the end is not the end (period)

If you're looking for a funny commentary, sorry this one takes a slightly different turn.

Four years. Most people don't even work at the same job for four years. What do you do with four years of memories that suddenly come crashing to a halt?

the friends.

the parties.

the freshman 15.

the first all nighter.

the VEISHEA memories.

the first college girlfriend.

the 16 DPS parking tickets you got...in one year.

the freshman pranks on the punk down the hall.

the meaningful conversations with your roommate at 4 am.

the only bowl game we qualified for. Get it done coach Rhodes!

the first test you failed, and thinking you had failed at life.

the freezing cold walks to class in a blizzard.

the many forgotten assignments.

the life lessons learned.

the friends you made that you will never forget. the friends.

the good friends remain, the ones that just wanted your stuff, they fade.

Now its on to the real world. We're suddenly tossed from classes and homework to customers and contracts. Deadlines have teeth. Families need fed. Dad's fields don't need planted anymore but yours do, and if they don't get planted you loose money, not dad. Most of us are 22 or 23, we've got a whole 60 years left before we get covered with dirt and start pushing up daisies. What will we do with that time between now and then? In 100 years no one is going to remember us unless we invent something as revolutionary as the clock. Your name will just be another that is read off at family reunions.

What will you do with your life? I feel like living for my own name and leaving nothing but a gravestone behind is pointless. All that will represent my accomplishments is a dash between date of birth and date of death. People will only see a dash for every material thing I ever gained. The dash represents all my money and fame. A dash. A one inch dash. Maybe this life is to be lived serving others, living for some thing so much more than ourselves.

Think about it.

Greg's job could get easier...

So we were "researching" the possible technology to take some of the work load off Greg and this is what we came up with. We figure by lightening Greg's load we could get over more acres...see the following video for explanation.

A long, long time ago...

...some guys, maybe someone's great great grandpa and his 14 kids built a fence between two farms. One of those farms is now the 450 Home Farm, and we don't know the name of the other. We farm it but don't know the name, we should probably figure that out. What took great great grandpa and his 14 kids two weeks to build took us a whole two hours to remove. Hope it wasn't your great great grandpa that built the fence. If it was, sorry, we pulled his fence out.

It was really nice that day. Really, really nice. Like 85 and sunny with a 59224 mph wind kind of nice. The wind aside, it was a good day. Just a thought...what does it take to pull a fence? Answer, one tractor, one loader bucket, one gator, an Iowa State University pickup, two class advisors, 12 strapping young men, three girls (to keep the 12 in line), a hayrack, a 4020 pulling the hayrack, and one guy driving the 4020 and supervising the whole deal and making fun of the guys and gals pulling the fence.

After a brief hiatus...

If you have been following our blogs regularly sorry that we went AWOL for awhile. There wasn't much going on during spring break and the week after spring break I got stuck between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Yes. Between the two countries. I'll get back to the 450 farm in a second but you need to know about my adventures...

So I went to Haiti over spring break. Yes, the same Haiti that got rocked by an earthquake. I co-led a group of 46 to Saint Lois du Nord, a city with 30,000 refugees. We worked in an orphanage and helped care for the kids and some dug a drainage ditch with a pick ax and shovels. Anyhow on our way home we left Haiti but the Dominican border closed 15 minutes before we got there. So we slept on a bus between Haiti and the Dominican. No government control here, just guys with machetes and guns. If you wanted to dispose of someone, go there. No one will ever know.

Back to the farm...we got a new tractor and its got fancy GreenStar GPS in it so we can drive straight.

Ethan Crow, professional technology model, demonstrates the GreenStar monitor.

Melting snow+rain=mud

It's raining outside right now...surprise, surprise. Just an FYI here, we got a lot of snow this weekend and when that snow melts it turns into water. There's a lot of snow out there, a whole lot. We're going to have a whole lot of water in about, um, two hours. Shoot. Normally we plant corn and beans in the spring, looks like we might be planting in the fall this year...if it dries out by then. If that happens we'll be harvesting crops in the spring, kind of like some guys are doing this year. Below are some pictures. If at all possible try to avoid these situations. If you get stuck in these situations don't post the pictures online. If you do I'll find them and make fun of you.

One option for fixing the issue of getting stuck would be to invent a tractor with pontoons on it...this guy had a descent idea. To bad it wasn't any good.

This guy wins the "Where the Heck Were You Going" award. My advice to you; don't drive your tractor into a mud hole, you're going to get stuck.

And finally if you must cut beans in the spring avoid places that have standing water unless you have two bulldozers in front pulling, or just put in some tile there champ.

You know you're a farm kid if...

So we had some speakers come to the farm from AgMax today. We all liked them because they gave us pens, chip clips, and leather gloves, and of course a quality presentation about GRP and GRIP insurance policies.

It was like Christmas in here when the gloves were handed out. Everyone unwrapped their brand new gloves and tried them on. Grown men grinned and giggled; only in a class full of farm kids.

You know you're a farm kid if you get more excited about a new pair of leather gloves than a new dress shirt.

Want a chopper?

Remember when we were six years old and we all played with little toy tractors?...some of you may still play with little toy tractors. If this is you and you're not married yet, put the tractors in a box and don't get them out again until you have kids, let them play with them until they're six, then take them away so they don't end up unmarried and playing with tractors at age 32, like you.

Anyway...that said, a couple custom committees ago the determination was made that chopping wasn't making us money so they axed it. Good call. We've still got the chopper. Custom committee decided to sell it. Good call again. If you want to buy it, it can be yours, for a fee of course. Talk to Greg, he can hook you up with a chopper.

Custom committee decided to cut up an old silage wagon and sell it for scrap metal. They figured the wagon was worth more in scrap metal than they would get selling it. The class 100% backed their decision.