Pickin’ Rock

Today marks the first day of rock picking. Now you if you’ve never had to do this there is one word that I have for you…. Lucky! Let me try to explain what this job is. The fields around our area every year has rocks in them that need to be removed so your farm equipment doesn’t get wrecked when either you are baling hay or taking the corn and beans out of the field with the combine. And these rocks can be left over from last year that you didn’t get picked or they came up with the frost out of the ground. Now not everyone has rocks in their fields and we’ve always been lucky ? to have them. As kids we knew it was getting close to having to start this job when as if over night the hay wagon had the back boards taken off and magically showed up in the yard one morning. You then all climb on the wagon and headed out into the fields to clean them up for the year. There are some things that you really have to know if you are going to pick rock. First thing : ALWAYS bring a shovel with you to get the rocks that are buried. Most rocks you can kick with your feet to get them loose but there are stubborn ones that you just can’t break loose. These you’ll need the shovel for and you hope that it’s not going to dig up a round rock. In my books the round dark rocks are the heaviest. Second thing : You need to make sure if you are going to throw a smaller rock on the wagon that there are no brothers or sisters that are just hanging out by the wagon. If you throw a smaller rock and it goes over the edge – well you can just about imagine what it’s going to hit right? Yup, someone is going to either get nailed in the head or maybe worse… they could get hit on their feet or legs. Now in the head isn’t so good but then they’ll just probably cry and you’ll think to your self  ‘well they shouldn’t have been standing there’. But if they get hit on part of their body – – you better be prepared to run!! As kids we would spend what felt like most of the summer picking up rock but in reality it must have been only a week or two.  And now that it’s just Daryl and I, we go out about an hour or two at a time and pick our rocks out of the fields. We don’t seem to have as many rocks in our fields as I did when we were kids. I guess it’s good exercise and since I’ve given up all hope that I’ll ever have nice finger nails, I it’s not so bad.

So like I said earlier, today marks the first day of the year for picking up rocks. My brother and nephew were rock picking by our farm today and he called to say that he found a really cool big rock. Now I’ve been looking for a rock to write our name on it for a landscaping decoration, but he said that it wouldn’t work for that but it’s still cool. Sounded great! So in a couple of minutes he’s pulling into our yard with this awesome rock in his bucket. I’ve got the prefect spot for it and I just need the lawn to dry off some before we can get in there with a tractor.  You can’t tell how big the rock is, but it’s pretty big.  When Daryl and I went out later to pick rocks we didn’t have to pick too long, and there was really a wide variety of rocks that I found today. Now I love rocks. I’ve got a rock collection still from when I was a kid and if I get into any trouble now it’s because I have kept way too many that I find. But here are some examples of the ones that I found today. The first ones are the pretty colored ones that you just know someone could make the coolest jewelry out of it that had a Rock Tumbler machine. The second one is pretty common. For some reason they get holes in the rocks and even though they’re not in the pretty category – they still are worth keeping back for a picture. It looks shiny, but I took the picture right after I had washed the dirt off of them.  The next one is kinda funky. It’s a normal rock with a pink vein going through it. Haven’t seen too many of those. And the last one for today? Well it’s the picture of the day. Of all the years of picking rocks, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. At first I thought it was something growing on the rock, but after I scrubbed it a couple of times, I’m thinking it’s just how the rock started to form or something. My dad also liked rocks and it’s too bad he’s not here to ask if he ever seen something like this. Check it out.

Picture of the day – Crazy Rock!

And the night ended kind of sad. I knew that I was missing one of our peacocks for some time now but after looking around some of their local hangouts, I just couldn’t seem to find him. I thought that maybe a hungry fox or coyote came by and grabbed him. But today when Daryl and I were in the machine shed we found what was left of the peacock. And if you guessed nothing much but feathers, well you guessed right. I know that a raccoon can kill and eat chickens so if it was that or something else, what ever it was only literally left the feathers.

What was left of the one peacock today

I was glad that the feathers were still there and in good shape. I’ve been saving them for a friends wedding that they want to decorate with and it looks like now they’ll have plenty.

As the day came to an end we really got  a lot done. Daryl worked on a couple different pieces of equipment and even went out into the field to work this one patch up for the summer.And while he was working on that, I went on a mission to find some good fruit and vegetables. For some reason lately they’ve been looking so bad that I have been having to buy frozen.  I had what seemed to be good luck today and most of the things that I bought tasted good. The only thing that was not ripe was the watermelon. But it wasn’t too bad and the chickens thought that it tasted perfect. I’m sure after a long winter a fresh watermelon rind would taste good.