Pick'n Corn

While we were in NC we stopped to watch a farmer picking corn. Ends up it was someone I knew when I was a kid. His name is Milton but everyone calls him Buddy. Buddy and my cousin Rick were best friends in school. Buddy's wife was riding the combine with him and when they came to the end of the field to dump the corn in the truck she got out to see what these people in a minivan were doing parked in the field. After we introduced ourselves and found out we knew each other they let the kids ride in the combine. Brady and Sydney made one round(up and down in the field) and then on the second round I noticed the driving was a little more eratic. I looked through my zoom lens and realized they were no longer riding but were now driving the combine. They got a big kick out of driving the combine. If you zoom in on the pictures you can see some big smiles.

My Dad told me two farmers in the area had just bought new combines that were somewhat larger than this one in the pictures and they cost $500,000 each. I'm sure there was a salesman someplace that was happy.

We also stopped by Somerset Place which is a historic slave plantation and state park. It is about 3 miles from my house. This is brady pumping water with a hand pump. I remember they used to say that my grandma was one of the first people to have running water in the kitchen because my granddad put one of these pumps where it would pump into the kitchen sink so they would not have to carry water from outside. I don't know, maybe everyone did that? When you use this pump you always leave water in the bucket because you have to use that water to prime the pump the next time you use it.