John Deere

This is a project I stitched of an old tractor, but when I look at the image, it puts my memory in rewind...



Edit: You may find a free download of this pattern here: http://www.thecrossstitchermagazine.com/Projects/Free/johndeere.pdf

This takes me back to the days when I was very young, with gardens, fields of corn, and pastures. I can smell the fresh air. There were no nearby highways, so you could actually hear the birds singing.
I remember the corn "shocks" as we called them. After all the corn was gathered, cooked and canned, there would be some ears of corn left on the stalk but they were left behind because the kernels were starting to dry out and not good for eating, for humans, that is.
They were left as winter food for the cows and horses or mules when we had them. Sometimes we only had one cow which was our milk source. I remember a mule which was sometimes used for plowing the garden.
After the corn was cut, we stood it up in shocks. It was gathered up in bunches, and stacked straight up, spread out at the bottom and tied at the top with bailing twine. It was in the shape of a tee-pee. This was a drying process and sometimes left in the field like this until the animals needed it.
We "kids" would make sure one or two of them were tied high enough that we could go into the bottom of the shock and open it up like a tee-pee and play inside. I guess we didn't think about snakes and spiders.
I wonder how many others did this as a child. I'm thinking there were probably many children who did this if they grew up in the country as I did.