Farming and Friends in NEBRASKA!

Thursday, June 25^th – After leaving our RV park, we found a car wash with a bay for RVs!  How cool is that!  It would be a lot easier if they had a hose on each side as in trying to flip the hose over to the other side, it kept snagging on the ac units etc. on top of the RV, so a bit of a pain for Earl, but at least we knocked off some of the dirt. It is incredibly dusty out here!

Just across the street we found this opportunity awaiting some passerby.  LOL I actually thought about going over there and using them while Earl was washing the RV.  But due to the temperature, I negated that thought.  ha

We enjoyed our travel day to Nebraska, although if we hadn’t happened to see the state line we wouldn’t have realized any difference from Kansas – still lots and lots of corn and wheat.

 A bit of a glitch this morning however.  As we left our RV park, there was a really steep dip in the road, and we scraped a bit as we went over it, though at the time we didn’t think much of it.  About 30 min later as we came to a stop at an intersection, I gasped and said, “Honey, the front is moving out!” The generator is in the front of the RV and we have a protective shield in front of it.  When we scraped the road on that dip, we broke the “hinge” that holds the generator casing in place!  Yikes.  But God is amazing, as always.  We were on a country road with very little traffic, for one.  Next a really nice farmer stopped and asked if we needed help, and he worked with Earl for about 30 min to try to hammer it back straight so it would hold, but no luck.  But he did have wire that they wired it shut till we can get it fixed and we were on our way.  God. You have to be so grateful for His provision!

We were just antsy to get to our friend’s house in Kearney Nebraska!   The temperature is WAY too high for our liking so after orginally planning to go back to CO, we changed to a northern course.

And was it ever worth the wait!  Wow, what a beautiful farm, y’all!  Pictures don’t do it justice.  It’s huge!!  About 2,400 acres, and every bit of it is just immaculate!!! Not surprising, knowing Harold and Anita Smith all these years – their house and cars were always spotless and everything so tidy.  Here’s a few photos…

We were able to park the RV right on the farm just a short walk away from the house -  they had water and electric hookup all ready for us, and we enjoyed seeing their house for the first time.  

 We were chatting a mile a minute. They took us ALL over the farm, including out in the fields!  Explained equipment, how it works,  answered a hundred questions, as we were as curious as could be.  Farming has changed a lot since Earl used to work summers with his uncle, and all I ever knew was a garden.  A good sized garden, grant you, but still a garden with one little Cub Tractor.  This is a whole new world.  It’s awesome to begin to really see where our food grows and where it comes from!

We've seen these watering devices all over.....now we know they are called Pivots and work on a slowly rotating basis to cover a field in 24 hours. Pretty cool.

Isn't this pretty corn?  So healthy and green. Imagine it going as far as you can see in all directions.

This is the motor that drives the pivots and mixes fertilizer with the water.  Who knew?

Harold giving us a lesson on farming.  

 Showing how tall the corn is in late June. We need a pitchfork and straw hats and we could be on Hee Haw!

If I remember correctly, this is the Platt River that runs on their property.

 Our dear friends, Harold and Anita Smith - they are awesome, and treated us like royalty.  Anita is super stubborn, though.  She will just grab the check at a restaurant and no arguing with her!  Anita, you will NOT do that the next time we see you!  It's our turn!!

 Isn't this a pretty farm scene - Harold just drove right out into the fields.  Those hay bales are a lot bigger than you think!

Including this photo for one reason only - a remembrance of a lot of laughter around the table the morning we left.  One of their farm hands, Rollie, working on a round hay baler.  Nothing funny about this, right?  Another story when Earl is relaying the conversation to Kent. (private joke there).

This is Kent out on the tractor and believe it or not, this is LATE at night!  It does not get dark till 9:30ish-10:00 - makes for a long day!

 This is Zoe, who is guarding the RV while we go have fun....

Harold and Anita took us to this amazing restaurant in Kearney.  Oh my goodness, if you're ever there, be sure to order the onion rings!!!

On our way home, we drove onto the fields again and saw deer all over the place!!!  It was dusk and there were literally 40-50 of them.  Harold and Anita said they’d seen them by the hundreds there!  Lots of wild turkey out there as well.  Beautiful homes in the area.  This is a really pretty part of Nebraska.

 Friday – we started out with a delicious breakfast that Anita had prepared – scrambled egg casserole, homemade cinnamon buns, homemade banana bread and fruit!  Juice and coffee.  What a spread!  It was great to see Sherry (we hadn’t seen her since she was about 6) and met Preston, Kent’s son (all grown up and married!) and Kent’s wife.  Hoping to get to see Kent before we leave – he lives on the tractor, it seems.  Ha  Breakfast was delicious and afterward, we went on another tour – seeing an ethanol farm and some of the local sights in the Kearney area, including going down the Oregon Trail while Harold and Anita talked about the history there.

The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument.

Back on the Smith-Patterson Farm....

 Harold's garage/workshop/museum of collector autos, etc.

 Shelter housing equipment.  This is a big operation!

Some of the tractors and cars Harold has collected and restored.

After a tornado came through several years ago, Harold planted a line of beautiful trees along the property and received this award.

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 This was our view of the house from where our RV was parked.  See the nice walkway for us to go over to the house, except I'd rather walk barefoot in that lush soft grass.  We don't have grass like that in Florida!

This is Fort Kearny.  In its 23 years as a military post, Fort Kearny came to symbolize westward expansion and development.  It was the first fort built to protect travelers on the Oregon Trail. It was the headquarters of military and civil government, an important stage station, a home station of the Pony Express, an outfitting depot for Indian campaigns, and the home of the famed Pawnee Scouts. If you're interested in more info on this, go to outdoornebraska.ne.gov/parks/guide.

Harold was able to arrange a tour for us of a potato farming processing plant!  I wish I had been able to get a brochure to tell y’all more about it as I’ll never ever remember all the details, but it was HUGE!!!  They rent acreage from Harold and Anita to grow potatoes and 100% of their potatos go to Frito Lay and are made into potato chips!  Imagine!  You’d have to stand in this place to realize the enormity of it all, but we were in just ONE of EIGHT storage bays.  I don’t know the dimensions, but EACH one of those bays held TEN MILLION POUNDS of potatoes!!! 

Unbelievable to see that kind of space and the huge buildings and massive equipment.  One thing I learned is you can eat Lay’s Potato Chips with the knowledge that they are insanely protective of the process.  Potatoes cannot have any green or brown spots and have to have the nutrient mix down to a science!  Ben is the manager of the plant and has a Master’s Degree in Biology.  I kept saying he had his Doctorate in Potatoes!  

 Seriously, I never knew there was so much to know about how potatoes are grown!  He took us through their lab, where they test to see exactly the level of nutrients, the amount of glucose, sucrose and starch is in every “batch” .  Every week they go out to every single field and do five different soil/plant samples to determine the exact levels of everything to determine that it meets their standard.  How they’re washed, how they’re stored, all of it, for what would seem boring, was really fascinating!  

In one end of the lab area, he had several gallon zip lok baggies full of potato ships – they have a slicer that slices to the exact width that Lay does it and they have a fry bin, etc. right there and they test and put them in this “tester” cabinet and have to send all the technical info and photos to Lay’s to approve.  Those bags looked delicious but were all marked with some technical markings, etc. and he never once offered to give us a potato chip!  Seriously!!!  We were all craving potato chips when we left, so we went straight to Dairy Queen and got a drink while Earl walked over to a nearby 7-11 and bought us all potato chips!  LOL  Crazy how you get that on your mind. Perfect snack to tide us over till dinner.

For dinner, we went to an amazing Bed & Breakfast WAY WAY WAY out in the country!!!  Just beautiful property and lovely garden settings.  The whole restaurant said “Closed” when we got there, but Anita knew she’d made reservations, so she went in to verify they were expecting us and indeed they were – SO we had the entire place to ourselves, Harold and Anita, and us, and on the way, we picked up Steve and Judy Miller. Wasn't the sky just incredible?

 It has been so many years since we’d seen Steve and Judy!  We used to be neighbors in Hobe Sound when we were all newlyweds.  Steve and Earl and Harold all hung drywall back in the day, and we had a ton of laughs remembering lots of old stories.  The restaurant served family style so we all chose brisket, chicken and ribs, cheezy potatoes, broccoli salad, and green beans.  Every morsel was to die for!  Oh my goodness!  Then dessert!  We had Platte River Mud Pie and some of the others had brownies, carrot cake, etc.   Once again, we had to waddle away from the restaurant.  

 Steve and Judy are building a new house, so we all went over to go through that.  They’re hoping to be in in about a month, and I sure hope so, but lots yet to be done.  They’ve done so much of the work themselves, much of which is really custom and just beautiful.  It was pretty late when we got home, so we went right on to the RV and had a restful night.

Saturday, June 27th – we dreaded leaving our friends.  Boooo  I’d much rather say hello than goodbye, but we have plans to get together again in January so that helps.  They just treated us like royalty and it was awesome to see their kids, Kent and Sherry – that we haven’t seen since they were 6 and 9!   All grown up and Kent has 2 grown children too and ALL of them work together – it’s just awesome to see a family working so well together.  Kent has a gorgeous house right across the road from Harold and Anita.  This is a huge, very successful farm and I love the way they give all the credit to God for its success. There is not a "bragging bone" in their body, and if we hadn't shown genuine interest, they'd have probably just been happy to see us and not even talked about the farm!   Lots of laughter over breakfast again, and then we couldn’t delay the inevitable.  Harold came out with special Pioneer caps for us, so now we definitely look like we fit in to the Nebraska farm scene.  Haha  Such good memories.  We left with tummies and hearts full. Oh and by the way, Harold fixed that latch that was broken!  What a guy!

Uneventful trip to Valentine, Nebraska for an overnight..... very forgettable park, and we didn't even unhook.  One enjoyable thing was we were able to just walk over to a restaurant AND a theater.  We saw Jurassic World.  Not my favorite movie by a long shot, but entertaining.

We loved our time in Nebraska, now stay tuned for adventures in South Dakota!