robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

This happened in the late 1950s. OH! If I had a time machine to take my cameras back and capture this image in stills and video.
A Spring night at my Grandparent’s farm in Western Kentucky. When out at the farm my brother and I slept on a fold-out bed in the corner of the dining room next to a window (big windows-about 3 by 6 feet) on the west side of the house.
It was so cold I felt the temperature difference almost 2 feet from the glass. It was a full moon that night and you could see frost sparkles on everything. The Moonlit world was all shades of silver, gray, and jet black. The sky was clear with a high thin layer of ice crystals that made a rainbow (lunar halo) around the moon.
As I drifted off to sleep, I heard the honking of Canada Geese and rolled over to hang my head off the bedside to look up and saw a “V” of northbound geese crossing the face of the moon.
Then just as I looked down a very large owl glided past 5-10 feet off the ground going south between the house and the tool shed/garage about 40 or so feet away. The owl followed the driveway across the stockyard gate, downhill towards the stock barn then turned southwest to cross the large pond, over the pastures, and downhill across a smaller pond and into the trees growing along the creek that ran west to east at the bottom of the slope.
The background was the far pastures and crop fields on the other side of the valley with woods at the top along the ridgeline and one little light through the trees from a window of the next farmhouse where someone was still awake.
Everywhere there were sparkles of frost on trees and fences and a few high thin ice clouds in a field of stars like you can never see in a city or even many towns that have streetlights etc. to produce light pollution.
This is one of my all-time favorite memories from almost 77 years of life. I hope my words did it justice.

NMGal Loc: NE NM

Very few will have that pleasure now.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

But hopefully some will. The % who live on farms and in small towns is lower now, but the overall numbers are probably a bit higher since our population is so much bigger than back then.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

Question --- how many books have you published???

And re this and your previous post, there are things we who spent at least some of our early lives on a farm experienced, that city dwellers never can know. It gives a more nearly complete understanding of life, and the way things should be. For the things which were "lacking", and the "hardships" endured, there was much more than adequate compensation. I am so glad I experienced most of that which has been described!

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

gtilford Loc: Woodstock, Ontario, Canada

Love the picture your words have painted and it has taken me back, not quite as far but to the mid sixties to mid seventies and the life I was able to experience living on a tobacco farm in Southern Ontario, thank you for this and the other post

srg

Superb word painting.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

books = zero Too much like work. And 35 years of writing and revising lesson plans yearly for multiple subjects and ability levels etc. was enough writing for me for a couple of lifetimes.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

thanks, you are welcome
Tobacco was the biggst cash crop on my Grandparents farm but they also raised some beef cattle, milk cows and hogs (Granddad made and sold old fashioned home made bacon, sausage and hams to Hickory Farms of Ohio on contract. His hams got graded as Extra Fancy Grade A if I remember right. I know he got more per pound than anyone else in the county.), corn/maize and fescue which became grass seed* and hay.

*The seed company had contracted "harvesters" who trucked in their machines. Thrashed out and bought the seed plus bailed the hay every year. Those people started down in Texas and the Gulf Coast region then worked their way north to Canada as the crops became ready for harvest. They did that every year. Migrant farm workers who owned very expensive combines and other machines and the flatbed 18 wheelers to transport them. Then put the trucks and machines on a train to go back south and spend the winter doing upkeep and working their own farms and ranches.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Thanks very much.

olddutch Loc: Beloit, Wisconsin

YOU painted a very nice picture of that experience, and it did not take you a thousand words.. you do not need a camera...

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Thank you very much. I can see the images in my memory but I really wish I had good pictures to show other people. Especially my family members who are "city folk" for the most part.

olddutch Loc: Beloit, Wisconsin

all you need are those people who listened to the Radio in their youth...

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

When we lived in the Grande Ronde Valley in Eastern Oregon, in 1943-44, fescue was one of the major crops.

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City