I sing the song of a land of golden fields and a mighty river…

The sun was just past midday, the sky was blue like the Aegean and the clouds that fluffed their way across it sent a living shadow which moved over the prairie that we were walking through. The summer heat was hot but not oppressive, a few farm houses blocked the view of the corn fields that stretched as far as the eye could see.  Of course Xena was complaining about seeing how far we still had to go, but I thought there was peacefulness to the open expanse. We were getting close to a river because the flat expanse was being replaced by trees and hills that followed a line going from east to west.

We came across a man sitting on a log talking to himself. It seems that he was trying to figure out a way to help the farmers plow their fields.  Apparently with the tough prairie soil of rich black dirt and clay, the plows were constantly getting stuck and breaking. Xena told him about how several days earlier we were at a tailor shop and they were using these metal needles like the ones we encountered in Redditch to sew through thick leather. They sharpened and polished them through a process that used sand and that maybe with some adjustments he could use the same kind of polished steel on the plows. At first he looked at Xena like she was Medusa, but then he threw back his head and laughed, then gave her a hug and said that it would work. Then he started talking about shaped moldboard and how it would be the first cast steel plow, whatever…All I knew was that John Deere was so thankful that he invited us for a meal and told us all about the Moline area, how this was the only place the mighty Mississippi river ran east to west, instead of north to south, and that Blackhawk , the Chief of the Sac Nations, grew up where the Rock and the Mississippi rivers converge and most importantly we were going to

be seeing a lot more prairies and corn fields on our journey. 

With that, we decided to head north in time to see the leaves change, as well

as for a change of scenery.