Morning all and welcome to Friday. I am kind of excited actually. If I work diligently and effectively then I can get everything that has to be done to day completed by lunch time and then spend the rest of the day just writing. Which sounds glorious. So let’s get this day started shall we? Writing prompt here we come!
This was fun. I kind of like the bowing to peer pressure without going standard. It could be fun to work with at some point.
Friday, June 11th: That year, he decided to plant sunflowers.
That year he decided to plant sunflowers. He didn’t expect much. In fact he expected the seed he put in the ground would simply be eaten by birds. There was a perverse humor in that for him. When growing up each year it was his job to build the scarecrows and help keep them away from the fields.
Even when he left for college he built the scare crows. Before leaving he checked the ones that managed to survive to the harvest and repaired the existing ones. At Winter break he made additional ones to fill out the gaps.
Even after graduation, where he moved on to his own place and his own job, he ended up spending his holidays building the scarecrows.
But he made his money elsewhere and by the time his parents passed and the farm came to him, he had no need to farm the land, no need to build scarecrows. He sold off most of it so that it could remain in productive use, and because he didn’t want the hassle of dealing with the issues all the unfarmed land might cause.
He kept a small buffer of land around the house though. For the first year he let it lie fallow with only a few volunteer seeds coming up here and there. The following year, grass began to rise and he mowed it religiously to keep the growth low.
But it looked strange to his eyes to look out and see only a long wide stretch of grass where once there were crops. And so the next hear he purchased the sunflower seed. He planted every inch of field still under his domain. He saw many looks of approval when he ventured off of his property. Mostly from his father’s friends and their descendants who still farmed. To let land lie fallow here was considered a sacrilege. By planting seeds, any seeds he was doing his duty by the land and the community.
Thoughts began to shift when they saw what it was he had planted.
As the sunflowers began to rise, they were treated with suspicion. When their yellow petals unfurled, suspicion turned to surprise and a disquiet feeling. He was watch, he knew it. But no one talked to him. He felt the weight of their regard, heavy upon his head and when he could no longer take it, he made a few purchases. The large order from the Agro store made some of the suspicion fade. He may be doing something strange, but he was at least doing something productive.
Knowing that if left in the fields, his sunflowers would draw birds in droves and potentially harm other’s crops, he harvested the heads of the sunflowers before the birds could descend. While he purchased equipment it was for processing not harvesting. To harvest the heads he used a pair of hedge clippers. He earned several blisters for his efforts but suspicion was blunted with his harvest and turned towards curiosity. Curiosity increased as his extractors arrived and he began the process of extracting the sunflower seed oil.
Ten til Midnight 