Blogs

It turns out that trying to run over a very large snake with a riding lawnmower might not be the best plan – if you approach it from the tail end first.

Blue Lakes Country Club is a classy place. With its Snake River Canyon location, no jeans and collared shirts dress code, and its “only golf with a member” rule, it caters to the upper echelons of Magic Valley society. Yet, despite all its pretentions to Long Island sophistication, it’s located in the bread basket of Idaho farming country.

“First, it’s gotta be dark outside,” is the punchline of the joke that starts, “How do you pick a good watermelon?” It refers to the practice of stealing watermelons after dark.

I suppose all collections have to start somewhere. The photo accompanying this article was taken around 2003 and is a pretty good representation of the start of ours – the Farmall M and the Oliver 77.

All four tires on my old beater trailer were mostly worn out, somewhere between another couple hundred miles and barely hanging on. The manager of the tire shop wasn’t surprised to see me, nor was he surprised at the sorry state of my tires. He was pretty familiar with my routine.

One of my favorite sports movies of all time is Field of Dreams. The iconic Kevin Costner stars as Ray Kinsella, a young Iowa farmer who plows up a cornfield and builds a baseball diamond. The words of his deceased father whispered to him have nearly become movie lore, “If you build it, he will come.”