Farm Story Friday

  PDA Police Badges PDA Police Para Sempre! (24 March 2023) Two years ago Caleb, Sydney, and I traveled to the Denver Airport to bring a young man named Cameron Rusch to our home for a visit before Sydney began her missionary service. During the hour drive to Colorado Springs, Caleb saw a need to ensure adherence to his strict public display of affection (PDA) guidelines. A younger sibling council convened, a dire need was identified, and the PDA Police (PDAP) organization was born… Caleb identifying the need for PDAP… Or, had PDAP existed previously…?  …Forty years ago on a remote dairy farm in southeast Idaho a young boy ran incessantly from couch to window and back again. The excitement of the upcoming visit was almost too much for this seven-year old boy. Sure he had seen girls before, but girls belong at school and church meetings, not on the farm. And under no circumstances should they be spoken to… Roger was not alone in his excitement. All six boys under the current ag...

Kelsey, Sydney, Caleb, Megan, April, and hordes of stuffed animals taking over the bathtub. Bad Guy! (25 November 2022) Recently I have been thinking about bad guys. As you know, I’m the master at identifying bad guys. You should also know that a more proper title for the bad guy in a movie or story is antagonist. But “antagonist” doesn’t roll off my tongue as easily when I have to quickly identify the bad guy of any given movie. As humans, when we talk of others, we often identify them as either good or bad. This seems to particularly be the case in the media and politics. Media finds it easier to sell a provocative headline (e.g. Bad guys hurt cute Kitty!) than a boring headline (e.g. Doctors remove the thorn from the cute kitty’s foot, causing pain in the process.). And politicians find it easier to get re-elected if they tell everyone how bad their opponent is.  But after much contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that everyone has made some good decisions and some poor ...

Figure showing approximate location of real vehicle top velocities in the Mach continuum (drawings courtesy of Greenwood kids). Turn Up The Music! (6 November 2022) After a three-year hiatus, and since I had some time on an international flight, I decided it was time to post another story, you know, for all my blog fans:). Elder Richard G. Scott visited the Brazil, Rio North Mission while I was serving there. I was too far from the mission home to attend, but his talk on Revelation really affected our mission. He taught that we should write down, and then do our best to follow the inspiration that comes into our hearts and minds. Soon many of us missionaries were carrying around “cadernos de inspiraçao” (inspiration notebooks) so we would always be prepared to write down and follow through on whatever inspiration God saw fit to send our way. In the words of President Nelson, we should “Hear Him”. While I am clearly imperfect at Hearing Him, I have been extremely blessed every time I ha...

Grandpa Hartley Greenwood with his cows. Select Sires (18 October 2019) Today for church we watched the Sunday afternoon session of the October General Conference. The thing about watching conference is that two individuals can listen to the same talk and each receive a unique message suited to their particular needs. As I was thinking about today’s farm story, I realized that this is sometimes true in academic situations as well. To demonstrate this I will share what others have learned from my aerodynamics lessons. During a lesson on airplane thrust and power, Megan learned how power is related to the thrust and velocity of an aircraft, what thrust curves look like, and a little bit about Junie B. Jones... Megan’s notes. During a lesson on oblique shocks, Kelsey learned about a Mr. Squiddles that has to climb a big mountain but then he gets to slide down the back side of the mountain where apparently he meets the love of his life and they have lots of little Squ...

Megan, Sydney, Kelsey, and Caleb at the Pumpkin Patch “farm”. How to Shoot a Cow… and other important skills (11 October 2019) I hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. Caleb informed me today that the temperature in Baghdad (100 degrees) is 85 degrees warmer than Colorado Springs, and that’s in the evening after we’ve cooled down about 5 or 6 degrees! According to my weather app, the temperature in Idaho is about the same as Colorado. I’m getting cold just thinking about coming home to 15-degree weather! But I guess as long as I don’t have to go outside to milk cows in the cold I’ll be okay. I noticed two things in the Embassy DFAC (dining facility) last week that reminded me of the farm. The first occurred when I entered the DFAC for lunch and medical personnel invited me into an adjoining room where they gave me my annual flu shot. This reminded me of shooting cows… with medicine (or oxytocin), of course. Demonstration of how to hold the needle (sorry, I didn’t ...

View of coastline from our home in California. It sure was beautiful running along the coast! Go Cowboys! (4 October 2019) I hope everyone is having a great week. Sydney’s recent heroics on the football field reminded me of glory years of North Gem High School sports. I couldn’t find any pictures, or any actual evidence of my sports domination, so you’ll just have to take my word for it:). Sydney flexing and showing off her #20 (same number I wore!) after dominating in a game of football. My brothers and I all loved sports at North Gem High School because the school was small enough that we got a lot of playing time on the football and basketball teams. I also played on the American Fork High School football team my senior year after we moved to Utah. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t play much. Since we didn’t have cross country at North Gem, I didn’t really know what that was. If I had known, I probably would rather have run on the cross country team, and would probably hav...