325 Ready to turn the page on 2011

Looking back is has been a good year, it is always a good year every year, some are excellent, some are just good. This was one of the good ones. It would be good, but probably less interesting if life was not such a corn maize most of the time. Actually, a corn maize has paths for you to follow and you make decisions and test your skills in getting through it. Life is more interesting than that, as no paths are there. You make your own as you go, giving you a sense of accomplishment or failure by the turns you make. So sometimes it seems best to just take it slow and allow other forces, other circumstance to happen to help you make good twist and turns and hopefully arrive at the satisfaction of accomplishment and not failures.
It would be nice if we could always see over the hill. To know what lies out there ahead of us. But we can not, so facing that we learn as we go. We try and be good people, try not to embarrass ourselves too much and others. We eat our vegetables, we get our proper fiber and if were smart we even put on a coat when its cold outside. We work hard so we can have food and shelter and things. We try and stay healthy, if we get sick we look to others for some help. Help usually is there, and before you know it we are back up running into the corn maize again. Life is funny that way, it just goes on...So tomorrow we say goodbye to 2011 and we welcome in the NEW YEAR.

I look forward to 2012 with Hope and Faith, but at the same time I look with some anticipation of what could happen in the corn maize ahead. It is a rocky world out there today and things are just about as rocky right here in the USA. Not going into what ails us, you know as well as I what I am talking about. Watch the news, multiple sources as they all spin the truth a bit, some more than others. You will figure out which ones with experience. But things are not rosy, we could miss this bullet or we could take it, we just have to see. My advice is take precautions, stock up some non perishable foods, stock up some cash and some coins in a safety box at the bank, just in case. I do have hope with the political wave of alertness and awakeness that is starting to sweep the land. I hope it continues and improves where we are headed. If that happens we won't need the provisions. If it don't they may be good to have.

Happy New Year to all...Proceed with caution but by all means proceed....

And if you click on the title above you will be amazed by the number of corn maizes to you can look at...almost as many as there are lives out there getting through it.

324 The Christmas Season and a Full Pond

It is a wonderful time of the year. It is December a month that usually offers the lowest grain prices of the year and the highest hopes for our lives. We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in just 10 more days. We give each other gifts, in rememberance of the gift we received by His lifes work of showing us how to live and then 33 years later offering himself to die for our sins. Thus the ultimate gift of salvation in eternal life. It don't get any better than that folks. I love this season for all that it brings. When it starts even before Thanksgiving now, I kind of fight it I guess. Feeling kind of Scroggie for a few days. Thinking, Oh no, do we have to do this again, we just did it last year and the every year before. But then the music kicks in and whips me into shape and of course the thinking about that gift we receive "if we want it", puts me full bore into the season...That is where I am today, my shopping done, a few gifts yet to wrap and some great Christmas CD's playing on my home audio system.
And I will have to admit the small 8 pound ham I purchased last night for 5 bucks slowly cooking in my oven, with carrots and potatoes, giving off the sweet odor of whole cloves and brown sugar, does nothing to dampen my spirit either.
On top of all of this wonderment, we have been receiving lots of rain of late. Temperature this morning was 60 degrees, heard lots of thunder last night, more like April than December. But remember we are Hoosiers, and things can change, tonight it is to be down to 28 degrees. And not any too soon, as I could have lost my Christmas spirit had my Strawberry's started blooming again. I checked them this morning on my way to take these pictures. They have retired for the year, finally.
As you can see by the top pic, my pond is expelling water big time. It is full the water shown in the other pic is up to the bottom of the dock. I love the water conservation that my pond provides. It holds back a lot of water that runs out of my little 50 acres and meters it slowing into the drainage system. Eventually it all goes down the Ilgenfritz ditch to the Wea creek, then to the Wabash river but at a lot slower pace than if my little pond had not been built.
In case I don't get back bloggin before Christmas, let me wish you all a Merry One. Enjoy to the fullest but keep in mind why its all done...Not to surge the economy but to share a few gifts with each other and some love, thus remembering the gift of love that is ever present. One last thought as I look at the water coming threw the pipe, it reminds me of this season too. The never ending grace that our Savior provides...

323 Tailgating, Raining, Snowing, and Land Rush

Well got invited to Hort Park at Purdue tailgateing. It is fun the Capecci's and Plaspohl's have a fun time at a few of the Purdue Home Football games...we eat, drink and be Merry and then go home and watch it on TV in comfort...it is a lot of fun..campfires are always fun, well unless it's the 4th of July or something.

We had a really good rain a couple days ago and as you can see in the second picture it recharged the ground and even ran off quite a bit. Was glad to see that as the pond had been kind of low for the last couple months. I call my second picture "A river runs to it". That's what I get when I get run off I get nice clean water going directly as you see into the pond. It all flows north out of my 50 acres and is filtered through the 5 acres of native grasses then arriving very clean. I like the set up and so do the fish. I know they were happy to get the additional water to swim around in. Probably added at least 18 inches to the acre pond, which with Dayton math equates to about 540,000 gallons of the precious stuff all in a matter of a
maybe 3 hours. It is amazing and not a gallon of it hit the rivers. But I am now about 6 inches yet from the drain tube which will allow then the overflow to be metered slowing into the streams and river system.

But my little pond does it's job holding water back, conserving water and providing water for the fish and the grand kids and even me and sweet pea to swim and float around in kayaks in the summer time. Maybe coming up soon will just be ice skating and maybe icefishing.

Then after the big rain it turned to snow and it actually accumulated 4 to 5 inches on the ground. So our first major snow of the season as seen in the last picture below after it had melted a bit.

Which brings me now to the "land rush" of sorts that is going on with farm land across America these days. There is a couple things driving land values to new all time maybe even artificial highs. First is grain prices maybe being
double what they were 4 years back. Second and probably the real driver behind the willingness to pay huge prices for land is the state of the nation and the world. It is the same thing that has driven gold and silver prices and that is the fear of the economic system collaping and our money system as we know it kind of going away. Vanishing like steam does. And so people with huge amounts of it turn to land and metals as a way to have at least something in case that should happen. Land being even better than gold as there is some income while it is appreciating or depreciating. And who knows which that will be, but I have seen this before in the 80's when land seemed to have no top but then 5 years later it fell drastically in value. So the risk is there but who knows? If the economic system stabilizes it will probably level out and maybe even drop. But it may not we may see that these prices for Land and Gold and Silver stay with us a while. But at some point things will change it always does.

Click on the title above and Purdue will tell you more about farm land than you may want to know...Last nights land auction I attended was 232 acres of good but not great farm land near me. It brought $1,960,000.00 or about $8,350 per acre. I guessed before the sale that it would fetch 1.7 million. I was a little low and came away as I do from most auctions, "with all my money"....Land has doubled in the last 10 years maybe less than 10.