• Monday-What'sUP July 22 - 11:10 pm

It's hay making time in the Copper Country and E. Neil Harri has been up in the air scouting things out for us in the Golf Course Road area between Calumet and Lake Linden-Hubbell. In the top photo today, you can just make out a pattern the freshly mown hay makes in the farmer's field below. Then when we zoom in, you can see a bit more detail of the design this farmer created without even realizing he had done so. Looks like a maze from this high up!

Neil's third photo is just down the road from the first shot and gives us a "birds eye view" of the Hughes Farm, operated by Gary and Pat Hughes. They have some of the sweetest strawberries, I've ever tasted and are grown with no chemical sprays. In fact, all of the produce you can buy from the Hughes' is naturally grown and raised, so you need not worry when you're biting into the summer's bounty from this farm... all you'll be tasting is the goodness of whatever fruit or veggie you've purchased. No additives, just pure Copper Country flavor!

Way too cool! Neil strikes again! I love it!!!

Very nice! Thanks for the shots and the info!!

Me thinks Aliens made that pattern in the hay field.

The smell of fresh cut hay, one of the better smells of living on a farm!! We do our own hay for our horses.

I spent one summer in the 50's working on the Franz Zeims vegetable/fruit farm in Lake Linden..We would plant, hoe, deliver to locals. One reward was that when we got to the end of the hoeing of the strawberry rows we got to dip into the Trap Rock River. Mom always bought eggs etc from the farms shown in todays pictures above Hubbell on the way to Calumet.

I spent many summers making hay; first the old-fashined way with loose hay, spreading it in the barn, and then, later with hay bales...boy, did it sting when you got into the sauna after a day of making hay...yeow!!

Looks like a fun place to play.

A big money making project around NW Illinois has always been detasseling corn. My kids all made good money every summer. But what a rough job! They earned every penny of it. They'd fight to see who got the shower first when they got home! But some of their money helped finance their week at the county fair up the road. Even those memories are falling away today. Not many kids now are willing to work that hard under those conditions. We weren't farmers but we were country people.What artist patterns in those great photos. Thanks again.

Hooray for the "natural" food farmers. It's hard 24/7/52/yrs work. We appreciate them. We need them. We are grateful for them.

we used to have a small farm with pigs and geese when i was 10. it is hard work to keep everything going. though i was young when we had these animals i still had to help out and all. best thing was me and my younger sister rode the pigs and the neighbor kids tried it and the pigs dumped them in the mud!! these geese used to grab the backs of my sweatshirts or jackets and try to fly behind me ...it was a sight to see. more than once we would form a chain and touch the electric fence and whomever wasn't holding tight enough got the biggest shock ever...this happened to my younger sister when she was 8 years old and she cried, but she had the guts to get back in the chain and do it again. i don't know if i would do that now here umm 15 years later haha.

Ms Katie, oh those county fair memories! Our daughter would show her horses, Tia and Doll on saturday, on Sunday she would show her ponies and gernseys. Sunday morning we trailered her ponies to the fairgrounds, unload Misty and Flirt, tie them to a friends trailer, head home for the guernseys, Lady Bug and Buttermilk to bring them up to the fairgrounds. So Sundays we had 2 ponies on one side of our trailer and the guernseys tied on the other. Sunday evening would be check in time for the cows and monday was the dairy show. The cows were released late tuesday. Michelle lived in that dairy barn with the other 4-H and FFA kids from Sun. nite thru tuesday late afternoons. Wonderful and rich memories!

hey really nice hay

Ms Janie weren't those some fun times, the county fair!? Always wanted to write a book about them. Everything from corndogs,to judging cows, chickens, pies,school projects,flowers and fresh vegetables. Some fun times of flirting teens, summer romances (hopefully the teens), tractor pulls and stage entertainment. Meeting neighbors and old friends you hadn't seen all year. Whoa, must be getting old with all the memories. ha-ha

Here in the heart of seed corn country, it used to be THE Summer job for teenage kids; relatively high pay for a few weeks hard work. But no more. Not many of them are willing to do the work, and some were difficult to manage. Now it is mostly migrant workers. They work hard with no argument and seem thrilled with the money. Many families return every year, and a few have stayed on for full time jobs with the seed companies.

Maybe the strawberry growers of the copper country should take a trip to California and teach them how to grow GOOD strawberries. Shortly before the local berries were ripe I bought a carton of California strawberries; hard as rocks and tasteless.

amen dave, altough i can't have strawberries now cuz of food allergies, but yeah they always have been that way lol can't beat the local berries as many say. i have seen some still selling berries around town.

Daveofmohawk, (Thaw before eating)he,he. Local strawberries in CA are just like locals there, delicious. But, picked too early and then shipped = TRASHberries, no taste or smell!