Tearing a bill open as I walked back from the mailbox, I mentally went through the stuff I bought, reasoning with relief that I didn’t use that card overly much. Imagine my shock when I saw a $3,000-plus amount due. I was speechless.

Taking it back to my office where I could gather my senses, I spread everything out on my desk. Astonishingly, I saw a charge of $3,016.95 for a ski resort vacation in Colorado.

We very much enjoy the Amish community. They are a life-giving, generous, friendly group who seem to thoroughly delight in serving people.

With a freewill offering, one can enjoy a breakfast hosted by the these sweet folks, located in rural Marion. Homemade pancakes accompanied by scrambled eggs (with ham and cheese), ham slices, porky links, orange juice and coffee are on the menu, along with a melt-in-your-mouth glazed doughnut.

“The cows are out!” Four dreaded words a farmer loathes to hear. During the course of our years of dairying we did hear (or holler) those words a time or two.

When we were dairy farming, we bred our cows, keeping the heifer calves to replenish our herd, and selling the bull calves. Once in a while a heifer couldn’t, for one reason or another, get bred. That one would be raised until she could be butchered.

It startled me to slam on my brakes as fast as I could. Looming larger than life next to my car window appeared a small doe, darting out of nowhere as they’re prone to do. Before I had a half-second to even think, she thumped-thumped against the passenger door behind me and limped off the highway, thankfully before any other car hit her.

“Hey, do you wanna go to Farm Progress Days?” says he.

Inside murmuring. Ah, not really.

After a moment’s hesitation, I brightly suggested, “Can we take the side-by-side?”

I figured if I was going to be forced to walk around acres of uneven territory (harvested alfalfa fields), I’d have some fun getting there.

“Sure.”