Rocks & Vehicles

Now that the snow has melted and the waters (at least in some areas) are subsiding, farmers are chomping at the bit to get back into their fields. So I thought in honor of being at the cusp of another planting season I would share a couple aspects of farming that I have picked up on recently. The farmland in Central and Western North Dakota (maybe elsewhere too) tends to have quite a few rocks buried on it. So one of the first tasks that farmers have always had to perform around here is removing rocks from their fields before plowing them. Some rocks are easily dug up using tractors but others are too big to remove. In that case farmers will either designate the presence of a large buried rock by piling the smaller rocks they have dug up on it or they will dig a deeper hole next to the rock and shove the large stone into the hole thus burying it below ground.

It is also interesting to see how many vehicles there are on many farms. Notice I did not say "cars" and "trucks" but vehicles, which seems to be what they are commonly referred to around here. Anyway, unlike in urban areas where there is limited room for vehicles other than ones being used regularly, on rural farms there is plenty of room for older cars and trucks. So farms tend to be full of sedans and pickups that may or may not be running at a given time and may or may not have current registration but are nonetheless useful in a farming operation.

Yesterday my wife and I drove down to Bismarck to attend an orientation with the Northern plains District of the Evangelical Free Church. Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Hasn't he been there nearly two years?" And the answer to that is "yes." However, when we came out to Underwood, our District Superintendent himself was transitioning to another position and it wasn't until about a year ago that our current DS was installed. So there were some of us at the orientation who had been in the district awhile and others who are brand new. We had a good time fellowshipping with each other and the district staff, learning about the EFCA, the NPD and the culture of the Northern Plains, eating a meal together at the Golden Corral buffet and they set us up for the night at a motel in Bismarck. One interesting cultural tidbit that I learned is that rural folks tend to focus on natural resources and work independtly while urbanites focus on man-made resources and are interdependent.

Well, the elementary basketball season is winding down (one week left!). This past Saturday we had a tournament in Wilton and our sixth grade team (made up of one sixth grader and a bunch of fifth graders) won a thriller in the first game against Garrison. We were down 13-6 (low scoring affair) with under three minutes remaining. We had been playing great defense and getting good looks but nothing was falling for us. All of a sudden everything changed. We ran the same play (double screen for the point guard) each posession down the stretch and began scoring at will. Our lasg basket came off of an inbounds play with twenty seconds left and gave us a 15-13 victory (our first of the season!). Now we also have a fifth grade team made up entirely of fourth graders who have already beaten a couple of other teams this season. It has been nice being a co-coach this year and not having to control the kids all by myself.

By God's Grace, Jeff