Wheat Field

Remember the wheat field pictured on March 9? Now it is turning golden with maturity. Seems to be a couple of weeks early this year perhaps due to the very warm spring weather.

Wednesday and Thursday


Wednesday morning I drove by Jeff's house to see what had been done. Most of the roof deck is in place.

Thursday we planted sudan in the field by the creek here at home. Marvin planted most of the field this morning and I finished late in the afternoon. Black Dog was happy to be working again. As I left the tractor and started for the pickup I noticed Black Dog trotting across the field. He had spotted a coyote that was watching the activities from the back side of the field. When Black Dog would come toward me the coyote would follow always staying about 50 yds. behind. Black Dog would turn toward the coyote and he would move toward the creek. They did this several times before I called the dog to follow me to the house.

School Days Again

Tuesday I attended a couple of classes in Stephenville that are required to maintain my pesticide applicator's license. This license is required to be able to buy agricultural chemicals. By the end of the day I had earned 5 hours of CEU credit.



The session began at 10 am with a 2 hour class dealing with chemicals and equipment used for brush and weed control. At noon we were treated with a catfish dinner supplied by a local equipment dealer. The food vender cooked in a trailer just outside the building and served the catfish, chicken and fries piping hot.

The three hour afternoon session covered toxic plants of Texas and their identification and control as well as treatment of affected livestock. It seems that Oleander is one of the most toxic plants in the state! Cockle Burr is extremely deadly from the time the seed sprouts until the plant has about 4 leaves. I remember this as a serious problem for baby pigs that like to eat the young plants. Most poisonous plants are avoided by livestock if they have adequate good forage available.

The toxicologist that spoke told of being elected to a term on his local school board. He said that there were two oleander plants outside the front door of the kindergarten room at his school but the day after his first meeting as a board member these plants disappeared!

I was familiar with prussic acid poisoning mainly from sorghum plants like Johnson grass and have seen cows die within a short time of eating frozen Johnson grass. I did learn that the actual damage is done by cyanide gas that is released in the plant during these times of stress.

Saturday Summary

We took a drive to Cleburne on Saturday afternoon. This is highway 4 between Grandview and Cleburne. It was Antique Alley weekend.







Jerry had called the Cleburne Cemetery Association to get the location of Grandpa Rhoades grave so we stopped by Rosehill Cemetery as we went by. The traffic was so heavy on highway 4 that we had trouble getting out of the cemetery.

Next we went to the annual Johnson County Iris show and took a few pictures.







On our way out of town we stopped by the Cleburne Memorial Cemetery to see Auntie and Uncle Walter's grave and also that of Grandma Hazel.









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After replacing the cache container for Footbridge Southwestern we drove county roads from Keene to home missing Grandview entirely.