It's a bird.. no a plane!.. No, definitely a hot air balloon

This morning Arik ran into the office yelling "Holly, you don't want to miss this! And grab a camera!"

Arik never yells... or runs... so I knew this was serious! I grabbed the camera and followed him outside. This is what we saw:

Despite the thick fog, there was no mistake about it: a giant hot air balloon was dipping down onto the Farm. 

Our curiosity got the best of us so we ventured closer...

And closer. We learned they had to do an emergency landing due to the fog and our Farm happened to be the lucky landing ground. A support team on the ground was working on pulling the balloon from a just-harvested-yesterday corn field to a flat, grassy area to make the landing.

 While we waited and watched, we took the opportunity to have a photo shoot in the black-eyed susans: 

In a few minutes, they had the balloon landed safely on the ground, deflated, and packed up on the trailer. 

Before leaving they gave us a Certificate of Appreciation "in grateful acknowledgement for assistance and participation in the art of ballooning" -- basically saying thanks for letting us crash (figuratively) on your land. The thanks really goes out to them, though -- what an exciting, random morning!