Alto, Louisiana.
John Owen and Dan worked together at Wolf Creek early on in Dan’s illustrious ski patrolling career. John had maybe the most interesting off-season job of them all, he is a Louisiana rice farmer. We spent yesterday afternoon with his wife Anne and their sons Bob and Pat before John came home covered from head to toe in grain bin dust. After a quick rinse off he drove us out to the farm for the grand tour. The Owen farm is 1900 acres of which 1200 is rice and the rest is a hodgepodge of wheat, soybeans and even some old pecan trees. John and Anne took us out for our first mudbug meal at Cormier’s. Along with his boys we put away 25lbs of crawfish. John even got us T-shirts from the restaurant that have instructions on how to eat them, (this is for Dan’ benefit he didn’t get the hang of “grab it, pinch it, peel it, suck it”, and almost starved).
Anne, John and a bucket o' bugs.
The Boeuf River.
Dan and John spent the evening reminiscing over the good ‘ol days and threatening to break out their explosives training to blow up some pesky beaver dams that interfere with rice farming. Fortunately they were all talk and no beavers were harmed in the making of this post. This morning we visited John out at the only high point on the entire farm. John showed us the grain bins and his huge combine. Dan had serious toy envy, our rig isn’t half the size of that combine.
Dan and John atop the Grain bin.
A dry rice field.
A flooded field.
The grain bin.
Irrigating the fields.
The grain bin fan.
Nothing brings me back to childhood like the smell of honeysuckle, which is everywhere around here.
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