Original headline: Circles baffle farmers
Pat Esper didn't give a second thought to the 4-foot crop circle he combined over while harvesting wheat from one of his family farm's fields.
It was just some teens causing trouble, he thought.
But getting wind of another circle about 100 feet from the small circle, this one measuring about 50 feet across, quickly brought the other formation to mind. Both were discovered in the Howell Township field, nearly perfectly circular, with the wheat compacted to the ground in a counter-clockwise spiral.
"It's just like you see on TV," Esper said.
The larger circle also has two mysterious protrusions from the circle, sticking out east and west. The western protrusion, a small rectangle hanging off of the circle, is larger than its opposite.
As best as Esper can figure, the crop circles were put there between one and two weeks ago. A farmer came by to spray the fields two weeks ago and saw nothing. During the next application, he discovered the larger circle.
With the wheat dry and ready to harvest, anyone walking through the field would leave some kind of a trail behind, Esper said. The field is marked with tire tracks from trucks and farm equipment, but not with trails through the surrounding wheat or footprints in the dirt.
"This is kind of advanced for some kids to be doing it," he said. "Whoever did it took some time to get the wheat to be all laid out."
That field was the first one to be harvested. Esper has neither discovered any other circles in that 80-acre field or in a smaller wheat field nor heard about circles in other farms, including those of the farmer who sprayed the field and discovered the large circle.
"When you cut the crop, you cover every inch of the ground," he said. "I was looking once I found this."
Esper's family runs Rocky Ridge Farms, working about 1,000 acres in the county.
"We don't have time to do something like this," he said. "We work from seven in the morning to nine or 10 at night to get the wheat harvested."
Esper said his father, Mike, is more of a believer in the unexplainable, so his family has been joking with him about waiting for the visitors to take him away. If the circles are the work of pranksters, he doesn't expect them to come forward and solve the mystery.
Jim Berry, whose property ends just feet from the smaller circle, attributed the circle to deer or turkeys - until he walked out and saw it. "That is odd," he said.
He said he hasn't heard or seen anything strange recently.
