…that’s where the tall corn grows.
My wife taught me that song years ago and regrets it every time I sing it back to her when we have just crossed the border on our way back to one of her family reunions. I’ve been in Iowa since Friday night. We passed lots of brown corn stalks on our way south through Minnesota. Its better here in the heart of the tall corn.
On Saturday we got a lot of farm talk from her enthusiastic cousins. Cousin Dave who farms some of her property told us how he took the lessons he learned at Iowa State from the Ag Prof who was called “Chickenman” to start his own farm with 10,000 chickens. The 9,000 eggs he and his wife harvested every day helped him buy his acreage.
Cousin Kent took us on a tour of local farm fields and showed us where clay and sand and soil that had lost nitrogen in the heavy rains of the early growing season caused nitrogen loss leading to brown stalks and stunted ears. Later he showed me how his harvester can be configured to take in everything from corn to soy beans to wheat. Its a monster machine but not the biggest you can find combing America’s farm country.
We’re heading to Kent’s house today for the reunion. I’ve already had a huge dinner of chicken and one of steak and today’s meal of roast pork loin will send me home tomorrow fat and happy and determined to pick up the semi starvation diet Claudia and I tried out for about seven weeks last Spring. It took ten pounds off me and Iowa has done its best to put them back on.
As for our trip back we’ll be traveling through the same forests of brown we saw last year. Apparently global warming is making parts of Minnesota resemble the on and off again drought stricken countries of the Sahel in Africa. It won’t be good for Minnesota’s native fish either. And NPR says rabbits are caught in the cross snow hares too.
So is Climate change just another conspiracy to stoke our paranoia? Maybe. I love the comment section of this story. NPR listeners are among the most educated and they offer lots of reasons to be paranoid.
Soon I’ll be heading back to Duluth where the Milwaukee Mafia known as Johnson Controls runs our schools……….into the ground.
As I’ve always said, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me!”
