I found myself West bound this morning on State Route 113 in glorious fall foliage pushing my truck to the farm. Empty coffee cup in hand, lost in thoughts as the only sound being the wipers swishing back and forth removing a misty rain from my windshield. Pulling into the old farmstead found me stealing a cup of coffee from the kitchen and then settling in on the couch with my gentleman farmer friend whose short on time but still my guiding light. Silence and then random conversations about 8,000 channels and still not a damn thing on TV. Talking of soybean prices and me pestering them on when I am due on the freezer beef list to get my fill of farm raised beef. Talk of guns, ammo and old Navy friends. Talks of Hospitals and drug treatments. More silence. Conversations that mean the world to me and have since I have been blessed coming here since 1993. I have been stopping out to this farm for over 20 years and each time my friend and I talk it's as if we've know each other a lifetime. There is something about being in the military that gives one a unique ability to have long time, deep relationships with long or sudden gaps between seeing one another or talking. Soon, I'll have a eternal gap separating my friend and I due to his battle with cancer but I am just not ready, nor is anyone who's lucky enough to be related, friends or work with my farmer friend... I have always come away from time at this farm a better man and happy. It's magical. Now, for the past year since learning of his cancer each minute there is even more special, I just want to stay here forever in this scene sitting on the porch with my buddy and drink coffee and BS the afternoon away!

After I took my leave today, I wandered out to the old barn and absorbed the hundred plus years of energy this thing exudes. Pulling open the massive and heavy doors letting light spill in and cats went flying into the rafter high bales of straw and hearing the cows in pens down below I immediately felt better. Todays PaD is the usual SPS (self portrait Saturday) but forever burned into my mind not because of the photo but where this is shot at.