Jerry Nelson

Minor inconveniences can seem like major catastrophes when you are hundreds of miles from home. At least that’s how it felt when my wife and I recently journeyed to visit family in Kansas City.

It has been nearly forty years since my wife and I cared for a toddler, but I’m happy to report we still have what it takes. It just takes a lot more of it.

It took just a few mouse clicks to order blue pumpkins and pumpkins that look as though they have warts upon their warts.

Walking the grounds of the Annual Steam Threshing Jamboree, I heard the distant “toot-toot!” of a locomotive’s steam whistle. I was drawn toward the sound like a fly to an open kitchen door.

I’m not going to complain about advancing age. Because like a classic old tractor, I hope to just keep put-putting along. 

Back in May, our farm was ravaged by a powerful derecho, hurling the calf barn at my parents’ farm onto grain bins. A tornado hit a few weeks later, reducing our dairy barn to rubble.