Well my dear blog, the corn has been planted.  Naturally, we start getting
snow showers the following day around here.  Weather has been unusually cool
this year.  We had a week of above normal temps, and then the last 2 weeks
have been having nightly frosts and hard freezes.  The oats are up, and the
cold isn't bothering them.  However, the leaves on the alfalfa are curling up
and we are worried the newly germinated alfalfa may be killed off due to the
weather.  I guess we'll know more in a few weeks when the warmer weather
finally arrives.  The morel season has been very poor due to the unusually
cool temps as well.  So far, all of our good spots have turned out empty with
the majority of our finds have been out in the open, such as pastures, on the
west or south sides of the timber.  Mostly the little grey types so far, and
the poor things even have frostbite too.  Hopefully the warmer weather this
weekend will bring things along so that the yellows will now start to show up
and the better spots will start to produce.  I'm also worried that the apple
crop will be quite poor as the apple trees are trying to blossom in this
weather.  I guess we are fortunate, as some farmers in southern Iowa already
have corn that has germinated, and last night's weather went below the
freezing mark again.  I have a feeling their yields will get hurt as the corn
will be stunted or even die off due to the cold.

Planting went well in spite of our largest tractor going down due to a leak in
the braking system.  I ended up having to use a smaller horsepowered tractor
to run the field finisher.  It wasn't so bad, but the seat in that tractor is
shot, so every bounce I felt with my butt.  Not to mention I had to travel
approx. 3.5 mph instead of the usual 5.  Fortunately, we got the 4440 John
Deere fixed in time for our wettest field, where I needed the additional
horses to pull through the wet spots.  Otherwise, I would have been stuck or
had to avoid the spots entirely.

In other news, I changed jobs last week.  I'm back in the HF Radio programs
again.  I'll be doing verification duties like before, and also I will be
learning and coding the radio software this time around as well!  I sure don't
miss the stress from my old job.  It is nice not being responsible for the JSF
program any longer.  I'm sure in time I'll acquire the levels of
responsibility I had in my previous job, but for now I'm enjoying being just
the new guy.  Well, speaking of the job, I had better get back to it.    Ciao!