Farming in the Sky! 

The Farm Report for 8-3-2018

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The battle with the bugs continues! We're getting serious now - no more 'kid's stuff'. Reinforcements have been called in - the air brigades have arrived, and the aerial bombardment has begun in earnest. (And for those 'fact checkers' out there, yes these are not new pictures. But they are just the way it happened!)

That little tiny white dot in the middle of the last picture is a crop duster helicopter. Actually, there were two of them working the field at the same time. One was red, the other white. They were not taking their time. You will have to provide the sound effects yourself. Make Vrooom! Vrooom! noises like you would expect to hear in a John Wayne WWII movie, and you'll know what my morning coffee was like. The guy in the yellow plane has a death wish - or he's crazy - or both. Sometimes he was flying so low the corn tassles wiggled.

So then I walked out to the garden to check the new sweet corn patch. Racoons!!! But oh, no! Not this planting; not this time. Sorry my little masked friends. This time it is all for me. Out comes the electric fencer! Stopped 'em cold in one night. It is an evil pleasure, but I would just love to actually see 'em touch their little wet noses to that fence sometime. Ah the justice in it!

For the 'Worry Warts' who think something bad might happen to me working all alone out here in the middle of the giant Iowa cornfield, just look at this picture and ask yourself, "What could possibly go wrong here?" Heavy steel, antique tractors, chains, hydraulic power...What?

I watch Red Green for the instruction, not the humor. We needed a new rake, so I added one to the collection. That red one with the wooden handle, as Crocodile Dundee would have said, 'That isn't a rake.' 'This,' he would have said pointing to the back of Henry Ford, 'This is a rake!' 

This is an 'Oldie but Goodie' with a nod to Joyce. What could be better than taking some time out in the summer to do something dangerous down on the farm with the grand kids? Target practice! Miles was old enough to hold the gun by himself; Evie needed a little help from Grandpa. If you'll look very carefully at the first picture, you'll see a suspicious little target hanging in front of the circles. If you'll look very carefully at the last shot, you'll see Evie holding that little dangler in two pieces in her hand. Joyce had made biscuits the night before and had a colossal failure! (Unheard of for her.) They were hard as rocks. So....they made great targets. Boom! Went The Biscuit.

As any wise old feline would know, O.J. thinks the best thing to do in the miserable waning hot days of summer is to just sit on the front porch steps and wait it out. I agree.