This is the way that we get the fertilizer onto the fields. Our little EX 60 picks up a four hundred pound bag and slings it around to me. The helicopter drops a bucket close by and hovers above while the excavator operator gets the bag close to the bucket and then I fine tune the bottom of the bag and I pull the cord and direct the contents into the bucket. The EX swings west and the chopper takes the load up to the east. And then we go again until all dozen or so bags are up and on. About ten or twelve years ago the farm was using a tractor with forklift attachment to lift the bags and the helicopter lost lift coming in and crashed. No one was seriously injured but the copter was a write-off.

We have a funeral at the church today. A sad event for the family and community, made especially difficult by the season of rebirth that it falls during. We Christians are big on celebrating death as a transition to the Kingdom of God, but that doesn't take away the loss that the transition represents.