Have had people ask about my talking to myself. Just tell them I am talking to the most intelligent person I know.

While in the Air Force and stationed in Dover Delaware, had a senior master sargeant that I worked with. He was a loaner and would talk to himself often. Have seen him sitting in the mess hall talking with himself. He would actually get to arguing with himself.. Guess a true split personality. Actually a nice guy to work with. He was eventually sent to the Naval hospital in Philadelphia for treatment. He returned to work for a while, then retired.

Hard red winter wheat raised here in Ohio is mostly used for cakes and other baked products. Does not have the quality for white flour. Some is ground for flour and used in some of the specialty darker breads. Our typical yields will usually run between 60 and 90 bushels per acre.

Was driving to Port Columbus last Sunday to pick up a passenger. Going around I-270 on north side of Columbus, I saw a nice 6 point buck that had been hit and laying against the concrete barrier. There is a metro park near there and it is over populated with deer. They somehow manage to get over the high fence and on to the interstate in the traffic. Bleeding hearts won'r allow thinning the herd and the population is greater than the park will support.

Deer harvest in Ohio was much lower than normal this year. The warm weather and wet ground keeps the deer closer to cover and many hunters didn't go out in the rains and mud. Don't see many moving, even in the fields with good grazing. No problem finding food and water this year. Likely out mostly at night and sleeping during the day.

Gene

Quote:  "There is a metro park near there and it is over populated with deer. They somehow manage to get over the high fence and on to the interstate in the traffic. Bleeding hearts won't allow thinning the herd and the population is greater than the park will support."



Warning!!

Gruesome tale:

The deer do not always make the jump, Gene.  Below is the best photo I was able to find on the net of a cemetery entrance in a well populated Rochester suburb. If you can make out the wrought iron fence in the background, the steel verticals used to be as tall as the posts.  Additionally, each vertical came to a point at the top to yield a perhaps Medieval look.



You probably have guessed where this story is going.  The fence for many years has completely surrounded the cemetery.  With the fence being that tall it would only seem to pose a danger to passengers falling out of air planes.  Wrong!  Annually, a small number of deer ( 1 or 2) failed in their attempt to jump the fence and became ornaments on top of it thus having to be removed by staff workers.  A few years back, neighbors and passersby complained enough to prompt the board to order the fence be cut down some 12 to 16 inches and left flat on the top so the animals could clear it.  No disagreement from me that it was the humane action to take, but this exemplifies what a deer over population can do.

Charlie V.

Goodness, what a Christmas day in Western NY.  We crept to 47 degrees F with a good amount of mixed in sunshine.  I had to loan Santa a golf cart on Friday evening so he could make his rounds with no snow on the ground.  I am quite content to share the wealth and allow Texas to enjoy our usual white Christmas.  

In some limited travel yesterday, there seems to be less than the usual amount of Winter wheat. Most likely a wet fall prevented planting in on ground not well drained.  Below are  couple of shots of a rolling field that did get off to a good start.





Sorry about the dullness in the pictures.  The low angle of winter sun did not offer good lighting.

Charlie V.

Your photos look quite natural to me Charlie. Typical winter lighting when its overcast. Its continuing well above normal here in this part of Sask. but we are managing to hold on to our snow that has fallen so far. What little we have is well distributed and gives good ground cover. Here is a video I shot on Friday showing snow conditions on my farm.
[video=youtube;Q9nI5NUqZng]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9nI5NUqZng[/video]

Ralph;

Looks like the mount is very stable. Be nice for videos from the tractor where you can keep your hands on the controls. Have had a fine wet snow most of the day here, but too warm to stick until this evening. The lower parts of the lawn grass are just starting to to show a little white. Started out as a misty rain this morning.

Christmas day and Monday here was just like Charlie reported in N.Y. Highs in the high 40's to low 50's and lots of sunshine all weekend. Back to dreary again today and high of 33 degrees. Sunshine forecast for Wednesday and Thursday with cooler temps.

I washed the jeep Grand Cherokee yesterday, then traded it off today for another Grand Cherokee Limited. Got a 2007 model. May be the last vehicle I ever get. Sure is a nice vehicle. Won't bother me if I don't need the 4 wheel drive this winter. Be able to start the new year off right.

Charlie;

Yes, I could see very clearly where you were headed with the steel fence. Always did feel they were pretty scary. Didn't know if they were to keep people out or to keep the residents from escaping. Have noticed lately that a lot of the old cemetery fences are being taken down. Maybe for concern for the animals and maybe because the high price of scrap metal helps to maintain them.

Gene

Quote:  "Didn't know if they were to keep people out or to keep the residents from escaping."

Well Gene, I have been trying very hard to not drop the old one liner from high school, but now that the can is opened, I may as well dump out the beans.

Joe:  "Why do they put fences around cemeteries?"

Moe:  "I don't know, why?"

Joe:  " Because people are just dying to get in there."

There you have it.  Sorry about that.

Charlie

Yep, been hearing and telling that as long as I can remember. Another one;

How many dead people in there?

I don't know!

All of them.



I know and I am ducking!!!!

Gene

Reminds me of a "news story" I heard a while back. Not sure of the location, might have been a small town in Sask. A single engine Cessna plane crashed in a cemetery. Volunteers recovered hundreds of bodies from the crash site.

Reminds me of a "news story" I heard a while back. Not sure of the location, might have been a small town in Sask. A single engine Cessna plane crashed in a cemetery. Volunteers recovered hundreds of bodies from the crash site.

Rescue was terminated at darkness and more bodies expected to turn up when search resumes tomorrow.:rolleyes:

Gene

Thanks for a good chuckle Guys.  I may have heard that before, but it tickled my funny bone anyway.  Naturally that brings to mind a few more but I guess I will let them slide for now.

Weather wise, we have gotten past out lows of 13 F and 16 F of the past few days.  We are cruising in the 40's today and our 1/4 inch of snow has quickly disappeared.  This may be a good time to wander out of doors and see if everything is still where I left it.

Happy New Year

Charlie V.

Around our area of Ohio and I am sure it is the same in Charlie's part of New York, We have several very old and secluded cemetaries. Many from the civil war and Indian war years. Many are small family plots, usually on a hill toward the back of the property. As a small child, maybe 6 to 8 years old, I remember the Hassan farm just east of our farm had such a cemetary. Small, maybe 50 feet aquare, with a wrought iron fence around it. Was always afraid to go near  or into the fenced area. It was unmaintained and forgotten by anyone who may have had family buried there. The county finally passed a bond issue to finance the maintenance of all these sites. With the bond money and many volunteers, some sites were cleaned up to near parklike condition.

Gene

I remember just one very neglected cemetery that I saw as a kid some 40 years ago. Headstones in amongst the tall grass and weeds with little photos of the occupant on the headstone. I have not been back since but I would guess that like so many others, it has been restored to it's former well kept status. There seems to have been quite a renewed interest in keeping the old cemeteries up lately. I know of one that is along the edge of a farm field. Used to be a Church there that was moved to town in the 1950s. Pretty hard to move a cemetery.

As a young teenager, I and a couple of friends occasionally would go to a place up on the main road and each buy a quart of soda pop (orange crush, root beer, cola, or whatever we wanted that day).  This off brand pop sold for 15 cents a quart plus a five cent bottle deposit if we didn't bring a return.  Sometimes if we lacked cash we would scrounge bottles along the road side to get the fifteen cents from deposits to buy our pop.  We would then walk back down the road a few hundred feet to the large Catholic Cemetery.  At the back side to that cemetery ran the B & O Railroad tracks.  At one point there was a somewhat overgrown six foot diameter concrete tile under the tracks to the other side.  Once through the tile you found a small overgrown cemetery perhaps one acre in size with most headstones that were still readable  dating to the 17 and early 1800's.  This place was situated on a knoll with a number of large, stately pine trees for cover above.  The cemetery offered a cool place on hot days to sip our quarts of pop and read the stones.  Being raised with a decent level of respect, it would never occur ot us to cause any damage to that special place as so often happens in recent years. Sadly, I think that in later years I did hear that the cemetery had been vandalized and many of the stones broken.  It is surely a different world these days.

Charlie V.

Our Dotson family has a lot of history in eastern Kentucky. My parents' families were from the Salyersville/ Prestonburg area. Our family and Richardsons and Mitchell and Bailey families were intertwined and lots of local sites, churches and roads named for our families. Visited one overgrown site down in a stone wall with 4 graves. The giant ragweed had everything pretty well hidden. I trampled the weeds down and found 3 of the stones and hunting for the fourth, when cousin Ralph, the family historian, told me there were rattlesnakes in that area. Decided I would leave that for a later time.

Lots of our history in the area. Ancestors were large land owners with lots of timber land. Ancestors at one time had a grist mill on one branch and a sawmill on the other branch of Bonanza creek. Our dad taught school at Bonanza school, which still stands neer the gristmill site. A Mapquest search for Dotson, Ky will take you there.

http://classic.mapquest.com/maps?city=Dotson&state=KY&country=US&latitude=37.6469&longitude=-82.858101&geocode=CITY

Gene

I found a Dotson Cemetery on Dotson Branch Road, Gene.  A couple of others in Ky. also.  Sure is a lot of woodland in that area.

Charlie V.