Big Day!

Today is significant for a couple of reasons -

#1. It's my dear husband's 60th birthday, which is enough in itself a cause for celebration,

but then there's......

#2. He has finally, after many long, tiring days, finished planting 60 acres of field corn. Phew!

Plowing was started on April 15th. Then came rock picking...a job no one in their right mind likes. Before the corn planting began 8 days ago, he planted 10 acres of oats and new seeding (grass for hay).

Yesterday, while planting, he had a pleasant surprise....

The Killdeer is a bird that lays its eggs in fields, and these often become casualties when field work begins. While slowly driving the tractor along, watching the row, he saw a flash of color - a female Killdeer with wings and tail fanned into a circle, protecting her eggs. The brave little mother didn't fly away until the tractor had almost passed her. Hubby climbed off the tractor to inspect the eggs, and thankfully, the wheels had missed them.

Back at the house a little later, he told me about finding the eggs and suggested it might be a good opportunity for photos. Well yes! And here are the eggs, amazingly intact. This field had been dragged in the morning and it's truly a miracle the eggs survived that!

Have any of you ever looked for a Killdeer nest? As you can see in this photo, they're so well camouflaged that it's almost impossible to spot them.

I couldn't get a good shot of the mom or dad at that time because they try to lure you from the nest by calling shrilly and flying away. They also do the broken wing thing...running away while dragging a wing, but I didn't see that this time.

Later I rode on the tractor with my husband, at his suggestion, camera in hand, and while the bird will fly away from a person who is on foot, she stays put on the eggs when the tractor approaches. We drove to within a few feet and I took several photos, after which we backed away and left the poor, vigilant little mommy alone. Click any of these photos to enlarge for detail if you'd like.

Here's Hubby dragging a plowed field...

....and here's our good friend, Nancy, disking. She used to have her own farm and still loves to do field work. She finds riding around on a tractor relaxing...when it's not too bumpy, which some of these fields were, leaving her 'all shook up' by the end of the day :)

It's so lovely to see the trees green again.

The Canadian geese like to feed in the fields ....

.....and down by the river, but I only saw a couple of muskrats swimming there this day because the geese were over in another field. Oh, and we saw a beaver swimming in the creek as we came across the culvert! That was a happy surprise! He flipped underwater and disappeared into the culvert when he saw us, so I wasn't quick enough to get a photo. I keep hoping to see him again, but so far no luck.

I explored the river and stalked the geese while Hubby plowed.

It's very pretty down there.

I found some geese over by a little creek.

On and on Hubby plodded, hour after hour, day after day. He couldn't get the old 4-row planter fixed without waiting for expensive parts to come from overseas, so he used the 2-row planter, which of course took twice as long....

.....but today he finally finished! Oh happy day!

Finishing up with a couple of shots of the view looking past our front yard, taken with the zoom lens from up on the shale bed over by that first field I showed you.

Those red leaved trees are the crab apples on our front lawn, which are just about finished blooming now, unfortunately.

Happy big six-0 dear Hubby!

You deserve a rest!