Another era

It makes me sad to drive past the lineup of machines with the "For Sale" sign in front of them.  This centenarian tractor is being sold because the man who farmed this land can no longer do so. Like most farmers in the county, he kept the farm going by having a second job.  In this case the job was digging basements, and mine was one of them.

Last year was the jubilee of the jubilee of this Ford tractor he once used.  I don't even know if Ford still makes tractors.  In the masthead is the Ford pickup which is lined up with this, another tractor, and a plow.  Interested? 

Although this farmland is no longer cultivated, there are many fields around it that are.  And land just west of this old farm which has lain fallow for as long as I can remember has just been cleared of brush and tilled once more. Don't know what crops will be planted but pretty sure it will be corn or soybeans, the crops in demand by the Pioneer and Monsanto seed production facilities in the county.

Tilling

It is ABC Wednesday again and the letter is T, in this case for tilling.  If you click on the photo, it will enlarge and you will be able to see part of the tractor's cab in the dust cloud.  This field is just across the road from the Cowling Road Bridge.  I wondered if tilling and plowing are the same.  In the American Heritage Dictionary, till, tilling is defined as preparing the land for raising crops by plowing, harrowing, cultivating, so this word encompasses anything done to prepare the soil.  Well, what soil is left if you are tilling very dry land.  This photo was taken at the end of last week before the badly needed rains came on Sunday.

Till by the way comes from the Old English, tilian, via the Middle English, tilen, and it is another one of those wonderful words that mean several things.  'Till we meet again is the shortened until and comes from Old Norse.  How much is in the till denotes the compartment for money in a store and also a purse or a supply of money,  And then it denotes glacial drift and the mixture of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders it brings with it.  And with that definition of till you are describing the land of Fabius Township. 

Happy T on ABC Wednesday everyone!   Click for more tours of T.

What a beautiful sky down on the farm!

Catch the lineup to the right of the back barn.  They were were really keeping an eye on me this morning.  This is another of my driving-into-town-for-a-meeting photos or photos on the fly.  However, unlike the day of the squiggly school bus lights (see March 23rd photo), I had the time today to be calm, to not wave the camera around too much and to even get the correct settings.

This land has only recently been used again as a farm.  The original small brick farmhouse had also long been abandoned and last year it was demolished.  Now there are cattle and goats cohabiting in the barns.

70% of the land in St. Joseph County is farmland and more of it is irrigated than in any other county east of the Mississippi, according to the Michigan State University Extension Service (see the January 7th photo of the irrigated field just down the road from us).  Twenty two percent of all the irrigated land in Michigan is in St. Joe County.  There are 900 some farms and the value of agricultural production is over $93 million a year of which $17 million is from livestock.  The top crops are seed corn, green beans, potatoes, and pickles.  The two million bags of seed corn are used to plant six million acres of commercial corn.  Both Pioneer and Monsanto have seed production facilities in the county.

Cold Comfort Farm

After the novel of the same name (oh and a movie as well), this farm greets as you enter the township and from the first time I saw it I have called it Cold Comfort Farm.  Watch out for the wood shed!

more from the chainsaw art gallery

The American Eagle is having trouble flying these days.  Tree stumps make for perishable art.  My eye loves all the lines showing up in this photo.