Let the Chips Fly Where They May

Harvest of fresh-yet-to-dry-out

Tonight my friends, we ride.

"This evening begins the annual Chatham Jaycees Cow Chip Roundup."

Wranglers on the prowl

Our legion of experienced chip wranglers will ride off to round up the 2019 crop of cow chips for the 2019 Illinois Cow Chip Throw! Wranglers round the chips up, then our chip technicians humanely cull the herd choosing only the best, ripest, and most aerodynamically perfect chips.

The chips are then transported to our one of a kind Cow Chip Confinement Unit (CCCU) patent pending, to rest and undergo a final inspection by one of the Chip Masters, primarily the Most Reverend Donald Peck.

After wind tunnel testing, those special chips are ready for their moment in the sun on July 20 at the Chatham Jaycees Sweet Corn and Cow Chipping Festival.

  

Painting CCCU to prevent satellite spying

Highly trained professional

Security personnel

Why do we go through such an elaborate and mostly fictionalized process?

Because we love you. And we put a little love in every chip. (For legal reasons we are unable at this time to describe that process.)"

    

Future  Chipper

Musicians play to encourage cows to produce. Earth, Wind, and Fire could not appear, altho they were requested.

Staff of Collection and Security Personnel

   

King of the Sweetcorn 

When the festival is over, excess cow chips disposed, celebratory bottles hoisted, this is what is left.

Farm in Chatham, IL

This is a follow-up from June 30, 2019 post. Now the time is upon us and I believed that you needed to know the new info. 

P.S.  Information and news releases provided photos and information for this post have been provided by the Chatham Jaycees Cow Chipping committee. Thanks go to the Most Reverend Donald Peck, who has been quoted as saying   "I was the Cow Chip Consultant, CCC. I have PhD in the business." As he is my brother, I can attest to the accuracy of this statement.

It Is Time

These are not my boxes--can you imagine if?

Sorting through boxes leads to glimpses back to the past.  It still amazes me to see those glimpses and then to remember when they were important.

Teaching was my profession for two decades leaving me with boxes and boxes of that life stacked on sturdy shelves.  I can open my garage door and look at those boxes, see the labels, and think “Do I still have that?”, and then “Why do I still have that?”

We are contemplating moving—more just contemplating.  Kids are grown and gone.  Their belongings have moved with them, with a few exceptions.

With that, I know I must take a deep breath, gird the loins, and face down the lion, which are those boxes. 

It is time.