Grampa's Day

We finished harvesting the wheat, and considering how wet the spring was, it yielded better than we expected.  Cousin Lee baled our round bales, and we got our double crop soybeans drilled.  They were put in a week later than we would like, so we will see if it was worth it.  I have been hauling liquid manure on the part of the field that didn't plant to soybeans.  We are starting to feel like we are getting caught up after such an abnormal spring.  We are way above normal rainfall so far this year, but July has been so hot and dry that the lawn is turning brown!

Cousin Joyce passed away last week.  She had been waiting for a liver transplant, and a donor (her church Elder!) offered his, but she had a heart attack on the operating table before she received it.  The old farmer's wife spent a lot of time with Joyce in their younger years, and she was in our wedding.  Her passing was a shock to us.  Ed flew in from California for the funeral and spent a few days with us.  We didn't do anything exciting while he was here, so we hope he wasn't too bored.  He did get to see all eight of our grand-kids together at one time at a picnic we had at a park one evening.

Today was the annual Tazewell County Threshing Day at the Vernon Koch farm.  He passed away earlier this year, so the family held perhaps the last one as a memorial to him.  Matt brought Jack, and we picked up Gideon.  We knew he wouldn't last real long, so we were there less than two hours.  It was good to see all the old equipment and processes from the "good old days".  The weather cooperated, so it was a nice day.  My grandpa Metzger owned a threshing machine, as did my great uncles on the Schick side of the family.  They would go from farm to farm in the neighborhood during the threshing runs.

Gideon was mostly interested in sitting on the antique tractors on display.

The sweet corn is just about ready.  The raccoons have gotten started on it before I was ready for them!  I now have a repellent out, along with some traps.  This morning I caught our first one in a trap.  Hopefully, we will keep them from the rest of the corn.

And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.
Genesis 50:10