Uncle Cran's Follow-Up Farm Report

Ozark Frozen Pond
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Uncle Cran has good news -- winter is over in the Ozarks! He no longer has to break the ice on the pond . . . though I don't believe that he uses the above technique of stomping holes through! That would be like sawing off the limb on which you sit . . . or cutting off your nose to spite your face! Uncle Cran's too smart for that, and here's his follow-up farm report to prove it:

Last Thursday was the last time I have had to cut ice. The nights get into the low 30's, the days into the 40's and 50's,and today it is 64, tomorrow the same, with rain Thursday night. This would be the time we would have planted our early garden[, as] I mentioned recently. The geese have been going north for three weeks, and increasing in numbers each week. Winter isn't over, but usually there will be a warm cycle around the middle of the month with a window of opportunity to plant things, then others each spring month. We don't put out much of a garden now, just a few things in April and May. But when I was growing up, we lived out of our garden vegetables and "truck patch" . . . of corn, potatoes, pumpkins, melons and climbing beans, then turnips in the fall. Now we do most of our gardening at Wal Mart.

Those were the days . . . but you can't stop progressing through life, I guess. I do miss watching the geese flying in their v-formed skeins high overhead, so distant up there in the heavens, you could scarcely hear their gaggles' faint honking.

But I'm a city boy now, here in the Seoul of Asia . . .