(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today)

During the deepest time of Iowa winters, dirty clouds skid across dark skies, days are short and stinging snow is borne on a wind so cold no coat can keep it at bay.  During these dreary times, our friends in warmer climates question our sanity for living in such an icy, blustery place as Iowa.

During the deepest time of Iowa’s simmers, the heat beats down and neither breeze nor tiny cloud brings respite from the sun’s endless stare.  But it is not the heat, but the humidity that drags us down like a leaden weight, making every step and every movement sweaty agony.  During these blistering times, our friends in heatless, humidless climates question our sanity for living for in such a torrid, horrid place as Iowa.

But there are times, like the last few weeks, when life in Iowa rewards patience and endurance.

During these times, the evening sun casts a golden glow across the hills and plains. Tall corn marches to the horizon while soybeans rows become bushy miles of perfectly tended hedges.  There is no need for air conditioners or fans because the air is sweet and cool and fresh as childhood lemonade.  The dust from country roads drifts listlessly across pastures filled with contented cows resting in verdant beds of greenest grass.

Young voices fill the evening air at the last baseball games of summer are played on dusty small-town diamonds carved from farm fields. Tiny glowing dots betray the dance of fireflies in the gently waving corn beyond the outfield. Garden vines bend under the weight of their produce.  And morning dew dresses lawns in glittering jewels.

There are no tractors roaring.  Planting if finished and harvest is yet to come.  There is o hurry.  The grass, the corn, the soybeans and children know no clock but the sun.  These are days of tire swings and back porches, of slow pitch softball and backyard barbecues.

August’s sun will sear us yet.  And each dusk brings us closer to winter’s short and bitter days.  But, for now, we savor and enjoy these mild days of August in Iowa.  And as the evening breeze washes over us, carrying a hint of October’s frost, we ponder the question of movie and baseball fame: ” Is this heaven?”

And we know the answer.  But sometimes it’s awfully hard to tell the difference.

 Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season for the Christian community.  For each denomination, it means something different.  For each individual, they honor the day, and the season, in their own special way.

Growing up in a strong Roman Catholic household, my parents taught by example.  When you are suppose to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, there was no cheating.  No meat on Friday’s meant just that – no meat.  For a family that ran a dairy and a small feedlot, that was no small sacrifice.  We were a meat and potatoes kind of family.

A typical meal plan would make any logging crew or work gang happy.  Bacon and eggs for breakfast, a hotdish – usually complete with hamburger, potatoes, and any wide range of different ingredients for dinner (our noon meal), a little lunch before chores and milking in the evening might consist of a lunchmeat sandwich and bars or cookies, for supper, just pure meat and potatoes with some vegetable on the side.

That was the farmer’s diet we lived and died by.

Lent brought the challenge of changing that usual routine, but I truly believe that Mom relished the challenge.  Rarely did she resort to the old joking standbys – rarely do I remember a tuna noodle hotdish or fishsticks.

One of her specialties was the classic breakfast for supper.  You could hardly beat a big stack of Mom’s pancakes, smothered in butter and her own homemade recipe for syrup.  The only thing that could come close to that was her waffle supper – I’m not sure how she did it, but none of the rest of us could make a waffle with that darn old waffle iron, but Mom’s always turned out flaky and golden brown.

On those cold spring days on the northern prairie, nothing could quite hit the spot some days then a mound of grilled cheese sandwiches and a big pot of tomato soup.

At least once a year during the Lenten season, Mom would catch a break and Dad would announce that we were going to the Red Apple for supper.  With a family of five kids, we didn’t get to eat in town very often, and when we did, we knew it was special.  We would finish up milking a little early, shower up, and the family would pile into the car.  We would take one of the big tables in the dining room at the Red Apple, with the dark wood and dried flowers on the walls.  There all-you-can eat walleye was fantastic – and for a family that worked hard and played hard, that all you could feature made my Dad smile…he knew he was getting his money’s worth.

But high above it all, the pièce de résistance, was Mom’s creamed eggs on toast.  How something so mundane, so ordinary, so plain, yet looks so disgusting, can taste so darn good remains one of the most best kept secrets on this planet. 

The eggs were boiled and mixed with a slowly stirred in heavy, peppery, cream sauce.  Dark yellow, almost the color and consistency of calf scours, with a smell like, well, I guess like cooked and creamed eggs.  Spread over toast, this somewhat foul dish transformed itself into something so unlike any other food, warm, smooth, but with a meaty texture combined with the coarseness of the toast and the smell and bite of the pepper.  That was special.

Perhaps too what was special about all of those meals is that it showed us that regardless if it was steak or creamed eggs, pork roast or tomato soup, the truly special thing about the meals was the time together, from the time we bowed our heads saying grace to when we were done eating and taking the dishes to the sink.  What was on the plates didn’t matter, it was who we were sharing them with.

 The day came to leave the Boca Raton Beach Club and Resort.  On a quiet Sunday morning, I packed my bags and headed for the door.

It did strike me the absurdness of it all.  Here I was, a farm kid from Northern Minnesota. A guy who spent one semester on the floor of a friend’s apartment to save money during grad school.  A guy that started his first job in Wichita, KS living in an unfurnished apartment…with a folding table and a sleeping bag for the first two months of his stay.  A guy that was more accustomed to having to clean the dust and dead flies off of the beds at home then the soft creature comforts of a luxury resort.  A guy that still believes some of the best vacations are the ones spent visiting friends and family, even if that means taking along a sleeping bag.  A guy who can still remember his first vacation…1986, Iowa, slept on my brother’s floor.  And his first trip on his own…1991, Kansas City, National FFA Convention, slept in a dumpy hotel room one hour outside of the city with four other guys from my FFA Chapter.

Here I was, leaving one of the most opulent resorts in the country.

As I took my bag off of the soft mattress and headed for the classic door of my hotel room, I turned back one more time, to the TV, to the balcony, to the view of the castle like buildings out the window and the sprawling green golf course beyond.

Shutting the door behind me, I looked at shimmering cleanliness of the starched white hallways, at the regal carpet and the statuary by the elevators.

Through the opulent hallway I walked.  Past the upper crust people in their Armani suits, Rayban sunglasses, and polo wear with their designer shoes and perfect hair, wearing my Levi jeans, my pearl button JC Penney shirt and carry my “Superior Cattle Company” duffel bag (a gift from a customer in 2001).

I proceeded into the front lobby, where a white gloved porter took my bag and my car claim ticket as I checked out with the very polite manager behind the counter – hoping that I would make it back to see them very soon.

Then, with two doormen opening the gilded doors, I walked into the sun, to wait with more people in their fancy clothes and diamond rings.  Waiting behind the people as they got into their BMW’s, Lexus’, Audi’s, Lincolns, Hummers, and Rolls Royce’s.  In the middle of all of this, around the opulent driveway comes my car with the white polo shirted young supermodel-to-be valet…driving my Chevy Imapala with all the windows rolled down and the radio blasting…what else…Jason Aldeans, “Hicktown.”

Fitting.  Very fitting.

As the porter placed my bag into the trunk, to the shocked stares of the other people waiting for their cars, the valet held the door of my car open for me…all the while the music wafted from the car.

“Guess I had the radio up a little load,” I said.

“No worries sir, we like the real people here.  Gives these other people something to think about,” said the valet.

Out of the elegant driveway in the midst of those fancy foreign cars to the sound of country music proclaiming the joys of small town America I went.  Glad to be heading home.  Happy for my experience and the rest for the long weekend at the resort.  Proud of my roots.

 I miss the truck.We had two vehicles on the farm.  A car, suitable for taking the family too and from church, running errands around town, or making the trek to Fargo or Minneapolis as needed, was the main mode of transportation.  I can remember a Chrysler station wagon, then the old Chrysler LaBaron, then the Buick LeSabre.

The second vehicle was the pick up truck.  In our case, it was the old Ford F-150 that was about as old as I was (1977 model, versus me being a 1975 model).  We worked well together.  That old pick up truck was my means of transportation – my means of freedom, for most of my high school years.

She wasn’t the classiest ride in town.

By the time I got to her, most of the letter and the white stripe was off the side.  Large rings of rust surrounded the wheel wells, and the right front fender had been replaced where my brother had slide into another truck deer hunting.  The floor boards had all but rusted away, and you had to be careful not to drop anything on the floor.  Nails, bolts, tools, and small farm animals could fit through some of the holes.  But it was entertaining to drop cheese puffs through the floor and onto the highway while going sixty miles an hour – they just left an orange puff behind the truck.

The old pick up’s condition continued to deteriorate once I got a hold of her.

There was the day driving to school when I heard a thump coming from the box behind me.  Turning around, I noticed that the topper had literally rotted off the – the side posts and bars literally turning to mush and topper was sprawled across the box like a calf on the ice.

Then there was the day that that tailgate came unhooked on one side while driving into school while doing fifty miles an hour down the gravel road.  That kicked up some dust.  The box was rusted so bad that the sides were shaking and literally couldn’t hold the tailgate in place any longer.  Into the box the tailgate went, then out to the garbage pile.

I started driving it to town regularly the spring of my junior year in high school.  Dad and Mom were making regular trips for Mom’s cancer treatments, so having the pickup meant that I could do errands around town, bring my sister to some activities.  Swing by the elevator and pick up feed as needed or parts from Cenex or Napa.

I did try to keep her in good condition.

When I was going to take my date to prom in her my junior year, I washed and waxed her and her old forest green paint shone in the spring sunshine.  I put cardboard down over the holes in the floor and some carpet squares on top, cleaned out the two decades worth of dust and grim from the cab.

When my Dad got home from Fargo that night, it was the first time I had ever really seen him that mad.

“What did you do to that pickup?” Dad demanded.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, “You know that is all I have to take to prom if you want to go and see Mom on Saturday.”

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t have to go out and get it painted!”  Dad said in anger.

“I didn’t pain it!  I washed it!” I exclaimed.

“Huh,” Dad said, still a bit taken aback, “I forget it was that color.  Well, anyway, once you get that protective layer of dirt off, she is just going to rust all the faster now!”

Dad was probably right – the old girl did seem to rust a little faster after that.  But I think even Dad appreciated the fact that she was a lot warmer in the winter with those manholes in the floor covered up with those carpet squares.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today)

Baseball players and football players (except for the Bills and the Cowboys) are in their off-season.  There is no such off-season for farmers.

Farmers are busy ordering seeds, fuel and other supplies.  They bone up on the latest techniques and technology.  They repair equipment.  They make crop and marketing plans.  Success in farming depends as much on winter planning as it does on spring planting, summer cultivation and fall harvest.  Success will elude any farmer who bungles one of those steps.

This is also the season for farm policy making.  What the Iowa Legislature and the U.S. Congress do can make a world of difference in how a Boone County farmer goes about his business.

Recently, lawmakers have been trying to encourage farmers to use more sustainable techniques on their farms.  As environmental concerns grow, that trend is likely to see more action this year.

A recent report from the U.S. Soil Conservation Service indicates the lawmakers may be seeing some success.

According to Jeff Vonk, Iowa State conservationist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, Iowa farmers are using more conservation farming practices than ever before.  During the last year, grassed waterway acreage in Iowa increased by 900 percent.  Corn and soybeans planted into last year’s crop residue without tillage increased by 650 percent.  Contoured acres were up 400 percent.  Terraces increased 23 percent and acres panted on land with at least 15 percent of the ground covered with residue was up 36 percent

Maybe I’m not looking in the right places or maybe ice is holding Iowa’s soil in place, but the snow drifts along Boone County roads look cleaner this winter.

There’s little that can be done to keep livestock odors and other agriculture-related “perfume” from wafting across the countryside.  That’s why the Iowa legislature is presently considering a bill that would allow counties to classify areas as agricultural enterprise zones.  The Associated Press reports that people living in those zones could not bring legal action against the farmer “because of livestock odors and other non threatening aspects of farm life.”

Urban workers move to suburban and rural areas to find solitude, security and fresh air of country living, but are unprepared for the dust, odor and noise that accompany some farm operations.  The proposed legislation would give farmers much needed protection from expensive nuisance suits.

This legislation and a host of other farm-related issues before the legislature and congress this winter will have a direct impact on Boone County farmers.  It’s a big job to keep up with it all.

Add those political issues to the mix of planning and preparation tasks farmers face now, and you can see that farmers may be off the field, but they’re not enjoying the off-season break.

My nieces were inconsolable.  They were angry.  Abby especially was on the ground, tears flowing.  Furious about the injustice of it all.

They had been promised a long weekend in Minneapolis.  They were going to come down and spend a night with Uncle Mark, then spend the next couple of days at a hotel with a pool and get the chance to spend a day at the Mall of America.

They found out at five o’clock in the morning in Uncle Mark’s living room that this was not too be.  There was never a plan to go to the Mall of America.  There were no hotel reservations made.  They would not be spending their planned weekend in Minneapolis.

And they were furious.

On the surface, it seems that their anger was justified.  These poor children were lead on.  These poor children had expectations!  How could their parents do this to them!  It was cruel.  It was unjust.  It was completely pitiless.

Until you find out the rest of the story.

The reason that they found out at five in the morning is that because they were really hoping on a plane to go the airport to fly to Florida and spend a long weekend at Disneyland.  No Mall of America, but something so much better, it was unfathomable!

And they were mad about it!

Hope often in our lives do we see these daily injustices take place and we wonder where is God?  Why isn’t he helping us?  Sometimes, like my nieces, we fail to take in the whole picture.

When I think about the story in the Gospel of Mark, when the men lower their crippled friend through the roof of the house so that he might meet Jesus and ask that he be cured, I can picture Jesus laughing a little to himself.

Here are a people so certain that Jesus can heal their friend, so certain that Jesus has these miraculous powers, that they are willing to literally rip the tiles of a roof and lower their friend inside.  They have so much faith, so much belief in this, that they go to extreme measures to help their friend.

What is Jesus’ response?

He gives them something even greater, yet so utterly unexpected that they don’t know how to respond.  Jesus response is, “your sins are forgiven.”  The people are so amazed and so taken aback by this, which they start to question, “How dare he forgive sins?  Only God can do that!”

I think Jesus was amused.

These people that had seen him raise the dead, heal the sick, and speak as no one had spoken before still failed to see and hear what he had been trying to tell them all along!  They failed to see the amazing gift that he had given this man, more important then even letting him walk.

Sometimes, like my nieces, we fail to see that bigger picture.  We may not get what we want.  We may not have our lives go as planned, but in the end, we are guided, we are lead, and we given the gifts of the spirit…if we but have the faith to see.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

I’m old and my life is falling apart.

I turned 25 last week- a quarter of century.  That’s 175 dog years.  Most folks, especially my wife who is a pretty young thing of 24, expect me to be walking with a cane any day now.  They say 25 is a big milestone.

I didn’t believe them.  What’s another year?  It doesn’t matter if you’re 16,19,25 or really as old as 31- as long as you’re young at heart.  I’m young at heart.  I told myself that age isn’t affecting me yet.

I was wrong.

As a young person, bad things never happened to me.  As a young person, finding mold on my Velveeta is as close as I ever came to a crisis.  In youth I was invincible.

Since I turned 20, i’ve been driving around in this wonderful1968 Ford pickup.  It’s not fancy, but it was in beautiful shape for such an old truck.  I dutifully washed it, waxed it and had it mechanical innards checked out.

“Take care of it and you’ll get a lot of good miles out of it,” my dad said when I got it.  There were only 40,000 miles on the odometer then. Now there are 13,000 on the dial.  No, the odometer has not been running backward.  I drove it when it was a sweltering 108 degrees in Iowa.  I drove it when it was 40 degrees below zero in North Dakota. (Not counting wind chill).  I drove it in thunderstorms and blizzards.

But despite all those miles and those awful driving conditions I never had any serious problems because I was young and unstoppable.

But last week as I approached my 25^th birthday, I suddenly became stoppable.

I convinced my wife that we could drive the pickup to Minnesota.  “It’ll get us there and back without any problem,” I told her.  It got us there without any problem.  Getting back was another story.

When we left to return to Boone, I noticed a slight tap-tap-tapping noise.  Noises come and noised go with regularity when you drive an old pickup so I wasn’t concerned.  Four hours later when we reached St. Paul it was TAP-TAP-TAPPING!  So we stopped for the night.

Convinced that the noise was not serious and that we would be back on our way by noon.  I took it to a mechanic the next morning.  “Never heard a noise like that before,” he said.  “Besides, we don’t do major engine work here.”

The next mechanic listened to the noise.  Then he took a drop of oil from the dipstick and spread it on his finger.  Tiny metal shavings glistened in the oil. “Rod bearing,” he announced.  “or it could be a wrist pin.  You might make it to Iowa or you might not,” he said.  “If a rod goes, you’re talkin’ new engine and i’ve seen ‘em throw parts right thru the hood.  That’s a nice looking truck, I’d hate to see that happen.”

I was only a day away from 25 and suddenly I wasn’t feeling so invincible anymore.

I’m afraid I’m not handling this crisis very well.  I don’t know where or if I’m going to get it fixed.  I don’t know what to do with it if I don’t get it fixed and I miss cruising around Boone in my shiny old pickup.

For now the pickup is in Minnesota with a terminal case of the TAPS and I’m in Iowa feeling old and wondering how much longer my own rod bearings are going to hold out.

Growing up on a dairy farm, there just seemed to be something so wholesome and exciting about the cowboy lifestyle.  Riding the range, defending the frontier against outlaws and rustlers, fighting mother nature to bring in the heard and save the ranch.We used to listen to the radio doing chores, and we used to stop and pause as Toby Keith would sing, “Should Have Been A Cowboy,” or Chris Ledoux sang, “This Old Hat,” or Willie Nelson sang, “My Hero’s Have Always Been Cowboys,” or perhaps the best, Roy Rogers and the classic, “I Want to Ride.”

The house would come to a standstill when a John Wayne classic would come on the television.  Dad scoffed at the idea of getting a VCR until he discovered the magic of watching, “The Son’s of Katie Elder,” “Rio Bravo,” “North to Alaska” or anyone of the host of other classic westerns where the wrongs were righted, the bad guys punished, and the good guy got the girl.

That was the cowboy lifestyle that we grew up with.

Even our reading material was heavy on the cowboy lifestyle.  Mixed in the bookcases with our Mom’s collection of biographies, historical novels, religious writing, and travel books were an assortment of Zane Grey, Louis Lamour, and other, lesser known western writers.

It just seemed to be a much more exciting life then feeding cattle in a pen, feeding milk to ornery calves, and milking cows twice a day, day in and day out.  The drudgery of dairy farming seemed to pale (pail?) in comparison to the exciting life of the cowboy.

Part of the appeal too was the wondering ways of the cowboy.  For a kid who looked forward to the trip once a year to Fargo, the idea of wondering the trails from Old Mexico all the way up to the Northern Plains of Canada seemed pretty darn exciting as you trailed a herd up and down the trails.

As you walked to the house at night, millions of stars would shine down.  You could picture yourself sitting around a campfire on the open range, the cattle settled down for the night, peace over the camp.  Ready for a peaceful night under the stars.

It was on those nights that I realized why the cowboy sang.  Looking into that vastness of space and time on the open prairie, unhindered by the lights of the big city with the whole world spread before it, it just inspires song.

But part of me realizes the more practical side of things too.  Having finished a batch of cowboy chili that lasted me almost two weeks of lunches…part of the cowboy singing was to cover up the trumpet playing from the chili.

It wasn’t suppose to be this cold.Bloomington, Indiana was suppose to be a southern climate for someone from the Northern Plains, they weren’t suppose to have the ice, snow and bitter cold temperatures that we were facing as we attempted to get tickets to see the storied rivalry between the University of Indiana Hoosiers and my University of Illinois Fighting Illini basketball men’s basketball teams.

I had flown into Chicago the Thursday night before the Saturday matchup at Assembly Hall in Bloomington.  From Chicago, I proceeded to Champaign, where I had gone to school only a couple of years earlier, to visit friends and professors.

Then it was on to Paris, Illinois to visit my friend Pat and his girlfriend at that time.  The three of us crossed from the friendly territory of Illinois and into the enemy territory of Indiana several hours before game time, me the only one brave enough (or stupid enough) to be wearing my Illini colors.

While we didn’t have tickets, we thought, how hard could it be to scalp tickets into one of the biggest basketball arena’s in the country?

Very difficult as it turned out.

Pat is an expert in the game of getting tickets for events at the last minute.  He cruises online to find deals, he uses connections, he knows all of the psychological tricks that the scalpers use to up the ante on a deal.  I have never known Pat to fail in his attempt to get the tickets that he wanted, and most of the time for much less then I ever anticipated.  He knew how to play the market.

This was the first time that I saw Pat strike out.  As the three of us watched thousands of people enter the basketball arena, we couldn’t find reasonable tickets.  It seemed like every seat in the house was spoken for.  Something I guess we should have counted on going into the heart of Hoosier country.  They like their basketball.

As we stood outside the doors to Assembly Hall, ready to give up, we watched a girl arguing with her boyfriend.  She turned from him, walked up to us and said, “Here, you need a ticket?” and she threw the ticket at us as she stomped off.

Well, one of us was going to go to the game.

In the end, Pat and his girlfriend went to watch the game at a neighboring bar, I went into the heart of enemy territory, with my orange shirt, and sitting next to an angry boyfriend.

How did it turn out?  The ticket was good – it had a good view of the game.  But the fans were rabid.  I feared for my life throughout much of the game and wasn’t even brave enough to take my jacket off to reveal my bright orange Illini shirt in the massive sea of Hoosier Red, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb (and like a sheep in a wolf’s den).

But it was fun to be at Assembly Hall in the heart of Hoosier country, where national championships teams had been formed.  Where some of the greats of the game had played.

But most importantly, on that February day in 2001, the Hoosiers were beat by my Fighting Illini.  I was almost brave enough to take off my jacket.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in December 9, 1987)

“This machine is one of the most revolutionary developments in the history of the livestock industry.  This product will forever change the way you deal with animal waste disposal.  “May I present… the hydra-push manure spreader.”

For one day in y college career I became a manure spreader salesman, fully committed and ready to stand behind my product.  Actually I didn’t get mixed up in the salesman bit all by myself.  I had a little help from my room-mate and cousin, Pat.   During idle chit -chat one day he suggested that we should enter the North Dakota Sate University Agriculture Engineering Show.  “Okay,” I said without thinking.

Dumb answer.

Pat was an ag education major and I was an ag economics major.  What did we know about ag engineering?  Not much and that was one of the few points in our favor.

The object of the show was to choose a new or interesting product that used various aspects of new agricultural technology, create an exhibit around the product and present and sell the product to the public on the day of the show.  The most effective exhibit wins.

In the past 10 years, technology has revolutionized farming. Computers can run combines.   You don’t drive tractor anymore, you operate them from the command console and milking and feeding cows is done by micro-chips.

We chose to exhibit a hydraulic manure spreader.

Our advisor raised his eyebrow at that prospect.   “I don’t think we’ve had a manure spreader in the show for 20 years.  It might be fun,” he said.

We studied our product day and night before the show.  We even assembled a wooden model that simulated the “patented hydra-push action.”

We located the real thing at an implement dealership 20 miles away. Then we actually convinced the sales manager to haul it to Fargo and back so we could display it.  That sell job in and of itself should have won us an award.

Meanwhile, other contestants were building their own machines.  One guy built a machine that could tell you what you ate for breakfast by analyzing the engine oil of your tractor.  Another developed a new way of metering fertilizer on to farmers’ fields. We didn’t have a snowballs chance in Florida.

But we continued like men possessed.  We made charts and graphs illustrating how John Deere hydra-push flung dung in high-tech fashion.

“The all new two-stage hydraulic push method completely eliminates time-consuming roll back and clean-out.  The tightly sealed sides and bottom handle liquid wastes as well as a tank spreader.”

Finally, after taking about all the razing we could from our fellow contestants, we rolled the massive machine into our exhibit and went to work. We assembled our highly effective display and started talking.

The crowd loved us.

I think they admired us for the having the gull to exhibit a manure spreader and I don’t think they actually believed that we were serious.

“Note the jagged beaters at the right side of the photograph.  Their aggressive spreading action breaks up even the most frozen chunks of waste and evenly distributes the material in an easily decomposable layer on your fields.”

We took third place in the electric power and processing division.  Not only that, we got a college credit for the whole ridiculous mess.

Since that time I have not spent a great deal of time standing in manure spreaders, nor have I felt the uncontrollable urge to sell farm equipment.

However, the whole thing convinced me that if I ever quit writing I may have a promising career in the livestock by-products disposal industry waiting for me.