Michael and I had a chance to visit with Dr. Herr recently. It was good to hear that David is back home and on the mend. He was fortunate to receive the excellent trauma care that he did. It was also great to read in Mrs. Priebe's column that so many of our local neighbors were generous in their support of David and his family.

The weather still continued to play a major role in our life here at Sandhill the past couple of weeks.

One of the thunder storms brought us a lightning strike on the road right at the bottom of the front stairs at the White House. Most of us were in the house that morning and it certainly shook us up a bit. Fortunately, the lightning and the heavy rains we experienced didn't cause any damage.

The only thing that fell victim to all the rain was our plans for a "Once In A Blue Moon" bonfire which was originally scheduled for August 1. We shifted it to last Tuesday evening after the weekly dinner with Dancing Rabbit. Thanks to Renay's dad French for providing the scrap wood and stacking it so nicely.

The bonfire was a lot of fun and we had a nice evening.

We have had another visitor here the past week. Rochelle is originally from South Africa and has lived in the U.S. for the past five years. She recently graduated from college in Southern California. It turned out that we already know her older brother, Craig, who has been at Sandhill a couple of times. As a matter of fact, he was a visitor at the same time that Michael and I were visiting in August of 2001.

We also had another visit from Susie's friend Zach, who lives in Kirksville. He bicycled here and had supper with us last Monday night.

A group of middle-school students who are participating in the Joseph Baldwin Academy, a summer enrichment program at Truman State, came over on July 26th for a tour of the farm. I always enjoy the interaction with the student groups that I show around. They ask good questions and have a lot of interest in what we are doing.

Our intern Jayd took a "mini-vacation" in Kirksville for a few days this week. Jayd stayed with a friend and spent some time on the Truman campus, even getting a chance to play music on a "good" piano a couple of times. Our old upright piano in the dining room is definitely not in the same class with its keys that don't work and lack of tuning.

We are in the midst of food processing mania right now. The supply of tomatoes seems infinite and the other vegetables aren't far behind. We are lucky in having members and interns who are willing to put in the very long hours to get it all done. It's nice to go down into the root cellar and see the shelves starting to fill up again.

Honey harvest began late this past week and it looks like we are going to have an outstanding yield. This is a nice change from last year's light harvest. Susie and Kristen assisted Stan and Gigi with bringing the frames in. We have two bee yards on the farm and another at a neighbor's farm. Honey extraction is going on right now at Sugar Shack and it will take several days to finish the process.

It is definitely easy to sense that the year is moving along. We had a community meeting this afternoon and spent some of the time talking over plans for plans for both the sorghum harvest and our sorghum festival. It's amazing to think that both are just around the corner in September.