Janie: Maybe you're right, I don't give the average farmer enough credit. I have gotten myself into trouble before by assuming all farmers were like my father and his brothers. I can't imagine my father ever keeping records of frost dates and the like, and he never mentioned that anyone else in his family did.

In my lifetime, he was living in a city 200 miles north of the farm where he grew up, so I don't suppose the local knowledge he had accumulated would have done him much good. On the farm, he had raised corn and tobacco; in the city, he raised tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes. I don't remember anything else.