Things Are Warming Up

This will be pretty short tonight since we are both pretty tired. It was a hot day and most of it was spent outside at the tractor show. We started out with a fun visit to the Spam museum in Austin, MN. They have a pretty good sense of humor about themselves and have created a very nice museum the goes over the history of Hormel and their infamous product Spam. It is very well done and they have a large gift shop where you can get just about anything you could think of with a Spam logo. They even sell Spam! We picked up two cans of the pepper Spam that is only sold at the museum store. They had passed around samples and it was very good!

You Mid-westerners will recognize our next stop. I had a tenderloin sandwich and Barbara had a butter burger. We shared a frozen custard.

Fully stuffed, we then went out and walked in the hot sun for the rest of the afternoon at the tractor show. I enjoyed the antique farm machinery and small engines. There were a number of antique cars, and of those, I like the 1903 Oldsmobile the best. 

My mother’s father was and Oldsmobile dealer so I have a soft spot for the company. Thankfully I found a root beer float around four.

Speaking of old cars, brother Bob just sent me this shot. He plays bass in a California big band and they just had a gig at a great hot rod show in northern California. That is Bob (with the beard) in front on the right.

The Bissen family had a party over at Jimmy’s so about a hundred of us headed over there. (It is a big family don’t you know) After brats and beer a bunch of us returned to the tractor show for the tractor pull competition. The Bissen’s are big at this and took home a lot of trophies. It was not just the guys, either. Jordon Bissen came in first in her class.

Barbara took most of the pictures today and she will get them in the gallery soon. She just had more sense and went to bed instead of fooling with them tonight.

What a Show!

We just got home after spending the day working at a nursery owned by one of the Bissen family. Barbara and I have just been sitting here in the dark looking out the front of motor home at a most fantastic firefly display. I remember fireflies as a kid, but nothing like this. There are hundreds of them arching around and above the grape vines and an adjacent soybean field. It is like looking at a very clear star filled sky. What an absolutely terrific way to end a day.

The nursery owners are hosting a Model T gathering next week and expect about 250 Model T’s. That ought to be a sight to see, but we will be well on our way by then. Tours of the nursery will be offered so we were enlisted to help get the place spruced up. It was very interesting to learn how they operate.

In the greenhouse they use a method of watering called “ebb and flow”. Young plants are raised in pots placed on large plastic trays that are flooded briefly to wet the bottom of the pots, and then the water is drained into tubs to be held for the next watering. All of the water is collected rainwater. Rainwater runoff is collected from the roof and stored in a 55,000-gallon cistern. This is an exceptionally efficient nursery. They have build a production area that converts grasses and other plant biomass byproducts into pellets that are used to fire the boilers that heat the greenhouse through the winter. Most of the byproducts used come from their own farm fields, but they also incorporate other farmer’s waste products like the sawdust litter used at a nearby turkey farm. It is an ingenious system. The family also operates an organic pig farm, hence the business name of Pork and Plants, Inc.

The tractor show was washed out by heavy rains that lasted all day, so rather than going to the tractor pull event this evening we hung out for dinner with the Bissen family and came home to our firefly show. We are pretty tired from a day of labor and will cash in early.

Tractor Ride

Our planned departure with the tractors was delayed by a few hours by rain but we were finally off by around two this afternoon. While a few tractors were towed on trailers, like the 1923 Fordson, 

over twenty of us lined up for the 25 mile or so trek to the fair grounds. It was cool and windy, but that was preferable to high heat. Tractors do not move too quickly so it was over a two-hour ride. Because of my being new I brought up the rear.

Final count was 28 tractors. (Barbara will post a picture of the tractor we actually rode in the gallery.)

One of the more interesting non-tractor items seen at the fairgrounds was this Ford Model T and camping trailer. This fellow had just pulled in from Alberta, Canada. He actually tours in this rig and has already put 5400 miles on it this year going to antique car events.

After a group photo of the portion of the Bissen family that joined us today we jumped on the school bus for the ride home.You can see the ride route on the progress map link to the right.

Tomorrow night we will attend the tractor pull competition!

Bissen Family Farm

What a gorgeous day! You absolutely could not have asked for better weather. There have been a few high clouds, but mostly sunny. The temperature during the day has been about 75 and will go into the sixties during the night. Looks like another fantastic sleeping night. We will need the rest, because we will be relocating the tractors to the Racine fairgrounds Thursday. This is to get as many of the Bissen family antique and classic tractors to the tractor show as possible, so even we city kids will be pressed into action. Ought to be fun.

We arrived at the Bissen farm in Adams, MN around 1:30 today and met Dale and Sandy Bissen along with their son Kim and Elly’s father Fred. We got a tour of the farm buildings and a look at a lot of the tractors, and then got the motorhome situated behind the equipment garage. 

It is the best parking spot we have had. No power or water, but what a view! We look out over their vineyard and the farmland beyond. The farms in this area are immaculate. There is lawn between the rows of vines that are better kept than my lawn at home!

Tonight we are off to pick up Elly and her sister Mary at the Rochester airport. As luck would have it there is a Trader Joe’s in Rochester! We will certainly stop there first. Fellow Lockheed Martin alum, Allison Summerford, now lives in Rochester while her husband finishes medical training at the Mayo Clinic. We will have dinner with them and then head for the airport.

Tomorrow we will be up early and on the road to Racine. Hope this weather holds.

Ahhh! Relief!

We headed out this morning just before nine and the temp was already in the high eighties and it was ninety-five by the time we hit Saint Louis two hours later.

After a top of 105 degrees yesterday, and a refrigerator that just couldn’t over come that heat, we were ecstatic to roll into Iowa in a moderate rain and temps down to sixty-nine. We are sitting here now looking at the sun going down after a great dinner. We have the windows open and there is a gentle breeze floating through the coach. It is nice not having to talk over the A/C noise. OK, there is a little scent of barnyard in the air, but this is an adventure – right? 

The campground is still recovering from a severe storm that hit Sunday. You might have heard of the weather system that came through then. Besides a lot of damage to little touches in the park like signs and the cattle sculptures, they had three trailers flipped over. One trailer was still lying on its back during our visit, but the cows were back up.

This is the quietest park so far on this trip. It has been a very nice evening and we are looking forward to a nice sleep with these cooler temperatures. We will sleep in, then get the coach ready for the couple hour run to the Bissen farm.

Under Attack!

When we were at Fort De Sotto Park last month we were plagued with ants when we packed up to leave. We placed ant baits in the coach and sprayed some, too, but a few were still hanging on when we left Sunday. This morning we found that we were under a full attack! The campground in Jackson, GA had paved pads and nice grass medians between the pads. We sure did not expect to wake up to see an ant freeway running up the side of the bedroom wall. When we went to the kitchen they were swarming the baits we had down when we left. Checking outside I found them swarming up the left rear tire and resorted to chemical warfare! Sometimes organic does not cut it, and this was one of those times! Tonight as I write this it appears that we have one, but I will reserve judgment until the morning.

We had a long day on the road today and pulled in to Marion, IL a little after five in the afternoon and got situated quickly. That is grown up talk for having a beer.

The drive here was through some very pretty countryside. We even saw a few Amish on horse drawn wagons. It was very hot, too. The dash thermometer was over one hundred for the better part of the afternoon and reached as high as 103. Granted that was while driving on hot blacktop, so that probably boosted the reading some, but it was hot enough that the refrigerator has not done well and we ended up starting the genset to run the house A/C to assist the dash A/C.

The Marion RV Park is a friendly place with nice sites even if they are a little close. Unfortunately, the town of Marion had a water main break this morning putting them on a “boiled water” alert so we will not be hooking up and will use on board water for showers tonight. Glad I added some water this morning. We do not normally carry much water since it is just that much more weight to haul down the road. Wednesday morning we will fill the tank for the first time so that we will have water while parked at the farm. We can hold 93 gallons of water, so that should get us through the visit. It is getting rid of the water that will require us to break camp mid-visit to dump the grey (sinks and shower) water tank since it only holds about 50 gallons. Luckily there is a campground with a dump station about ten miles from the farm.

We will hit the road again early in the morning for another long run to get us in position to arrive at the Bissen farm mid-day Wednesday.

And We Are Off!

We are on the road again! We are shooting straight north with the ultimate goal of Adams, MN and the home of the Dale Bissen family. Dale is Elly (Bissen) Anderson’s brother. Well, one of many brothers. We are heading north to join the Bissen family for one of their annual tractor shows/rides. The family members are serious collectors of older Ford tractors and between the father and his many sons the collection numbers eighty or so. Close friends Curt and Elly Anderson have been attending these for years and Curt now has his own restored Ford tractor that he drives in these rides. This is the heartland of America, folks. And these people are the bedrock this country is founded on.

My ancestors were farmers up until my grandfather broke away and became an engineer. My father was an airline pilot, so I am two generations removed from the earth. Granted there was the occasional family reunion on cousin’s farms, but for the most part I am a city kid and I look forward to touching, in some small way, the roots of my heritage. OK, my ancestors did not have tractors. It is the people I want to be close to.

The first three days of this trip are pretty much travel days. We held up short of Atlanta today because to get past the city would have been too long a day. We elected to stop in Jackson, GA located midway between Macon and Atlanta. We will delay our departure in the morning a bit to get on the backside of Atlanta rush hour.

We are staying in Forest Glen Campground right on I-75. It is a nice campground that seems to cater to transients like us, but there are some folks here that appear to be semi-permanent. We pulled in around five and started dinner. Despite tonight’s wine, we will be on our way north by nine in the morning.