Tornadoes and high wind weather phenomenons can leave fields littered with debris and family belongings. But other field finds deep within the soil profile can tell a bigger story.
We recently asked farmers what’s the most random thing they’ve found in their fields. Here are a few of the responses.
1. Balloon with notes from a children’s classroom
Fred West, a Delaware farmer, was plowing his field one evening when he stumbled upon a balloon with a note attached to it.
“The balloon came from a Sunday school class 500 miles west of where I was,” West said. “I sent the balloon back, then all the kids wrote me notes saying they were praying for me—an awesome memory!”
2. Hand grenade
In a nursey in Manhattan, Kan., Agronomist Daniel Wright says he found something unexpected.
“The hand grenade was unexploded,” Wright says. “But we’re right across the road from Ft. Riley.”
3. Antique glass bowl (perfectly intact!)
Shannon Lolmaugh was 8 years old when she spotted what she thought, was a small, shiny penny in her family’s kiwi field near Lemoore, Calif. Had Shannon’s curiosity not spiked, she would have missed an antique bowl that was resting 3 ft. below the soil surface.
4. Cemetery
“I was riding through our brush looking for stray cattle and found a whole cemetery from the 1800s. My horse stepped on one of the headstones—that’s how we found it,” says Joe Miewes, a Colby, Kan., farmer. “We ended up finding about 15 graves. Several were kids that died at birth and up to 5 years old. I can’t imagine what some of them lived through.”
5. Artificial Christmas Tree
Near Brown City, Mich., Precision Planting Regional Manager Jason Koning says he once found the holiday spirit in the furrows.