The Forgettable Corn Harvest

Corn harvest came in the latter part of our extremely dry summer. Fortunately, Jason and his dad hadn't planted a huge percentage of their acreage in corn, although I did hear Jason say that one acre would have been too many.

The kids were disappointed that there weren't more combine rides, but we took advantage of the few times the stars aligned, when the combine was close by, the kids weren't napping, Jason was in the field and not hauling a load to the elevator, and mama was feeling agreeable about lugging three children to a hot, sticky and dirty cornfield.

Helen was overall delighted about getting a combine ride with grandpa, although at this moment, her two-year-old female self was obviously upset about some not-so-trivial matter such as having to wear the wrong shoes or an equally horrible offense.


Owen insisted on climbing up by himself, coating his hands and clothes with a dusty black film that can only be known as combine dirt.

While the older two were getting their combine fix, little Mr. Jack had his first official tractor ride.

He was silent, for once.

Jason's guidance system frees him from the trouble of having to actually drive the tractor. To compensate for this loss, he reads magazines and watches movies while on auto-steer. After his first day of this strenuous activity, he came home to his frazzled wife, who had had a really bad day with the kids. She wasn't too excited to hear about the fascinatingly neat article he had browsed. On this day, he wasn't using the auto-steer function, because he didn't have it set up properly and was otherwise occupied with our little bundle of joy.

But the grass, or in this case, the tractor, is always greener on the other side. Here's John Deere's latest cab innovation. I had to wipe his farmer drool off the page before I took the picture.

Jack is sippin' the farming Kool-Aid.

We were pulling the grain cart, and Jim unloaded the grain from the combine while continuing to combine. Quite an impressive feat, especially with two inquisitive grandchildren in the cab!

Jack is still mesmerized.

We headed back to the semi to unload. I'm always amazed by the wide view from a tractor cab.

I think we might have another generation of farming!