Intern Stories

Intern stories?!?  Oh goody, what fun!!  HA, just kidding; not the type of intern stories you're thinking... sorry!
I just noticed that this blog hasn't been posted on since the 5th of the month, so I decided I better get to it!!
I'll just intersperse a few pictures in with my "stories".  Heh heh.

Our miniature soybean circle

 Well, now that I've sat down and started writing, there really aren't any exciting stories to tell!  So I'll just ramble. 

 Last Friday as I was checking some dryland milo fields, I looked up and noticed a rainbow in the west!  I was greatly disappointed to remember that I had NOT remembered to bring the camera with me that day!  Oh great disappointment.  It would have made for a splendid picture with milo in the foreground and the wind towers and rainbow in the background!   Ah well...  I shall just have to get over it, I suppose.

 Later on in the day(Oh, no, wait, this was on Wednesday) I was trudging through a corn field, studiously inspecting leaves for egg masses, when all of a sudden my foot plunged into a sprinkler track that had appeared out of nowhere, and I twisted my ankle miserably.  I walked it off and it stopped hurting after awhile, but on Friday I couldn't shift the four wheeler with that foot for the greater part of the day because it had started hurting again, so I had to reach down and shift with my hand.  I discovered that I can still drive straight and do that at the same time!  Whoopee.  Then on Friday I was being careful at sprinkler tracks, both because of that and because they were muddy and some filled with water.  Well I approached one and carefully stepped over to the other side, but the mud was so slippery that it pulled me back and the bottom half of my leg proceeded to get soaked.  Ah well, then it doesn't feel so hot when you're wet!

Bloom on a green bean plant

 Speaking of wet... later in the day on Friday I was up near the Pawnee river checking some milo fields, and one of the fields is across the river from the other, so usually you just find a place that isn't too steep and drive the four wheeler across.  Aha!  Well, today there was water knee deep all the way across the river!!!  Amazin', eh?  Well, so then I had to wade across.  It would have been lovely, except for that the water was warm from the sun so it didn't cool me down any, and it had been sitting stagnant for several days so it stank.  And it was murky so I couldn't see through it.  I grimaced every time I stepped on something that didn't quite feel like it should be there.  Who knows what all was in the bottom of that river??  I'm just glad I didn't come across any water snakes!  Yikes!

 Then there's this other field that I check on Fridays that makes shudders run up and down me.  (Well, maybe not quite shudders)  It's one of the dairy's fields, and they used to dump all their dead animals in their manure pile... so thus, when they spread manure on the field, the bones go along with it.  The south side of this field is a literal graveyard!  There are bones EVERYWHERE!  It's really quite disgusting.  I check it around noon, and the last time I checked it I made sure to eat my sandwich before checking it. 

 Hey, a spray plane!  Cool, you can see the chemical coming out! =D  Oh, that reminds me of another little story!  I was sitting in my pickup one broiling afternoon writing up my notes from the field I had just checked when this farmer comes by and informs me that the field had just been sprayed that morning.  Oh, how nice!  And I had already checked it!  Well, it must not have had too deadly of effects on me... I'm still alive anyway! =P
Then last Wednesday I was just getting ready to leave the pickup to check a field when Pa called and told me to watch for dead beetles when I was going into the next two fields, and if I saw any not to go in any farther.  They had starting chemigating Penncap(which has a 30 day "stay out"(I don't know what it's called for real) label, but we go in after 7 days)... without telling Pa even though they had just talked to him the day before! 

 This picture is rather creepy... the upper leaves almost look like all kinds of arms reaching out to GRAB you!  Which reminds me of something else!  Sometimes when you're walking through a corn field, a couple leaves will tangle together in front of you and you have to break through them; which usually is no trouble.  But a couple days ago a whole bunch of leaves decided to gang up on me and they all joined together and formed a thick rope that I could not get through without tugging and pushing and exasperating myself until FINALLY they broke!  (It didn't occur to me that I could just as easily have backed up and gone around.  But no, it's better to go through obstacles than around them, eh?  Toughens ya up.)

 You can barely tell what this picture is of... it's soybeans with a very bright sun shining through!

 And lastly, below are three videos I took yesterday.

 The first one is driving around a corn field to get to the spot where I was going to check it.

 Now I'm in the field... valiantly fighting through the rows!  Hahaha

And I decided to walk down a row to see what it would look like.

The End!  Hope you enjoyed... =P