Every few days I stand at the base of one of our front yard maples and push a fresh ear of field corn onto a squirrel feeder my friend Joe made for me a few years back.
For some reason, we don’t have many squirrels around our place, but we’re in no short supply of jabbering blue jays and territorial woodpeckers and space-sharing cardinals, and they thoroughly enjoy the bounty that we leave for them a few feet from our watchful eyes.
Our ear corn habit is supported not by runs into town to the local feed store or farm supply shop but from gleaning the fields near our home. My wife and I know we must look strange to passers-by as they blast past us in their cars and trucks, perhaps even appearing a little needy as we stoop and kneel in our old blue jeans and muddy boots to get our free harvest.
But where there’s corn, there’s a way, and we are determined to pick it up before the cold and the rain either ruin it or the marauding bands of itinerant deer that take over the fields at night gobble it up.
The rolling acreage near our home is farmed by a friend, Artie Yeargin. My wife and I have taught his children at the local schools, and my grandparents even worked for his grandparents when they were needed during the potato and strawberry seasons years and years ago. He is a good steward of his land, and I admire the way he mows along the roads that border his fields and how he works hard to prevent erosion and waste. I am also more than happy that he doesn’t care a bit that we walk his fields to kick up and pick up the corn for our feeders.
In what now seems a whole lifetime ago, I used to walk the fields around our home with my grandfather. We carried burlap feed sacks, and spent sunless afternoons gleaning for ear corn to feed his goats and sheep and my pony. We occasionally had a side of beef on the hoof, too, but I never really liked the idea of what eventual fate he usually faced and secretly hoped he’d remain a little too skinny to dispatch to the slaughterhouse. I also recall that I always wore a stocking cap and that my nose ran and that I wore brown Jersey gloves while we gleaned; my grandpa wore his green gum boots and a hunting cap that had flaps he could pull down over his ears. The cornpickers in those days weren’t nearly as efficient as they are now, so we’d come away with considerable loot, knowing that our labor was worth cold hands and a slightly sore back.
Just a week or so ago, Joanie and I were just under way on our customary walk when I spied a single, tantalizing ear of corn where Artie’s combine had merely mashed the stalks down, rather than clipping them off. It was a spot near a corner of his field where he’d had to make a turn.
“Let’s get that ear when we get back,” I told her. “Maybe we can find some more tonight before Artie chisel plows,” I said. I knew we would have a nice sunset to watch whether we found much corn or not, so 40 minutes or so later, we found ourselves in the field hunting for unburied treasure. Experienced gleaners know that you step on the shucks as they lie on the ground to see if they are empty or full, that rarely is a full ear of corn found lying in the sun as if it were tanning itself. The whole process simply involves stepping and stooping, an aerobic exercise that neither of us should avoid. In just a few minutes, we had harvested an unexpected bounty, and since it was warm enough, and we weren’t far from the house, we both pealed off our jackets and began tossing ears into them in hopes that we wouldn’t have to make an extra trip back home to grab a bucket or two.
The word “glean” dates back to the early 14th century and originally may have meant “he selects.” By late in that same period, the English were using the verb to literally mean “to gather grain left in the fields by reapers.” Of course, there are many Biblical references to the practice, the most obvious being the instance when Ruth caught Boaz’s eye as she gleaned his fields for grain. The Law of Moses forbade the corners of the fields to be harvested so they could be gleaned by those who needed it, and the practice is mentioned in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
So, who are the two of us to ignore Scripture and leave the corn to rot in the fields? It seems such a waste.
After a while in the field that day, we actually grew selective. At first, we picked up everything, even the ears whose hard, gold kernels were falling out like diseased teeth, even the ears that were less than half full or that held warped and oddly shaped rows of corn, as if the combine passed it by because it had no taste for imperfection. Eventually, we took only the best-beautiful, full ears — some nearly a foot long that otherwise would have gone to the field mice and mold.
We really have no good place to keep our corn once we pick it up, for it isn’t as simple as tossing it into a plastic trash can or cardboard box. Field corn needs to be dried — one reason why the roar of Artie’s grain bin dryers greets us each morning as we walk out to grab the newspaper or feed our begging cats. It is not, however, an unpleasant sound, for it signals another year gone, a harvest collected, and the return of clear, cold air from the north. If we leave our corn covered or wrapped in plastic for long, we’ll find it sopping wet. The tell-tale signs of rot and mold won’t be far behind.
We know we’ll be robbed of some of our plunder. The same armies of marauding mice that scurry across those nearby fields will attempt a full-scale invasion of our garage and barn to get what grub and warmth they can grab at our expense. The raccoons, before they go into their cold-weather daze, will raid our feeders, too.
But our time walking the fields is well-spent because we get so much more out of it than a bit of corn. But don’t tell our blue jays.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com or c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. He will be signing his newest book, “Sidelines: The Best of the Basketball Stories…” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 12 at the Vigo County Public Library and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 19 at Baesler’s Market. His first book, “The Off Season,” also will be available. Mike’s Web page can be found at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Prospecting in the fields of gold
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
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Authorities: Houston Found Underwater in Tub
Whitney Houston Funeral to Be Invitation Only
Raw Video: Heavy Shelling in Homs, Syria
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Bacteria Keep Swimmers Off Some Fla. Beaches
New Details in Search for Missing Utah Mom
Trial Opens for Ala. Man in Bride's Diving Death
Raw Video: Kim Jong Il Statue Unveiled
Baltimore's 'Crime Stopper' Is a Basketball Star
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Arm Wrestler Not Guilty Plea in Wife's Death
Raw Video: Houston Body Flown From L.A. to N.J.
First Person: Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
Raw Video: Whitney Houston's Last Performance
Obama: Good US-China Ties Help the Whole World
Raw Video: Protesters, Security Clash in Bahrain
And the Winner for Best Super Bowl Ad Is...
Obama's New Budget: The Winners and Losers
School Pays Students to Attend Class
Kim K. Wet, Wild and Natural
Ultimate Tazer Ball is a Shocking New Sport
Shakira Attacked By Sea Lion
Modern day treasure hunter searching for $3 billion prize
What Happened Inside Whitney's Hotel Room?
Saying 'I Love You' With a Sewage Plant Tour
VS Models Wow for V-Day
Olympic Swimmer Proposes on Podium After Big Win
Kate Upton MLB 2K12 Commercial
Watch: Whitney Houston's Golden Hearse
Scarlett Johansson's Bikini P-D-A
Man Allegedly Drowns Wife While Scuba Diving
Glee Pays Tribute to Whitney
Wash. becomes 7th state to okay same-sex marriage
Romijn's 60 Pound Weight Loss
The 'Celebrity Apprentice' Cast Meets Donald Trump
Kissing contest heats up
Hugh Hefner's Son Arrested
Jacqueline Kennedy's personal papers released
Did Tyler Perry Have a Secret Wedding?
