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It’s Your Graduation and Iced Coffee Pudding

May is the time we all think about graduation. Maybe you have someone near and dear to your heart graduating from pre-school, high school or college. It’s such an exciting time for all! As a high school teacher I attended many graduation party venues congratulating many seniors. Here’s a speech I gave at the school I taught the year I retired. I made sure it was only 90 seconds.

Who wants to listen to a long speech at graduation? I don’t see any hands up!

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Preparing to Plant and Homemade Yogurt

This year’s planting season is not ideal. We’ve had a lot of rain and the weather is cool. The truth is, we have two choices to plant; corn or beans. The deep dark soil of Iowa and the humid nights and days of summer are well suited to growing bumper crops of corn and beans. Twenty years ago we also planted oats that also made straw for farrowing hogs. Those days are long gone.

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So very cultivated!

Planting in last year’s bean field doesn’t take as much preparation as planting in last year’s cornfield. Bean fields don’t have as much trash as a cornfield, as bean plants aren’t as big or as tough as a corn plant. They are less than half the size and don’t have as large of a leaf structure as a corn plant. Less stuff creates less work!

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Mercy Hospital Art Show

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The Gambler and Banana Bars

Decades ago I impulsively went to a garage sale at a house I drove by on my way to the grocery store twelve miles away. I was looking over the items on a table in the driveway. A man sauntered up to me. He had on a tight-fitting shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest. He wore diamond rings on each of his fingers and had gold chains displayed around his neck. He checked his gold watch for the time.

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Preparation is the Key! and Hannah’s Irish Soda Bread

There are several pieces of equipment we use to put in the crop. For planting corn, we use a 9-shank John Deere chisel plow (1996), a 28-foot John Deere soil finisher (1988) and a John Deere 4-row planter (1985). We use three different tractors; a John Deere 4755 (1992), a John Deere 4040 (1980) and a John Deere 4440 (1979).

Planting beans requires all the equipment listed except a 450 John Deere bean drill (2000) is used instead of the corn planter.

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