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I had a bit of time on hand on Sunday; actually the whole day. I felt like getting out, but I didn't particularly feel like doing a lot of hammering, prying and clambering about, so I decided to head out to the fields, since this is the time when the farmers plow up a lot of them. I've discovered a "collection" of fields over a few years of sleuthing around the Geisingen and Blumberg areas, so I figured I'd do the tour again. The only thing which is a little strenuous about this kind of activity is bending over and standing up again. Crisscrossing fields in a grid pattern can get a bit boring too by the end of the day, but the air is fresh, the birds are singing and the cats are on the prowl. I covered 8 fields over a stretch of about 7 hours - they lay quite far apart and I have to drive from one to the next - and 5 of them had a few things worth taking. The thing about field finds is that a lot of the fossils laying there are pretty weathered, so a lot gets left behind, but there are almost always a few thing which could do with a closer look in the workshop. Here's what I took home with me. The ones in the first 2 crates come from a pile of blocks which were stacked at the edge of a field near Geisingen. They had obviously been recently cleared off by the farmer. I whacked open a lot of them, thereby discovering some ammonites within a few, as illustrated in the second photo. The stone is pretty hard, lots to remove, and there's some puzzle work to do, so I'll probably save these until last. I'm not even sure if they'll survive the treatment. I started rummaging through the finds today and decided to begin with the ones at the bottom right, since the matrix is relatively soft and easier to work. I chose the one in 2 pieces where you can see the chambers to begin with. First I removed the matrix from the smaller piece and then glued the two pieces together Then I worked a bit more with the air pen, decided to remove the rest of the matrix surrounding the fossil and had a go at it with the air abrader in order to see what shape the shell was in. So far so good...the rest of the work was done rocking back and forth between pen and abrader. I find it's pretty good for a field find, although I still have a few gaps to fill in with stone meal. I'm also not sure about the species, but I'll figure that out later. I'll post this again once it's finished and also the others as I get them done.