Soybeans popping up from the soil in perfectly orderly rows. The contrast of the fresh green and the dark brown and even black soil here in central Illinois sure is a refreshing and welcome sight to see each spring. A true miracle if you ask me. 
“The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn't still be a farmer.”
- Will Rogers
This is another throw back post. But when I found these photos on my hard drive my heart skipped a beat and I knew I had to share. 
We have been fortunate to be the semi drivers and keepers of the semi for Channel Bio for the last many years. Channel Bio used to be several different seed companies. They did a little reorganization and they are now called Channel. Back in the day, the semi was referred to as the BIOFUTURE truck. It was a mobile classroom, complete with flat screen TV's, a kitchen to bake cookies in and an office. They would set up at various events and our family would help with the setup and tear down and would work the event, introducing people to the technology used for the seed corn.
I’m not a semi kinda chick, but this baby was cool! It had a big slide out side and a tarp and they laid out carpet and had tables and chairs and an outside TV, trust me, very cool! My then baby and I went to visit his Daddy at the Farm Progress Show once when it was in Decatur, Illinois. This is the boy sporting his super power bracelets and cowboy boots. 
Look at that face! That tongue was always busy, just like generations of this family before him. Or maybe it was his forward resting position which caused a frontal lisp. (I’m a speech therapist and can’t pass up the explanation.) It’s cute though, no? 
His daddy is farmer, his grandpa is a farmer, I think he has potential in agriculture, but the boy’s got rhythm man, and the moves to match! 
Plant Channel Seed ya’ll. Boom Diggety, yay…..
Disclaimer: We don’t ONLY plant Channel Seed and I know nothing about it, other than they have a cool semi and have treated us well over the years. When our seed man reads this post, I probably will have another disclaimer, but for now this will do!
Okay, so I took a little bloggy hiatus. Don’t burn me at the stake. I absolutely loathe when people apologize for these little time-outs. So, I AINT DOING IT. Let’s move on…..
It’s a little past Easter, but hey, it’s spring, so in my non-type “A” personality we are all good. At our grade school in town, the art teacher orchestrates an egg decorating contest each year. My kids decided to do a collective entry and brain stormed themes. Here is what they decided on (cough, cough) a few years ago, okay, so several years ago, but what’s it matter anyway?
It seems that agriculture seeps into everything we do here round these parts! So does using whatever we have on hand to get the job done.
It makes us more creative when we wait until the last minute and concoct something out of whatever we can scrounge up man! I mean, look at those craisins for eyes and that beautiful almond nose.
This baby won us a collective GRAND PRIZE! I’ll hold over last year’s egg entry for next year’s post. I’m secretly doing a little cheer that we somehow dodged the contest this year….shhh, don’t tell the kids.
update: I think the contest maybe didn’t happen this year and that’s why we missed it. Good to know.
The front porch of our home, so many, many years ago was a play place for Hubs’ grandfather. His grandfather and great aunt were born here in the house we live in.
A little history for you…when we were first married, we lived in a nice mid-sized tenant house on a nearby farm. It was just perfect for us. We fixed it up a little and lived with it’s imperfections, as it was an old house. In fact, I guess you could say we sort of loved it’s imperfections. It was down a long lane, with only Amish folks for neighbors, which was a little unnerving, because I wanted to know I could call my neighbors on the phone in the night when I was terrified. Which never occurred, so not an issue, but yaknowwhatImean….. seven or so years into our marriage it was time to move into a different school district to be “home.” Our oldest was entering school in a year and we HAD to be in our home district! Multiple generations of this family went to our home district, so it was unthinkable that we wouldn’t! :) So, we moved into my Hubby’s parents’ home and they moved to a new home. This made our kiddos the sixth generation to live here in this house. Now THAT is awesome! Hubs and I knew from the day we got married and lived in that little tenant house, that we would want to raise our kids right here in the country, right here where their history was. Right here where are roots are. It’s pretty cool when two people agree so whole-heartedly on those important kind of things, ya know?
So when a cousin brought us this photo she had found of Hubs’ grandpa swinging on our front porch, I was elated. My baby plays right there in that spot. In the footsteps of his great grandfather. Though I never met him, his grandfather was a kind hearted, genuine man with a love for farming and a heart of gold. Many people say that my husband resembles his grandfather in many ways physically and in temperament. He must have been a great guy then!
I am thankful for all that Great Grandpa did for this family and for this farm. I am thankful for the path that he established for our family and for the integrity that he engrained. I wonder what he would think of farming in 2011? I know he farmed with no cabs, no air conditioning, no gps and no variable rate technology. How things have changed in 100 years!
Maybe I ought to go sweep the inch of dust off that old porch floor now and read a few blogs out there on my iphone? Grandpa would be pretty amazed at that I am sure.
Snapped from a phone camera, but lovely indeed. This is dry corn being loaded into a semi to be taken to the elevator where it is sold. This is how the farmer gets paid! Yeah! Sometimes we put corn that is a little moist into our bins and use these enormous fire breathing dragons to push air through the bins and to dry the corn. I’m positive that isn’t how my husband would explain it. I am sure my explanation is more fun though. Someday, I’ll get a good picture of those dragons when they are running and post it. There are three on top of each other and at night when they are all fired up, it is freaky. Freaky, fire, loud!
Farmers can also take their moist corn to the elevators and have them dry it. They have to pay the elevator to do that though, so it cuts into profits. We have to pay to dry it too and propane isn’t cheap, but it must be cheaper than the elevator… I’m guessing. Also, it allows us to make our own hours and not be constrained by the elevator hours. Sometimes we want to keep harvesting and the elevator people want to go home after a 12 hour day and have 2 hours of a life. Well, we don’t roll like that. During harvest, we have no life…right girls!!? We call ourselves Harvest Widows for a reason!
You can see the steam rolling out of the dryer from behind these bins as the sun is setting and the grain is moving. Beautiful. There’s a theme to this blog I am noticing. Beautiful. That’s it. Beautiful bounty. 
I snapped this one early in the harvest season. I just thought it was a gorgeous photo depicting life around here. We live smack in the middle of an Amish settlement. That means we have several Amish neighbors and our kiddos have Amish friends that they go to school with. Actually, we have Amish friends too. I think, don’t quote me on this, that there are almost as many Amish people round these parts as English people! Pretty cool huh?
A common traffic situation around here involves a buggy or two or three or four, an Amish person on a bike, my ultra cool vanster, a semi, a piece of equipment, a flatbed hauling lumber and maybe even a tour bus. It took me a very long time to get used to seeing buggies and so many bikes on the road. The road apples were tough to get used to as well. My kids don’t know any different! How neat? It’s just how life is for them. They aren’t used to seeing roads without horse droppings on them! Ha!
Another difference I had to get used to was our uncontrolled intersections in the country. Where I come from, SOMEONE had to stop at each intersection and you knew when it was you because they put a STOP SIGN IN FRONT OF YOU! Novel idea! I was blowing intersections around here for quite awhile before dear hubby enlightened me to the idea that most intersection don’t have stop signs either way. WHAT? That seems nutso to me!
Wait, why did I move here again, horse poo on the roads, bikers and buggies and no stop signs? Young love, oh ya, that was it!!
Now that it is old hat, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Isn’t it beautiful? I count my blessings every. single. day. No place like home!
A friend of mine, her hubs drives a truck.
Because of this, I had the luck,
To meet and to have much,much fun.
Grocery shopping was our first run.
Coupon queens before it was so cool.
The kids all go to our little school.
This friend of mine is so very nice.
She helped me get control of my spice.
(cabinet that is.)
I’m no poet, but we sure did have fun organizing my cabinet. Does that make us boring? Welp, tis what it tis!
We have a Amish Bulk Food store in our area. It is called Beachy’s Bulk Foods. I love it. Something I love is ANYTHING in bulk. Sams Club is my happy place by the way. Beachy’s sells any spice you could want, in bulk, for cheap. So I have lots of spices to organize.
We butcher our own pork. So I had to get every pork seasoning they have. Which is 4: maple, Italian, mild and smoked.
My nice friend made fun of my home spray. The stuff smells great when you burn food and need to hide the smell. Like today! I burned the corn I was feeding the field crew. Blech! Stink! Room spray to the rescue. Then it smells like grandma’s kitchen full of oatmeal cookies. See, I’m a realist. I need room spray. (as a side note, I got a text from a very nice guy that works for us driving an auger cart. He liked my burned corn. Or…..maybe he felt bad for me:)
So now, my room spray along with my play dough making oils have a nice organized place to be in my spice cabinet.
And the world is a good place. Thanks to my friend.
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