Crop Duster

I really enjoy watching a crop duster at work!

If I see one I'll drop everything to watch it. I like to take pictures of them, too...(... although not always good ones).

I was pulling weeds in the garden a few days ago when I heard the rumble of a crop duster plane in the sky, so I ran to fetch my camera.It's so fun to watch a crop duster fly down so low to the ground, and then swoop back up into the sky again, and then fly sideways to turn around and do it again.

Their loud engines add to the excitement of the experience. To me it's kind of like watching a fireworks show and feeling the firework booms.A crop duster makes a fantastic show in the sky, accompanied by body rumbling engine and propeller sounds.

Maybe to the pilot it's just a regular day of work.But it sure is fun to watch!

I also fetched the video camera and took this 59 second movie of it:

I posted pictures and a movie of a crop duster once before. You can click here if you'd like to watch that movie, too!

At Last, Part Two

In my last post I wrote about how good it feels to hear the rumble of tractors around me because it means that the crops are finally getting planted after an exceedingly wet spring.The farmers needed a few dry days so that they could finally get their tractors into the fields.But it seems that one minute you are praying for one thing (no rain), and the next minute you are praying for another thing (rain).So you can imagine how excited I was today when it began to rain on all those newly planted seeds.

I was so happy that I grabbed my camera and went outside. I snapped a few pictures and then I turned to look in the other direction, and as often happens out here, there was a entirely different view when I looked the other way.There was a beautiful rainbow...... actually a double rainbow... can you see it?

At Last

Things have been busy around here.After one of the wettest springs ever recorded we were graced with some dry sunny days and everyone can finally get their tractors into the fields.The wet weather put everyone behind schedule. Prior to this week only ten percent of crops had been planted. (Ninety percent of the crops were already planted at this time last year.)But now it feels like the world around me has let out a sigh of relief. People are happy. Farmers who I don't even know wave with excitement as they pull their implements up and down the road.

Maybe they are just slap happy from sleep deprivation... because they are working around the clock to get caught up.When I step outside at night I hear tractors rattling and rumbling all around me. And I see tractor lights in every direction.Seeing those lights and hearing that rumbling in the darkness around me is comforting... fields are being worked. Crops will get planted. And I know that at least one thing is right in the world. At last.

Local Air Show

This was a local air show. Very local. We watched it from our yard.

Sure, it wasn't a real air show. But it was, indeed, very fun to watch.
A neighbor farmer hired this cropduster to spray his field.
The pilot flew back and forth, and up and down, and sideways, and almost upsidedown at times, in order to get right over the field he was hired to spray.
If you want to experience this event a little bit more close up, click on this 30 second movie I made of it...