To those who serve our country proudly, we thank you.
Hugo has the American Spirit, how about you?
Posts Tagged With: Summer
Friederick’s Farm
For a few short days during mid summer, I can watch the sun set directly over the former Friederick farm from our place across the valley. It’s buildings and silos looming as a landmark on the horizon. A tribute to the many working farms that have went the way that our local coops have. The little feed mills and main street farm stores have long since vanished from our lives. The little dairy farms that dotted our rural country roads and made our local economy thrive will soon be as extinct as the dinosaurs.
Many of the farms have been fragmented by severing the homesteads from the land they once served and sold as farmettes. Our woodlots are now referred to as recreation land and taxed accordingly.
Not many years ago if one needed emergency help it was just a short drive up the road. If you didn’t find anyone at the house or barn you would just drive out in the fields and you could find somebody. Help assisting a first calf heifer giving birth was a common emergency. Sometimes you would need someone with a much bigger tractor to pull you out of a mud hole, that you thought was just a wet spot that turned into a bottomless pit.
A short time ago during one of our wet springs, I got stuck in a seep in one of our fields and I had to call my wife at work and she came home and pulled me out of the mud while wearing her long dress.
Yes, things have changed across America’s heartland and as I now look at the Friederick farm standing on the West Ridge, I see a lifetime of hard work, dedication, and a way of life suspended like so many others in a transitions zone of what once was and the new age of high tech agriculture.
Yep! I think we all miss our old neighborhoods.
100 Degree weather killing crops
What a summer? We’ve had so little rain and 100 degree heat, the corn seem stressed. I don’t know if we’ll have a great yield this year.
Cow on the Roof
What a surprise I got one afternoon when I walked out of the house and seen one of our Holstein Cows on the roof of the hog house. She was standing there posed like a hood ornament. Years ago this type of buildings were very common on farms as most every farmer milked cows, had hogs, chickens and sheep. Small farms were versified to survive back then. Cows hoofs were not designed for climbing. How the cow jumped up there is a mystery and that’s the only time she ever did it.
Interesting as well is all the clutter of old boards lying around. After my folks bought the farm, it took years to get it all cleaned up. Most of it I guess was from the many old dilapidated buildings falling apart. When I was young I stepped on nails four times. My right foot still shows the affects of one nail. My mother thought I must of had a magnet in my foot.
On the back of the photo shows the year 1968, my sophomore year in high school. Two years later I began my career as a full time dedicated farmer and conservationist. I bought my first farm at the age of 21 and was married shortly after my 23rd birthday. We’re still here today living and farming in the Big Platte Valley.
How Sparky got his nickname
How did Sparky get his nickname you may ask? That goes back to hot July afternoon some years back. Our old used lawn mower finally kicked the bucket so I promised the Mrs. I would get her a new one. Actually being a conservative (tight wad) I got her a used one; however it was new to her because she hadn’t used it yet. Everyone knows that when a previous owner gets rid of something used there is a reason for it of course. This one had a wiring problem. Well, I was too busy to fix it, the grass was getting taller and the wife was complaining the lawn looked like a hay field. So the pressure was on to let the hired man fix it. Well I just assumed that everybody knew that when you work on electrical wiring that you disconnected the power source first. NOT Sparky! Alias Bright Eyes, smoky hair Sparky likes to learn by hands on. No big deal though. It wasn’t nothing five hours in the local lawn mower repair shop couldn’t fix.
Everybody has an action figure hero; Superman, the Lone Ranger, or Wonder woman. We have Sparky. For who else could we get to keep inventory of the moths that visit our porch light. I don’t have time; I’m too busy trying to tag calves.
Big Valley Longhorn Ranch 