Freedom

Phil had a long time friend in the prison at Dixon. They had Bible studies together, Chris began a journey of faith, and he was the one that called to let Jon know that Phil was dying.  There were some people from church that had been corresponding with him per Phil's request.  Chris was informed that he would be released from prison before Christmas if they could find a place for him to go.  He has to wear an ankle monitor, so there are only a few places he could go.  He could spend 90 days in a halfway house with the ankle monitor or another year and a half in prison.  The inmate advocate found a halfway house for him in Decatur.  So on the day before Christmas, Jon and I drove to Dixon and picked Chris up.  As he walked out of prison after 19 years of never stepping foot outside of the prison walls, he looked totally overwhelmed.  He hadn't ridden in a car for 19 years, let alone a compact SUV.  He hadn't held a smart phone, GPS was new, he didn't recognize the car models on the road, and was amazed by the wind towers and wind farms as we headed south on I-39.  He has no ID, no bank account, no drivers license, no credit cards, no clothes of his own, and no job.  We stopped at the local bank in Dixon and they wouldn't even cash the small check the prison gave him that was drawn on that very bank!  We had to teach him how to use the new gas pumps when we stopped to fill up.  He felt very conspicuous and wasn't sure how to order when we stopped for lunch.
We found the house in Decatur in the bad part of town and it was a dump.  We felt bad leaving him there.  The guys running the place seemed nice enough and helpful, so we hope he does OK there.  We reminded him that if he could handle 19 years behind bars, he should be able to handle 90 days here.  It was a 350 mile day for Jon and I!

Chris seemed repentant for his past life, he took full responsibility for his crimes,  he doesn't want to repeat his mistakes, he was humbled by our willingness to help him, and he shared his desire to become a baptized Christian.  He has another chance to make his life honorable and upright.  We hope and pray that he will be successful with this new beginning.

Nephew Ned took a teaching job at a music academy in Singapore.  Today his parents put him on a plane for the grueling flight to Singapore with a stop in Korea.  He has never been there and doesn't know a soul there.  I'm sure it will be a real adventure and perhaps a challenge.  We pray for his physical and spiritual safety as he moves to the other side on the world.  We will miss having him in Central Illinois, his concerts, and his late night visits.  Maybe this will be our opportunity to take an exotic vacation!

Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.
Psalm 142:7

F2FV

We headed out to Omaha this week for our annual pre-holiday getaway to attend Farmer2Farmer V.  There was still some corn in the field as we crossed Iowa on I-80.  I sat at a table at the meetings with some farmers from North Dakota who came to F2F even though their corn crop was still in the field.  They had heavy snow on the ground and the corn hadn't dried down yet, so they were just letting it sit until the conditions are right later this winter.  I don't know if I would have that kind of patience!  There was a farmer in attendance from Alaska that I was hoping to visit with, but he was always busy, so I never got the chance.  He grows small grains.
There were over 3000 farmers in attendance, including hundreds from Canada.  Next year, Farmers Business Network is expanding into Australia. 

The first evening our speaker was Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy Seal.  He was the lone survivor from Operation Redwing, an attempt to locate dangerous terrorists on the mountainous border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Hence the name of his best selling book, Lone Survivor.  The book was recently made into a blockbuster movie by the same name.  He told his incredible story of survival after being all shot up, getting knocked out a half dozen times, being paralyzed from chest down, and still crawling seven miles through the mountains until he was rescued by some friendly villagers.  He was full of patriotism, dedication, encouragement, anecdotes, common sense, and gratitude gained from his years of training, service, and traumatic experiences.

The next day, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, showed up to give us an update on the trade agreements, trade wars and tariffs.  He had a positive message about the future of agriculture and shared what the Dept. of  Ag. and the current administration was doing to help.

Another interesting speaker was Billy Beane, EVP of the Oakland A's baseball team.  He changed the game of baseball (and eventually other sports and businesses) with his progressive use of big data and analytics to build winning teams with one of the lowest payrolls in major league baseball.  His methodology became known as the "Moneyball" philosophy, and was the subject of the bestselling book by that name.  He was pretty proud of the fact that Brad Pitt played him in the movie about his story in Moneyball.  Farmers Business Network applies some of the same data analytics in their business model to help their farmer members with decision making.

One of the sessions I attended addressed the use of social media for farmers to connect and the importance of agriculture spreading a positive message to counteract all the negative messages.  An executive from You Tube was invited and spoke on the rise of farmer You Tube channels.  Also speaking were a number of popular You Tubers including Zach Johnson, the "MN Millennial Farmer", Ryan Kuster "How Farms Work" and Merideth Bernard "This Farm Wife". 

We had a safe uneventful trip, for which we are thankful.  We paid $3.19 for gas in Des Moines, the lowest price I saw on the trip!

And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Job 1:15

Frustratons

We passed our Common Swine Industry Audit this week.  The CISA is to provide consumers greater assurance of the care taken by farmers and pork processors to improve animal well being and food safety. We mostly lost points for not having enough documentation and not having as many explicit, written SOP's (standard operating procedures) they require.  Example: We now have to have an SOP and document every time we clean the gun that we use for euthanasia!
We are now PQA Plus certified, PQA Plus Site Verified, Illinois Dept. of Agriculture Certified Livestock Managers, we passed the Pork Producers Environmental Quality Assurance Program, and now passed the Common Swine Industry Audit. 
Past hog farmers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew the hoops we have to jump through and the red tape just to raise pigs!

My tiller is finally home! 
In late April I took it in to Big R for some repair work.  It wouldn't start and also needed some adjustments and minor parts.  They sell and service Troy-Bilt tillers, so that was the logical place to take it.  With the late wet spring, tilling the garden was not a priority at all.  I stopped in after a couple of weeks and it hadn't been worked on yet.  I called in a couple of weeks later and was told I would get a call back.  I didn't.  Then it was June and we got real busy and forgot about it.  About a month ago the old farmers wife stopped in and inquired about it.  The original service man was no longer there and the new guy said he would look into it and call.  Two weeks later he finally calls and says he is working on it and it would be done in a day.  Two weeks later he finally calls and says it is finished and working fine.  So I picked it up today.  Over seven months later.

On 11/19 our land line quit working.  We don't use it much, but we do like it for emergencies, and our confinement alarm system uses the land line to alert us to problems.  We tried to report the outage online, but it would just refer us to the 800 support number.  After calling the support number and slogging through numerous menus, just when we would get to where we would report, it would hang up on us.  Time after time, day after day.  We tried various ways to actually reach a human, but no luck.  Finally yesterday I was able to get the outage reported on the phone companies' Chat function after being disconnected on my first try.  This afternoon our phones were working again!

Sometimes life seems to be full of unnecessary frustrations.  Then this afternoon at a farm meeting, I met a former soldier who lost both legs because of a roadside IED in Afghanistan.  His heart stopped three times on the operating table.  He was in a coma for ten days.  They told him he may never walk again, but he does with a cane and prosthetic legs.  He has a great attitude and a great story to tell and it certainly puts our petty frustrations in context!

But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
John 19:33

Move

Last weekend we moved D#2 and S-I-L and family to Grabill, IN.  They informed us in August that they were praying about accepting a job at Gateway Woods as alternate houseparents.  We weren't real excited to have them move away, as they would be taking two of our grandchildren with them.  But we support their decision and so Friday we helped load, and Saturday morning two pickups pulling trailers, two vans, and a car headed for Indiana.  We all arrived late afternoon, and everything was unloaded by suppertime. We spent the night at Loren and Rita's beautiful new home, and spent Sunday in Leo.  We helped a little more with unpacking and putting away Sunday afternoon, and then headed for home by evening.

It looks like we will be making more regular trips to NE Indiana in the future. 

We bought gas in Remington on the way home for $3.34. Way cheaper than anywhere we drive in Illinois!

 For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him
Genesis 18:19

Finally!

We had finished corn a week ago Saturday, but we still had our double crop soybeans to harvest.  We had tried them a week earlier, but they were still way too wet.  Last Sunday and Monday were both sunny, windy days, so we thought they might be fit on Monday afternoon.  They weren't.  We tried them and they were still 20 percent moisture.  The local elevator said they couldn't handle them that wet, but the manager agreed to take them if we hauled them to another branch elevator further down the road.  So with the weather forecast looking bad, we went ahead and took them out wet and accepted the huge dock from the elevator.  We are finally finished with harvest 2019!

About three weeks ago we had record cold move into the area for a couple of days.  We didn't go to the field at all for two days.  I saw 11 degrees on my thermostat, but Peoria said it got down to 9.  We did not have any additives in our diesel engines yet, so we were worried about fuel gelling.  Then we had more snow and wind that kept us out of the field for a day or so until it melted off. 
We tried to harvest some or our downed corn before the snow had completely melted off.  That was a mistake.  The wet snow that clung to the leaves fed into the machine, and combined with dirt and chaff, completely plugged up the inside of the machine.  We spent the next day inside the bowels of the combine scraping, brushing, vacuuming, and power washing.  We had to pull the chaffer and sieves out to be able to get inside to do a complete job.  I have the head wounds and knuckle scrapes as attestation.  Remind me never to combine in snow anymore!

Down corn is dirty and tedious to harvest, as we were only able to drive about 1.5 MPH.  But we were thankful that it fed into the machine easily as long as we could get the snouts under it.  We worked in one 80 acre field on four different days until we finally finished it.

The majority of our corn came out of the field wetter than normal, so we will have a high drying bill this year.  As you drove around the country late fall, there were large clouds of steam surrounding all the elevators and farm drying setups.  Including ours.  It was rather eerie at night!

In our last cornfield, the combine chased out dozens of rabbits, three coyotes (one with rabbit in mouth), and there was a bald eagle circling overhead dive-bombing for a rabbit.  I wasn't able to pay full attention to the eagle, so I don't know if he succeeded with his dinner plans or not.

Anyway, we are very thankful to be finished with this trying year, and also thankful that the yields were better than expected.  Not great, but still acceptable.  Now to see if the weather will cooperate enough to let us get our tillage done.

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
Romans 5:3,4