New Life and Death

We finally got a start planting corn late Wednesday afternoon (I hear I missed a really good Bible Study at church!).  We have made good progress, since the weather has cooperated.

Two old area farmers died and their visitations were both Thursday afternoon.  So we took most of a prime afternoon off from field work to pay our respects.  You'd think old farmers would be more considerate during prime planting season, but maybe they are trying to remind us that death is a surety and preparing for it is more important than planting corn.

Gregg Sauder told us we shouldn't be planting Friday and Saturday because of the predicted cold snap.  Cold temperatures 36 hours after planting stresses the seed and can harm germination.  We, along with all of our neighbors ignored his warning and planted anyway.  Farming is always a risk and a gamble with the weather, and we took one.  We hope we don't regret it.

Saturday night I parked the planter in the shed and as I walked past the combine, I heard a new litter of kittens meowing in the feeder house.  Hopefully they will be gone before we have to get the combine ready for wheat or we could have a problem on our hands!

A trailer load of weaner pigs arrived on Monday morning.  They didn't seem too anxious to see their new accommodations!

They are all settled in and doing well now.

In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
Isaiah 17:11

Pizza

When we were in Holmes County awhile back, we had a pizza supper one night at the B & B.  We ordered from Park Street Pizza, Sugar Creek, Ohio.  I now have two new favorite pizza flavors.  The first is The Memphis.  The ingredients are; pulled pork, BBQ sauce, onion rings, provolone cheese and cheddar cheese.  The second was Cowboy Chicken.  The ingredients are; grilled chicken, BBQ sauce, bacon, pineapple, mozzarella cheese, and cheddar cheese.  Delicious!  I would like to find something similar around here, or make it myself.

We intended to start planting corn today, but we had a planter malfunction.  We couldn't solve the problem ourselves, so at 9:30 this morning I called the dealer's service department.  I was told they were busy and would call me back.  I pulled the planter back to the shop and waited.  I didn't want to go out to the field to do other work because I was afraid I would miss the call or not be near the planter when they called.  At 12:30 I called them again and was told my name was on the list and they would be calling me.  I spent the afternoon hanging around the planter waiting for the phone call that never came. At 8:00 I put the planter back in the shed, more than a little frustrated.  I could have gotten a lot of other work done if I only would have known they wouldn't call!  We have some fields that are fit, and the rain seems to be holding off.  Let's hope tomorrow is more productive!

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
Proverbs 8:34

Dvorak

With all the rain we have had lately, the wheat is green and the fields are wet.  We have attracted a flock of seagulls.

In 1892, the National Conservatory in New York brought composer Antonin Dvorak to New York from Bohemia (now Czceh Republic) and commissioned him to compose a truly American piece of music.  They wanted him to base it on the "beautiful plantation songs" of unlettered African American men and women in a plea to ending the cultural parochialism which bound American artists to the European models and racial stereotypes of classical music.
At the premiere, the American symphony that he composed was sneered at by contemporary reviewers as "Themes from Negro melodies; composed by a Bohemian; conducted by a Hungarian and played by Germans in a hall built by a Scotchman . . ."

Thursday evening we enjoyed the performance of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Opus 95, "From the New World" by the University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra.  We met Nephew Ned at Za's for supper prior to the concert, and again at DQ following.  It was a good evening.

I recently finished reading Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  It is the dramatic story of the end of the Civil War and the account of the assassination of President Lincoln. It is a vivid, engaging, and entertaining story of the events prior to and after the tragic deed and the manhunt for the killer and conspirators.  I recommend it.
It got me wondering though, how the reconstruction would have been much different after the war, and how America would be different today if Lincoln would have been able to finish his second term.

[ Psalm 12 ] [ To the chief Musician upon Sheminith, A Psalm of David. ] Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.