It’s been my privilege over the years to write many stories about life on our farm here. I’ve been blessed over the years to get a fair bit of feedback on my stories and my book.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we were happy to be going about our work. On this July day, we were planning on round-baling our upper hay field. It had a beautiful second crop of hay on it that I had cut a couple of days before

Sometimes in farming and in life the most unexpected things happen. Such is what happened here this last summer.

We had an old silo that we used to store high-moisture corn for many years. Over time, because of freezing, thawing and age, many of the cement staves in the top half of the silo started to crack and break. It got to the point where we could see it was getting dangerous to keep using it in that condition.

We had an old Farmall tractor that we used for years on the farm to do a lot of light work. My son, Joshua, ran it a fair bit and owned half of it. 

I had a complicated situation arise awhile back with a large oak tree on our farm. The tree was off of the edge of the township road and the federal highway that run by our farm. I really like large oak trees that stand so strong and beautiful, and yes, I liked this big tree that stood next to the fence of my heifer pasture.

When we first started farming here years ago, I didn’t have many tools. Since I was very short on money, I ended up buying tools through a mail-order catalog. They were the cheapest tools I could find, and yes, they were made in China. The saying “You get what you pay for” was most certainly true in that case.

Sometimes in life there is a person or animal that always brings a smile to your face when you cross paths with them. I have one cow that always does that for me. Her name is Dixie, and she is one very unique individual.

Years ago, when we would fill out applications for medical insurance, the insurance agent would always ask us a lot of questions. One of the questions was, “Did anybody in our household do bull riding or parachute jumping?” If I would have answered “yes” to that, the cost of the insurance would have gone up substantially.

In our early years farming here, we had several acres of land on the lower end of our farm that had a lot of grass and brush on it along with a few trees.