Alan Skeoch

Author: terraviva

  • WHO WANTS a vintage COMBINE HARVESTER… Running order $500 (BRYAN MARSHALL FARM SALE OCT. 13, 2018)

    (I like to put  a little test in my stories just to discover who really reads the stories…I suspect most
    people just zip through the pictures and press delete.  The test:  Who bought the Clipper Fanning mill?)
    Note: The following dialogue is just me talking to myself but based on the experience.
    BARGAIN…IF ANYONE HAS  ROOM FOR IT

    (Vintage International combine harvester, perhaps 91 model 1970)

    alan skeoch
    Oct. 13, 2018
    ar Bryan Marshall farm sale
    Fifth line south of Milton
    (circa  1970 International Harvester / McCormick 91 combine harvester)
    “Combine looks like it just  from the Showroom floor.”
    “Too small for today’s fields…half a  century ago it was
    a prize machine.”
    “Not anymore.”

  • “HORSES WERE BETTER THAN TRACTORS” (LET ME TELL YOU WHY)

    HORSES WERE BETTER THAN TRACTORS

    (LET ME TELL YOU WHY)
    alan skeoch
    august 2018
    PLOWING IS AS ANCIENT AS CIVILIZATION…MAYBE 6,000 YEARS OLD
    “This painting on  an Egyptian tomb shows a farmer encouraging two skinny cows to pull a  tiny stir plow.”
    “Stir plow?”
    “Yep…early plows were really just tough tree roots  fashioned  to a dull point.”
    “How could that plow cut sod?”
    “It couldn’t.   Ancient plowmen  only plowed easy fields…no sod…closest thing to bare ground.”
    “Bare ground doesn’t grow much  food.”
    “You got that right…world population was small…farmers just tilled the tops of  the  hills where a stir plough
    would work.”
    “Do you mean those  rich fertile valleys  were just left  to the weeds.?”
    “Think so.  No doubt some poor sap was trying to grow wheat among the  weeds.”
    “Must have been good healthy work.”
    “Bad joke.   Most people died young…35 would be old.  Do  you believe that?”
    “Nope.   You are like  Trump and  make up a lot of  bull shit.”
    “Take  it for what it’s worth.”
    ‘I’ve got better things to do than read  your drivel, Alan.”
    “Bugger off and do it then.”
    “Just kidding…”
    “Human  beings in western  Europe came down off the tips of the hills  when the  medieval two furrow  wheeled plow was invented.”
    “More food”
    “Fat people started to appear in large numbers.”

  • PLOWING MATCH … DEATH OF A TRACTOR…Cucumber Ordeal

    BY ACCIDENT, WE FOUND A PLOWING MATCH

    (AND MET QUEENS OF THE FURROW)
    alan skeoch
    august 24, 2018
    “What’s  going on?”
    “Looks like a time warp…those tractors date back to the 1950’s and 1960’s…”
    “Why  so  many on one field?”
    “And  why pull two morrow  plows…obsolete as the pocket watch.”
    “And three of the plowmen are not men at all…three women…”
    “Special women…they are the QUEENS OF  THE FURROW.”

  • ALIVE! SOMETHING IS ALIVE IN THERE! (opossum)

    SOMETHING ALIVE IS IN THERE!  YUCK!

    (Oposums are here  to stay…Climate Change)
    alan Skeoch
    august 2018
    “Yikes, there’s something alive in the watering can.”
    “Never!”
    “I touched fur…and  it moved.”
    “Whatever  it is, looks dead to me…curled  up ball of yucky fur.”

  • Monarch Butterfly sightings, life cycle

    MONARCH  BUTTERFLY:
    HOW DOES THE FOURTH GENERATION KNOW IT MUST FLY TO MEXICO?
    (A MYSTERY)
    alan  skeoch
    August   2018
    MONARCH  BUTTERFLY REPORT
    OUR HOPE FOR SURVIVAL RESTS WITH THE FOURTH GENERATION
    Alan  skeoch
    August 20, 2018
    The world is  in trouble.  We all know that.  And the trouble is  right before our eyes.  No frogs, No snakes,  No  bobolinks, No leeches, No  Killdeers.   Let me change that.  yes, I did  find
    a  couple of Leopard frogs in our 7 acres  of ponds this year (2018).  No doubt there are more but decades ago there  were hundreds, thousands maybe.  And  last year we had  garter  snakes
    procreating in our green house.  The big female had lots of suitors…seemed to be in every crate of  flower pots.  None so far this year. And the ponds  had  lots of leeches.  None for past few years.  Have not seen
    a  bobolink or a killdeer for decades.  What to do ?  What to do?   Are we really in the midst of the sixth extinction of life on our planet? Will the polar regions  melt and  raise the oceans high enough
    to drown our ocean cities.  Will the climate change so radically  that lives of little creatures  will be lost forever?  Is it true that 95% of the living creatures on earth are human beings and  their domestic animals.  The wild  creatures have been reduced to 5%.