What will November bring?

I sit in my cozy kitchen and write this column for not only the first issue of November but the first in the Dodge County Independent.  

Looking back, for many years those living in the area and others who moved away, continued to receive the local newspaper to let them know about their former hometown.

For many years the paper went by the name of West Concord Enterprise but that was changed a few years back when it merged with the Claremont News and the name changed to News Enterprise. As of Nov. 1 both names will become a part this town’s history. I sit here writing and as I do so, hear spaced drops falling from the roof from the t rain that fell during the night and early morning. 

The rain is causing farmers mixed feelings since it was so dry and dusty it was a blessing, but it is stopping the corn harvest yet not completed.  I look at this month of October and think of all the lovely sunny warm days it gave that we enjoyed so much. For those in government jobs Oct. 12 was a non-workday set to honor Columbus and Halloween the last day. It is also the last of Daylight Savings Time and the ending of the fall wild turkey hunting season.  

Many turkey hunters went out in the early morning dark to sit on a log or in a blind with high hopes of seeing a turkey or several turkeys moving their way. Fall hunts allow the taking of both male and female birds. 

Where a few may have been lucky with their hunt completed on the first day, many were returning after many hours of watching and waiting empty handed and with the season ending saying better luck come spring hunt.  

On my farm there are two less birds with friend Jim, who doesn’t believe in taking a female even it is allowed in fall, came in on the fourth day of hunting with a Jake and friend Larry and after a number of early morning 16-mile drives to hunt and returned in late afternoon saying they are there and I hear them and even see a few in the distance but never coming my way. Then finally on the cold morning of Oct. 22 three hens walked his way at 8 o’clock. He aimed for the hen with a beard which few hens have and his aim was good and soon in the cold morning was on his way home a happy hunter.  

This unlucky rare hen has a place to perch waiting for her on a tree limb on the wall of Larry’s home next to a Jake mounted that has been alone for many years waiting for this to happen and while Larry was a happy hunter it will make this a happy Jake no longer being perched alone on a limb. 

I look back on October 2015 as a lovely month and do wonder what November will bring as I know and hope it will also be a lovely month.

But like many others I remember the Halloween trick storm of 1991 that we woke up to the first day of November to the early start of winter with a power outage that lasted for many days.  This early snow never left till spring.  Another early winter that only a few yet around can remember took place on Nov. 11, 1940, known as the Armistice Day storm and this happened 75 years ago and it has never been forgotten.

What this November will give us will we yet do not know but feel blessed if be as lovely as October.