanks for the picture. Mike was busy with jobs near Harvey and Killduff this past week. The ground is still remarkably dry. Thanks for the picture Mike. The custom work tillage we did this week confirmed how dry things are. We had a big week with the high speed disk. Our annual rainfall so far this year south of Oskaloosa is just under...

Ten weeks ago today we went to brother Doug and Ginger's for lunch after church. On their yard was their annual Labor Day camping group. Back home our combines were clean, serviced, and ready to harvest a crop folks weren't sure about. It had been such a dry summer. During harvest folks were asking where all the bushels were coming from. "My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He alone has the power and the will to assist me". Psalms 121:2 We wrapped up harvest this past week. On Monday little Tatum and his Mom helped Karl run the combine for an afternoon. Thanks for the picture Kristin. Since the weather isn't going to stay this nice much longer, we took a day, cleaned up the grain carts, and stored them away for the year. I've mentioned before this is our 50th crop. Around 50 years ago Kinze came out with a new innovation for a neighbor. A 400 bushel buggy to get bushels from the combine to the truck on a muddy year (the one on the right...

I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Life by the yard is hard, but life by the inch is a cinch". I've never considered myself an inch by inch guy. But I'm learning there's value there at times. Below Grandsons John and Ethan work together at taking John's crop out an inch at a time after school with our grandkid combine, the Ford TW 20, the little Kinze 400, and the old 87 semi and Mark's trailer. Thanks for the picture John. Harvest continues with our main crew an inch at a time. We're down to two farms left. We're thankful the custom harvest for others is finished. We're thankful for the yield. We're thankful for the price which was sold months ago. We're thankful for the weather. I'm thankful for a wonderful crew to work with. The processor we contract our corn with produces corn syrup, ethanol, citric acid, vitamin D, DDGs in feed, and is expanding to plastics and spandex. All from a kernel of corn. That's food, feed, ...