Return to contrived reluctance
Click on the old barn to see our original picture story from March, 2014.
Overwhelming reluctance is generally rewarding and makes us wonder why in the Sam Hill we contrived the subject reluctance in the first place.
For me, shooting this old barn and the antique car and tractor on the same premises supports my premise in the first sentence. It was one of those moments when one needs a mirror into which one stares and mutters under one's breath, you stupid *#?@^*#&!
Click on the old Chevy for more pictures and stories
The site was a treasure trove of "old stuff" which was new stuff in my late grade school and early junior high days. I had, for inexplicable reasons, blithely driven by this site for years, musing that some day I must shoot it. Then in March, 2014, and, as noted above, I finally got off my duff and did the deed.
Take a look at what was once someone's pride and joy and get an idea of how it was in the years just before rock and roll grabbed the fancy of the nation. Be sure and see the sister story on this collection on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer-dot com.
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Things got ugly
Posted on October 2, 2016 by Joe
Click on the flower to see our original August 2013 post.
In August of 2013, the American Lotus colony I had watched and photographed as it cruised through it's short life cycle was in the final throes of its blooming stage and right before the time to transmogrify to its primordial scary mode.
The huge blooms would become alien seed pods that sported a ghoulish green monster countenance — like a perforated mushroom on bad steroids with a dozen evil eyes — that was licking its chops to lure, hypnotize and devour your cat.
The verdant "lily pad" leaves would become ugly brown cocoon-like monsters exuding the crunchy specter of a burrito overcooked two hours in a nasty microwave. Though all that sounds bad, it is a Mother Nature deal. She relishes in lofty contrast to tease and confuse us mere mortals — and to remind us that she does not play by our rules.
Click on the seed pod for more pictures and a story.
To perfect her circle of confusion, Mother Nature goads the magnificent Lotus bloom return engagement in late spring the next year. But she changed the rules again and let her rain deprivation give preference to some invasive weeds that nearly choked out the Lotus colony the next year. It still has not recovered. That said, this week we return the the last last-hurrah of any significance at the Lotus colony. Be sure and see the rest of the story on the Corndancer dot-com Photo of the Week page for more pictures of the Lotus and its transmogrification.
Ye shall reap what you sow
This field near Grady is the subject of a controlled fire to rid of all vestiges of the crops just harvested from its soils. Despite the catastrophic appearance, the fire is under control. Such fires are an agricultural management procedure.
Ye shall reap what you sew
(With any kind of luck)
Click on the tractor to see a field fire starting.
With the practice of planting winter crops as soon as the spring and summer crops are harvested comes the problems of the detritus left by the former crop. In some cases, farm operators will plow and/or disk the remnants of last crop. If time is of essence; they often will burn the fields which gives the best cleanup as Mother Nature intended.
When a field burns, in most cases it gives the appearance of the inferno that Sodom and Gomorrah experienced. Since the preferred burning time is in the absence of wind, the smoke tends to pillar which exacerbates the Biblical vision. The truth is, fields don't have much fuel to to sustain a fire for a long time, so the wicked look is short lived and the fires die out quickly.
See a field burn-off up close and personal on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com, as in: see how one farm gets the blaze underway.
Harvest time in LA (lower Arkansas) is a frenzy of combines, tractors, trucks, and still to some extent cotton pickers, all of which, if a farmer wants to reap what he sows, need to come together at the right time, Mother Nature permitting.
This farmer is harvesting soybeans eight rows at a time. It is easy to spot a harvest from a distance since harvest machinery creates a substantial plume of dust from the soil and crops.
A week or so ago, all of the stars came together at the right time and harvest in our environs got under way in a big way. The ground was dry enough to support harvesting machinery and the crops were sufficiently dry to avoid financial penalties due to excessive moisture.
The farmer above is emptying the bean-laden hopper in his combine into a grain cart. After another hopper full or so, the contents of the cart will be transferred to an 18 wheeler which will take the crop to temporary storage. This guy was good. While the beans were unloaded he maneuvered the huge combine to make sure the beans were evenly distributed in grain cart.
I fought the grass and the grass won. After corn has done its job and produced the next generation the plant withers and dies. Not so for the grass and weeds that attempt to take over crop lands. This corn will soon fall to the combine.
When then corn is harvested the machinery, in its mangling process. will occasionally jettison some crop materials that should have gone to the hopper. It's an expected function of machine harvesting. Critters and Mother Earth appreciate the largess of the machine.
There's very little cotton grown now here in the plethora of fields that were formerly populated by King Cotton. Here's a glance at some of the 2016 crop that's not far from picking. It will be hit with a defoliant and as soon as the leaves drop, the cotton picker swoops in and strips the plants of their lint.
A time to reap
Though it does not look big, this huge combine, about the size of a small house, is dwarfed in a large field of corn. The combine cuts the corn stalks, separates the ears of corn from the stalk, shucks and separates the corn from the cob, saves the corn, and spits the detritus from the process out the back.
Click on the trucks to see what happened.
It's harvest time in LA now. The former shimmering green fields are now for the most part brown, shriveled, and loaded with the largess of Mother Nature's time-proven process. Now it's a matter of separating the fruit from the vine and moving it into the mainstream of commerce. In these environs, the main crops are rice, corn, soybeans, miscellaneous small grains and a smattering of cotton, listed in order of harvest. We are mainly in the corn and rice harvesting modes now. See even more harvest scenes on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com
The combine disgorges its harvested cargo to carts. The tractor driver then moves the cart and dumps its contents into a 18-wheeler trailer. Repeat if necessary until the field is done.
In the Delta, it is not unusual to have a cultivated field as your side, back, or front yard.
Tindall Drier, near Stuttgart, Arkansas, long since outmoded and inactive. still stands as a reminder of farm operations years ago. It is a great historic monument, right up there with old barns.
I'm guessing these Christmas-tree-ornament-like-doodads are to warn off agri-aircraft or discourage birds from perching. Shot near Stuttgart, Arkansas. I'm also betting that a reader will set me straight on the real intentions of these installations.
All too often in rural areas, one sees a sign designating a t-bone road junction alongside a home-made memorial.
Flight of the Bull Dogs
The Bull Dogs, in tight formation do a roaring high-speed fly-by much to the delight of the Grider Field air show spectators.
See more of the air show including this fully operational 1932 Curtis Wright B14 on the Photo of the Week Page at Corndancer dotd-com.
The Bull Dogs, a precision flying group led by Gerald Lloyd of Dumas, Arkansas, headlined a recent air show on Grider Field at the Pine Bluff Regional Airport. In fine southern and LA tradition, the show included a BBQ Chicken dinner prepared by Tyson Foods. Sales of the meals benefited the new and developing Grider Field Museum, a entity which will feature aviation memorabilia, in particular, the history of Grider Field, a major pilot basic training facility in World War II.
Speaking of airplanes, be sure and check out the pristine Curtis-Wright B-14 also at the air show. See it on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com.
The Bull Dogs fly RV kit aircraft and for the most part, participating pilots have built their own aircraft. Once they are built, and yearly, they are subject to the same FAA scrutiny as commercially manufactured planes.
The Bull Dogs fly by in one of their precision formations. The pilots are all volunteers and have other day-jobs or economic pursuits. They put in long hours of practice for the love of aviation and flying. Most of them have thousands of flying hours.
The Bull Dogs make a second fly-by in another permutation of the first formation.
Two of the Bull Dogs do an over-under fly by. The dude on the bottom has to remember his stick directions are reversed. So far, so good.
Our over-under guys take an aerial bow.
Size does not matter in the seriousness of aircraft. RV airplanes though small in size are serious airplanes as one can easily judge by glancing at the cockpit.
Aerobatics follow
The following pictures are of aerobatics in the show. Being poorly qualified to comment on the goings-on, we will let the pictures speak for themselves. However, I suppose it is safe to say that this is not the dude's first rodeo.
Seeing sunflowers again
Posted on July 3, 2016 by Joe
Click on the sunflower and bees to see our original June, 2014 post. You're gonna like it.
In June of 2014, while wandering down a gravel road in Desha County, Arkansas, I stumbled across the remnants of what I presume was a former Sunflower crop.
There were several nice pods of plants along the road and I'm guessing they were "volunteer" plants that sprang up from random seeds after a former harvest.
I grabbed some half-way decent shots of the sunflowers and some rouge corn, that like myself, towered over my peers during youth. Click here to see these in our original June, 2014 post. As I recall, most folks liked the pix, so you will too.
Click the old farmhouse for more and bigger views.
At the civilized end of the road, near Pickens, Arkansas, I saw a reasonably well preserved, tar-paper covered, dirt-under-the-fingernails,. former farm residence standing tall.
It had the requisite corrugated metal, aka "roof'n arn," roof and a nice front porch. It was shootable and easily accessed, so I did – and posted the pictures on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot com. There are several views of the old structure there for your viewing information and pleasure.