Aurora’s End

     “The car won’t start.”

     “What?  What does it do?  Will it go er-er-er?”

    “No, it won’t do anything.  The dash won’t light up.”

     “Do the headlights work?”   I knew the answer to that before Number 2 Daughter could reply.  I heard the alarm bell going off to let you know you left your lights on.

      “Yeah, they work.”

      “Probably not a battery connection.”  Our conversation was interrupted by a Good Samaritan in the gas station where she had stopped to fuel before heading up into the hills for a job interview.

      Daughter Number 2, living in Florida, had flown in and was looking for a job.  She needed a car to get where she needed to go.  We had recently added the Concorde to our fleet, so the Aurora was available.

      Jumping the battery wasn’t the answer.  After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I heard over the telephone the dinging of the seat belt alarm.  The thing had suddenly come alive.  This time, turning the ignition switch forward activated the starter and the engine started right up.

     The phone conversation ended abruptly as Daughter was on a late start to her interview.  The problem with the Aurora wasn’t done.  Faith in the car was vastly diminished, too.  From here on out, when you shut the car off, you wondered if it would start again.

     Sure enough, while DN2 was visiting friends in town, the Aurora played dead again.  She had to make other arrangements to get to the airport for her flight back to Florida.  At my earliest convenience, I visited the Aurora where it sat curbside in town.

     Removing the back seat, I opened the battery box and cleaned the cables.  They really didn’t need it, and just as I suspected, that didn’t solve the problem.  Turning the switch on produced no fruit.  The car would have to sit there another month.

      One Sunday morning, I towed a borrowed car dolly from Kansas and pulled up in front of the dusty Oldsmobile.  With a winch and some help from the property owner, I managed to get the heavy machine’s front wheels in place and strapped to the dolly.

     The Dakota strained pretty hard tugging the Aurora away from the curb.  Crossing the dips at the intersections was adventurous, but eventually I reached the highway, and soon I had the Aurora in front of the garage on the farm.

      I found out that backing a car dolly with a car on it was quite different from backing an empty dolly up to the front of a car.  My attempts to back the Aurora into the farm garage soon ended.  I decided I would try starting the car one more time.  If it failed to start, the car would have to sit outdoors for another while.

      This time, when I inserted the ignition key and turned the switch, all the bells and whistles came to life.  The car started.  It was as if the little trip into the country was the prince’s kiss that brought the princess back to life.

     The car was soon off the dolly and into the farm garage, and the Dakota, the car dolly and I were on the road back to Kansas.  Some weeks later, on a visit to check out the farm, on a lark I decided to try starting the Aurora.  It fired right up, so I left the pickup in the farm garage and drove the Aurora back to Kansas where I could work on it in my spare time.

      I decided to change the starter.  As I look back on it, that didn’t make much sense, since the starter worked whenever the ignition worked.  On the internet, I found a handful of instructions on how to change he starter. 

     On the Aurora, the starter was on top of the crankshaft, beneath the intake manifold, nestled in the V between the two banks of cylinders.  A lot of stuff had to come off, including the fuel rails, throttle body, and the intake manifold.

       As usual with me, getting started was the biggest hurdle.  Removing the big plastic cover revealed all the things that had to come off.  The fuel rails had flexible connections to the fuel line.  Once the rails were unfastened, you can swing them aside out of the way without having to break into the line.  No fuss, no muss, no spilled gasoline.

      The intake manifold was plastic.  Remove the bolts and lift it off.  Pretty simple.  And there was the starter, in plain sight and easy reach.  The wires were easily disconnected, two or three bolts quickly removed, and the old starter was out.

      Installing the new starter was equally simple.  The job was quickly done.  The new starter was in place, and I didn’t have to block the car up, crawl under it, struggle with getting wrenches on bolts, lift a heavy starter motor out and back in over my head, all the while keeping the greasy dirt out of my eyes and mouth, the usual starter-replacement protocol.

      Everything back in place and buttoned up, I tried the ignition.  Nothing.  I knew which wire activated the starter.  I bared a bit of the wire where it crawled out from under the intake manifold.  I ran a small jumper to the jumper terminal for the battery.

      The starter whirred perfectly.  The motor turned over and over, but wouldn’t start.  No ignition.  I went to the last step on every DIYer’s list.  I called the mechanic and told him to come get it.

     A day or two later, about an hour before the towing crew was to arrive, I tried once more to start the car.  It fired right up!  I called the mechanic and cancelled the tow.  I drove down to his garage.  I shut the car off.  He said to pull it into the bay.  The car started right up.

     In the bay, we shut it off three or four times.  Every time it started right up.  Adam explained to me that the problem was likely in the ignition key.  He pointed out the microchip in the key shaft.  He said it sent a mini-volt to the switch which allowed everything to work, an anti-theft device, I guess.

     Possible fixes, buy a new key, which didn’t always work.  He said they fixed the GM cars with that problem by installing a chip into the wire that went to the switch.  That way, it was always ready to go, whether the key’s microchip was functional or not.  In the meantime, he said a lot of times, if you turn the switch backwards to the accessory position and let it sit for a short time when it doesn’t work, it will come to life.  I wished I had talked to him a long time ago.

       Installing the chip would be about $180.  I opted to turn the switch backward.  We were a three-car family.  Taxes, license, and insurance added up.  It was time for the Aurora to go.  After about a year, we eventually did sell it.  The air conditioner wasn’t working properly and a myriad other small problems finally determined its fate.

     The Goodwife loved the Aurora.  It was comfortable.  You could drive for hours without fatigue.  It was quiet, very little road noise.  The instrument cluster was like the panel in an airplane, in a slight concave all focused towards the driver.  Everything was electric, seats, mirrors, windows.  It was a pleasure to drive.

     But there was the other side of it, the side in front of the dashboard.  It was a maintenance nightmare.  It took eight quarts of oil.  It had a leak in the seal between engine and transmission.  I consulted the friendly dealer.  His book said nine hours to change the seal.  Nine hours?

     You had to take the transmission down to get the exhaust pipe down to get the oil pan off.  I lived with the leak, adding oil all the time. 

      It had four ignition coils, one for every two cylinders.  They had to be changed two or three times while we owned it.  Changing them wasn’t hard, after we figured out that was the problem.

       Anyway, when all was said and done, I wasn’t sorry to see the Aurora go.  Its maintenance problems didn’t make it a very good spare car.

       

Quilt Retreat

     “The keys are locked in the car.”

     “What!? How did that happen?”  Bad news, good news, bad news all in a 10-minute period.

     First, a snowdrift blocked the road, and the Dakota wasn’t running properly.  Then a snowplow came along, before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  He was headed for the highway that surely would be cleared by now.

     Then the call on the cell phone.  The keys were locked in the car.

     “Is the car running?”

     “Yes.” 

     “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”  Which wasn’t too quick because the Dakota was running poorly when I shut it off to use the snow blower and now it wouldn’t start.

     I set off afoot across the neighbor’s field as the quickest way back to the farm.

     It all started months before, perhaps years ago.  The Goodwife always thought the farm would be a great place to hold a quilt retreat.  For those of you who are ignorant (blissfully ignorant) of quilts, quilting, and quilt retreats, a quilt retreat is like a camp where quilters go to spend a day or up to several days with like-minded folks working on quilts.  It requires room and board, so a big place with room to spread out quilts and room for dining and sleeping is necessary.

     She got the idea of having her sister and her sister’s friend come to the farm to try things out.  They were quilting novices, so they would be learning a thing or two as well as the would-be quilt retreat hostess.

     Their airplane touched down at DIA on a Thursday, early in the afternoon.   The Goodwife was there to meet them.  I was in Kansas at the time.  Plans were for me to meet them at the farm on Friday.

    I had been keeping an eye on the weather as it was still February and still winter storm season.  Spell that blizzard.  Sure enough, the weather folks were calling for a blizzard to hit the area on Saturday following some very nice warm spring type weather on Thursday and Friday.  Not at all unusual behavior for the high plains.

     I had been in phone contact with the girls.  I lobbied to have them follow plan B.  In light of the weather forecast, number one daughter offered to let them use her Denver residence for their activities instead of going to the farm.  They would have no trouble getting to the airport for their return flight on Sunday.  Both ladies had important things to do scheduled for the following Monday.

     “It’s going to blizzard.  I can’t guarantee them we can get them to the airport on Sunday,” I explained.

     “I’ll see what they say,” responded my better half.  When my phone rang hours later, she said cheerily, “We’re at the farm!”  I exercised my self-control and didn’t say what I was thinking, something about the futility of talking to a brick wall, coupled with some barnyard vulgarities.

     “Okay,” I sighed.  “See you tomorrow.”

     As if recognizing my disappointment, she added, “It is so nice and warm, how can it blizzard?  The girls really wanted to go to the farm.”

    Yeah, yeah, I know.  I checked out the snow blower, started it up, and ran it up into the back of the Dakota using a couple of eight-foot 2x 6’s for a ramp.   I snubbed it down and got ready for the next day.

     Friday was a beautiful day.  The trip from Kansas was warm and full of the hope of spring.  When I reached the farm, I laid in enough firewood for two days. I checked the water jugs in the basement.  If the power went out under duress from wind and snow and shut down the pumps necessary for the farm water supply, there would be enough water to get us through a couple of days.  But how could it blizzard?  It was so nice that Friday evening.

      Sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning, the wind ramped up out of the north and made the trees moan and the power lines wail mournfully.  When I got up at six a.m. Saturday, the snow had just begun.  Soon the wind-driven flakes turned to horizontal sheets of powder racing across the yard. 

      By noon, the drifts were getting fair sized.  The power stayed on and the wood stove helped keep the place warm.

     Then Murphy’s law stepped through the ropes into the ring and elbowed the referee aside.  The sewer system backed up.  Three girls in the house and a backed up sewer.  It drained ever so slowly.  It was miserable.  I thought I had prepared for every contingency.  Of course I hadn’t.

     By evening, the snow had stopped, the wind abated a little.  I ventured out and started the snow blower.  I blew snow for thirty or forty minutes, enough to make a path around the house.  I reloaded the plow onto the Dakota and resolved to rise early on Sunday morn and dig a path through any drifts blocking our way to the state highway.  Those girls had to get to the airport on time.

      At four a.m., as I was staring out the west window, the Goodwife admonished me that it was too early, go back to bed.  At five a.m., I could wait no longer.  By the time I had dressed, built a fire and downed a cup of tea, it was six o’clock. 

     The Dakota fired right up, but when I drove a little over a half mile and ran into my first drift, it started running rough while I got out to inspect the depth of the drift east of the trees of the abandoned farm stead just west and south of the farm.  When I backed up to get enough room to turn around and unload the blower, it died.  It restarted, but wouldn’t run unless I held the throttle down a ways.  So I shut it off and started up the snow blower, which ran a lot better than the Dakota.

      I had made one laborious 30-yard pass pass through a two-foot drift when something caught my eye on the south horizon in the early morning sunlight.  It looked like a snowplow.  It couldn’t be, a snowplow on a county road before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning?

      I pulled the snow blower back towards the pickup and looked again.  Slowly the shape came up from the bed of the Lickdab and climbed the incline into my view.  Sure enough, it was a county snowplow.  He was headed my way.  I tried to start the Dakota to get it out of his way.

     It wouldn’t start.  I got out of the pickup to be out of the way and to watch the drift-buster. The plow driver ripped through the drift and pulled up beside the pickup. Then he backed up to where I stood.  He asked if I was going to get through that drift with my little blower.  I said that was originally the plan, no longer necessary thanks to him.  He was amused.

     I asked him if he was going on north.  No, he would back up and go west on 3N to Highway 71.  That would be great.  I explained to him my predicament, of needing to get to the airport.  He assured me that if I could get this far, he would have the five miles to 71 cleared.  He turned his plow around and went south to 3N where he turned and went west on that road.

     I called the girls.  Get going.  The snowplow has cleared your way.

      I reloaded the snow blower and was struggling to get the Dakota started when the phone rang.  “How on earth did the keys get locked in the car?”  My set of keys was still in Kansas.                           One of the girls left the right back window down a couple of inches when they arrived Thursday.  Jenny had gone out to start the car to let it warm up.  She grabbed the scraper with the brush on one end to brush some of the snow out of the back seat.  Fortunately, the open window was to the south, so not a lot of snow got inside.

     When she got out and shut the driver’s door, out of habit she hit the door lock, and all the doors locked.  When she got around to the right rear door and tried to open it, she realized what she had done.  She felt terrible.

     When I arrived after my ten-minute walk across the wheat field, they had tried but failed to get a door open.  The sister-in-law could get her bony arm part way through the partially open window.  She could get a stick on the right front window switch, but she couldn’t grip and push hard enough to activate it.   

     I allowed that if she could get the stick on the switch, I could get my fingers through the window and onto the end of the stick and provide enough power to operate the window switch.  She did and I did.  The right front window opened and we were once again into the locked Aurora with the engine running.

     The girls loaded up their stuff and got ready to take off.  I bummed a ride with them back to the Dakota.  It eventually decided to start and I limped back to the farm.  I loaded up and followed the girls about 45 minutes behind them.  After three miles or so, the Dakota straightened out and ran right. 

       When I told the Dodge mechanic about the Dakota’s strange behavior, he explained I hadn’t let the engine run long for the computer to adjust to its new environment.  It last started in sunny warm Kansas, 2000 feet lower in altitude.  The colder higher altitude threw it for a loop when I didn’t give it time to adjust.    After the three miles, it got things set right.

      For the two girls, the ordeal wasn’t over.  They got to the airport, got on their airplane, and then security came and got Jenny.  She was randomly selected for extra security checks, but the security people failed to do the checks before she boarded the plane.  So they took her off the plane to do the check.  Sister-in-law couldn’t abandon Jenny, so she got off, too.  Their seats went to someone else.

      They got on a later flight.  With the snowstorm, the sewer problems, the car key episode, and the security fiasco, Jenny thought maybe she wasn’t supposed to make that trip.  They did get home safely and made their Monday appointments.

      As for me, I had a new key made for the Aurora, and I stowed it between bumper and license plate.  Twice burned, I finally learned.

     

          

Georgetown Train Trip

       “Where are the keys?”

     “I don’t have them.  You were driving.”  And so she was.  It was a nice summer day.  The Goodwife decided upon an outing to get me away from the farm.  Following our visit to the mine train ride near Georgetown, we would take in a meal at one of the Blackhawk casinos.

      We had “won” that meal at a charity auction in our rural Kansas community.  Someone donated the two meals, which were then auctioned off, either by silent auction, or by traditional auction with an auctioneer.  The proceeds went to the sponsoring organization, probably Rotary club in this case.

      I don’t remember what we paid for the two “free” meals, but we had the certificate with us, and it wasn’t out of date.  It was in the car trunk.  Which was now locked.  The keys were where?

     The search through purse and pockets gradually grew more frantic.  I stood at the trunk of the Oldsmobile Aurora, waiting for the lid to pop so I could deposit my jacket, which I didn’t think I would need for a while on this nice summer day, even in the mountains.  “Are you sure you don’t have the keys?”

     Yes, I was sure.  Then a rather disturbing impression hit me.  The car was vibrating a bit, not the kind of vibration that neither the train nor the passing traffic would cause.  I bent down towards the tailpipe.  Yes, there was exhaust exiting the pipe.

     Then I could hear it.  The engine was still running, had been running for the past hour and a half while we bought a ticket, stood in line, boarded a train car and went on the run to the inactive mine that the old railroad had originally served, and back to the parking lot.

     In shock and disbelief, I rounded the left rear corner of the car, pushed between the Goodwife and the Aurora and peered through the driver’s side window.  Sure enough.

     The keys were in the ignition, the dash was lit, the car was indeed running.  “There are your keys,” I said pointing accusingly at the car window, through which we could see the key fob and the orange tube that contained a small screwdriver, chained to the ignition key. 

     For an instant, dismay was replaced by anger and accusation.  How many times had I told her, “Never lock the door with anything but the key.  If you do that, you will never lock your keys in the car”?  Well.

      I had tried to apply that practice with my mother’s S—15 GMC pickup.  It had the annoying habit of locking the doors when you closed one, as when getting out to let it warm up while you scraped ice off the windshield, or to get something you forgot.  Since it locked itself when you least expected it, following my rule didn’t work.  Maybe that’s why we didn’t practice the rule as well as we should have.

       Now was not the time to start an argument or reinforce a lesson not learned, in the parking lot with the Aurora’s engine running, our only keys in the ignition of the locked car.  Back to dismay.  How would we get into the car?  All the while, the car sat there idling.  Was it overheated?  No, it didn’t smell like it, no sign of steam or excess heat escaping from under the hood. 

     I headed across the parking lot towards a creek.  “Where are you going? asked the Goodwife. 

     “To find a big rock.”

     “What for?”

     “To break through the window.”

     “Oh, don’t do that.” 

     I stopped.  On my way back to the car, I asked, “You have a better idea?”

      “Maybe there’s a locksmith somewhere.”  Back down to the gift shop—ticket office.  The man commiserated, said the closest locksmith was in Evergreen, an hour or two away.  We would have to pay mileage as well as time to and from.

     I weighed the cost of the locksmith with the cost of replacing the driver’s side window.  The rock idea sounded better, especially when I considered the amount of time involved, instant gratification versus waiting for the locksmith to arrive.

     Then the ticket agent—sales clerk said, jokingly, “What you need is a kid with a clothes hanger.  He’d get in there for you.”

     Hmmm.  The Aurora was a hard top, so there was this big gasket between the front and rear windows.  A stiff wire would go in there easily.  Maybe I could hook the door lock with the clothes hanger.

     “I don’t have a kid, but do you have a clothes hanger you could lend us?” I asked.  He looked around a while and finally did find a wire clothes hanger he said we could have.

     On the way back across the parking lot, I straightened out the hanger.  It was no task at all to get the wire between the two windows.  The car had theft-proof door locks.  After several attempts to hook the lock, I realized I’d never get a good enough hold on either the individual door lock, or the switch that controlled all four door locks. 

      Finally, I eyed the window control switches.  That required a push to make a window go down, not a pull like the door lock needed.  After a few attempts, I finally had just the right bend to get the wire through the gasket between the two windows and to hit the panel of four window switches that were on a horizontal panel on the left door armrest.

     It occurred to me as I fished that it was a good thing the ignition switch was on, because the windows wouldn’t work if the switch were off.  Eventually, I managed to hit the left front window switch enough to make the window jump before my wire slipped off the little arm of the window control.  I still couldn’t get a hand or arm through the opening, but I had a lot more room to maneuver the clothes hanger.

     Success breeds success.  It was comparatively quick work to hit the window switch a couple more times.  Then I could get my arm in and grab the door lock.  We were in!

      I checked the gauges.  No sign of overheating from the extended idling period.  I popped the hood.  Nothing amiss under there.  Soon we were on our way.  Our 45-minute delay seemed a small price to pay for our error, when I considered the cost of a locksmith or replacing the left window.  The car seemed none the worse for the wear.

     We hadn’t quite learned our lesson.  There would be another event before we followed the advice of our local friendly used car dealer.  He advised us to have a spare key made and stow it between license plate and bumper, held fast out of sight by a license plate screw.  A coin can be used to remove the license plate screw to retrieve the spare key in an emergency.

     We didn’t do that, even after our experience.  It would take another event to convince me to go to the trouble of having the key made and to take the time to remove a license plate screw and stow the key.

Bill’s New Carpet

     Finally.  He heard the car drive into the driveway, then the footsteps coming up the sidewalk.  She was late.

      It was noon.   Bill didn’t have much time.  He had to get back to school.  She would be in for a double surprise.

     But wait!  There were voices.  She was talking to someone.  She wasn’t alone.  She had brought a guest home for lunch.  Bill made a lunge for his pants.

     It all began with the decision to replace the living room carpet.  The decision went through all the stages, finding the right fabric, the right texture, the right color, prices compared, the decision made.  Then the furniture, shelves, everything had to be moved out of the room.

      It had been a lot of work.  Bill came home at noon as usual for his short noon break from school.  Normally, he had enough time to go through the mail, maybe grab a snack and head back to the brain factory.

      When he opened the door this time, the smell of new carpet greeted him.  The carpet layers had finished the job and had gone by the time Bill got home.  Three steps brought him to the living room entrance, and there it was, the new carpet.  Finally.  It had been a long haul. 

      There was still the work of replacing all the furniture, entertainment center, bookcase, all the things that had been removed.  Probably the room would have to be painted before any of that happened.  But for right now, there it was, the empty room with new carpet.

     Bill decided the moment called for a celebration.  He didn’t have much time.  The missus would be home soon.

      Jean was the head of the nurses at the local hospital.  In those days, the hospital was run by nuns.  The hospital had started as a Catholic enterprise, and the nuns still controlled things.

     Occasionally, a bigwig nun would visit to see that things were going right.  On this day, the bigwig lady had called and was checking out the nurses.  Her visit ran into the noon hour.  Jean thought it would be a nice touch to take the sister home for lunch.

     They were visiting as they walked up the sidewalk.  Jean warned that the house was in a bit of chaos with the furniture displaced for the carpet laying.  As she opened the door, she heard Bill scrambling inside.

     Bill managed to get his underwear on, but he stumbled getting his trousers on.  He only had one leg in place when the ladies walked in.  There he stood, pants half on as his wife and her sister-guest-supervisor walked through.

     Jean didn’t miss a beat.  “Well, get your pants on,” she said as she led her guest through the clutter to the kitchen.  What her guest thought remained unspoken.  Maybe she thought he was part of the displaced furniture.  She too gave Bill a glance and followed her hostess to the kitchen.

     Bill completed dressing.  It must be time to go back to school, he thought.  He made his excuses for leaving and headed back to school.

      Flowers rather than a nude model might have been a better means of celebrating the new carpet, Bill decided.  But one thing for sure, it was one piece of carpet that neither of them would forget.        

Wet Spring, Dry Fall

     The best wheat crop I have ever raised resulted from 5.75 inches of rain in April and May.  A heavy wet snow on May 1 isn’t included in that total, since the rain gauge really couldn’t record the snow.

     Since May, things have slowed.  June provided not quite 2 inches.  July recorded less than one half inch.  It was nice to have a dry harvest.

    Now it is time to plant wheat and a little moisture would certainly be appreciated.  The last good rain was August 3, one and one fourth inches.  Since then, Mother Nature has bestowed only a half inch.

     September came and went with a big fat zero for precipitation.  That doesn’t bode well for wheat planting.  It has been too warm for September as well.

     I made a test run with the drills on September 8, but judged it too dry.  Some wheat did come up, but a lot didn’t sprout, thus confirming my judgment.

    

      I resumed planting on the 28^th, figuring it will take some moisture to get the crop up.  I’m gambling that the moisture will do as well on the already-planted seeds as it will for those planted after it rains.

      The danger for seeds planted before it rains is too hard of a rain will either silt in the rows or crust over.  A rain that comes too hard and fast will wash the top of the rows down into the furrows.  The silt may bury the seed so deep the blade can’t emerge.  Hot weather following a hard rain can create a crust on top of the soil that the seedlings can’t penetrate.  Replanting will be a necessity in either case.

    The third possibility is continued drought.  In that case, I have done the best thing I can, roughed up the surface with the drill rows, which will help prevent wind erosion, dust bowl conditions.

      A few other factors influenced the decision to plant in the dry soil.  First, I have never planted so late.  In 1984 or 85, I replanted a few acres in November. 

      That was another dry fall like this one.  When I was about a day or two from being done, there came a shower of rain, about a quarter of an inch.  Everything I had planted up to that point came up.  Something like thirty acres planted after that shower didn’t do so well.

      We got some rain and snow in late October.  In November, it had melted and dried enough to get the tractor and drills into the field.  So I replanted that thirty acres in November.

      It never emerged.  The seed sprouted and tried to come up, but it died when a cold snap froze the ground, and the seedling, too.  I plowed that thirty acres and planted Prozo millet in May of the next year.  November wheat planting didn’t work very well.   

     What did I learn from that experience?  In October, it can snow.  Snow and cooler weather keep the soil moist, perhaps too moist for tractor and drill.  By the time the ground dries enough to plant, it could be too late to plant.  It would be better to have the seed in the ground if it’s going to snow and stay wet.

      Then there is superstition, maybe.  Tradition says you plant aboveground crops from the new moon to the full moon.  I need to be done planting wheat before the middle of October when the full moon occurs.

      The factors have been weighed and the decision made.  I mounted the old tractor and put the wheat seeds fairly deep into some pretty dry ground.  Time will tell if I made the right decision.

     Consolation comes in two old sayings.  Many of the old neighbors say, after agonizing over a decision, “It won’t matter fifty years from now.” It won’t.

     The other is an old rhyme:  “Plant in the dust and your bins will bust”.  Watch out old granary.

      (For more on the old tractor and drills, see http://50farm.blogspot.com/2012/09/planting-wheat.html.)