10/12/09 Crop Report

[Ken G]

On Friday and Saturday nights we had hard freezes in the Yorkville area of the Fox Valley. I hate scraping thick frost from windshields.

By Monday morning, whatever vestiges of green were left in the soybeans had completely disappeared. The standing corn has turned almost all yellow/brown, virtually overnight.

Still in this area, no visible signs of harvesting. As I headed east out of Oswego on the back roads this morning, long trails of geese over head, all heading south. That means someone south of Oswego has cut a field. Sure enough, when I got to 111th and Route 30, to the only field I had seen cut so far, it was empty. Not a single goose. The hundreds of geese that were feeding in the field as late as Friday night have moved on.

Over the next few days they're calling for rain on and off. If a farmer down in the Yorkville area can get a bean field cut before the weekend, I think they'll have more geese on opening day than they can shoot at. I was out fishing the end of the day on Sunday and the geese are staging all over the area. Like they're waiting for the farmers to get their work done.

I've been noticing these things for years. I have no idea why I write this stuff down and put it up here. It's not like I have the opportunity to do anything about it. At least not yet. There are a few local land owners I've got to know. We'll see.

I guess I have to think of something while driving down these back roads. Beats thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch. Or sports in general. Or whether or not it really matters if North Korea is testing missiles. What's more important, some missile hitting some remote Aleutian island or paying my rent.

Here's your dichotomy for the day. Around here when you catch an audio whiff of what people are listening to in their cars, 9 times out of 10 you catch the sound of some kind of country twang. I'm not from around here. I'm a transported inner city urban early punk. So at 60 mph down a corn lined country road I have the first 4 songs of U2's Joshua Tree played in a continuous loop as loud as my speakers can handle it.

When I stand on the edge of a field, taking in the vista and watching large V's of geese floating overhead, or if I'm standing in the river admiring the vanishing point as it disappears into walls of shore line green, I can't get U2's Bullet the Blue Sky out of my head. I want to hear it loud enough to echo over the field or down the valley.

When I'm sitting still in the woods waiting out whatever it is I'm hunting, I can't get Brian Eno's back to back classic of The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch melding directly into Baby's on Fire out of my head. Again I want to hear it echoing through the woods and ravines.

The odd part is that while I'm in these spots I can also play back in my head just about any type of music, whether it's classical, jazz, more rock, blues, country, blue grass, you name it.

For some reason, they don't work as well.

Sorry, turned into more than a crop report.

[Special Ed]

The field you speak of I can see from my house. I have been cleaning goose juice off of everything around my place lately.

I sure wish I had a bow...... Part of one of the fields in that area is right behind my house separated by 30 yards of woodline. I know I could sit on the edge of those woods, call in geese, and have 10 to 20 yard shots at them all while being less than 20 steps from my garage.

Being a disabled Vet, I have a lifetime hunting and fishing license for Illinois. I've continued to purchase the yearly fishing license anyway, it's a small price to pay for the work conservation officers do. I have not had the chance to take advantage of my hunting privileges, but would love to. I sure wish I had a bow.......

Especially considering I was a 5 time Expert shooter in both rifle and pistol while I was in the Marines. Even better yet, having shot and placed in the Far East Division Marine Corps Marksmanship Matches held in Okinawa, Japan. Top ten wasn't bad for a first time match shooter, only one other rookie beat me. The engraved M1 Garande he received as a trophy for High Tyro was well deserved, after all, he beat me by 3 points fair and square. Then there was the three years after that I worked as a marksmanship instructor for 1st Marine Division, that was fun. They pulled me out of my A billet for that, pulled off of deployments even. I wish I had a bow.......

A gun would be too easy.