Friday, October 9, 2026

The folly of youth is best demonstrated in all the instances when wise and well-meaning adults counseled me to "enjoy life, it goes so fast!" I, with the boundless wisdom of a teenage know-it-all, responded to this insight with a well-practiced eye roll and scoffing disdain.

Part II Though my father never knew his great-grandfather Samuel Young, he was fortunate to spend a great deal of time with his own grandfather, Samuel's son.

This is the time of year there never seems to be enough hours in the day to get all the work on a dairy farm accomplished.

About the time I broke the cotton shackles of my mother's apron strings for the glorious freedom of my father's farm fields, a technology wave hit the southern Illinois farm of my youth.

Well, the bad news is that I can now officially call Mr. Wonderful "my old man." The good news is that I'd rather be poked with a hot stick than do so.

Part I How does one go about explaining a connection to the land? It has seemed impossible for me to explain why I care about the land on which my father was born and raised.

Dryness leads to poisonous grazing With dry weather in many parts of the area, the potential for animals to eat toxic plants increases, mostly because they're hungry and not much forage is available for grazing.

Are you a label reader? Probably not, unless you get bored when you are on "business" in the bathroom and you don't have Readers...

I'm not the most frugal of individuals, but I'm by no means a spendthrift. Either way, I have little respect for things crossing my desk that strike me as a colossal waste of energy, time and money.

It would seem that summer has settled in for the long haul. Already the locust blossoms that saturated the sunlit afternoons and the evening breezes with their heady perfume have withered away and the orange blossoms have scattered their petals like snowflakes.