23 September 2007

Farming Questions

When we first moved here a month ago, I loved driving past all the vibrant green cornfields and beanfields. It's cool to be in the middle of agriculture - sort of helps me remember where the food comes from, ya know?

But now I'm driving past bone-dry, yellow fields of corn and beans. It sure looks like the plants are dead (but I'm not a farmer, so I could be mistaken). And I know my own lawn isn't exactly growing much, which is cool because I don't have to mow it very often (and I don't need to eat the grass).

But the dry yellow crops leave me with many questions. Are the crops really as dead as they look, or is this what it's supposed to look like this time of year? And if they really did dry up and die, is irrigation really that expensive, difficult, etc (i.e. more expensive than losing the whole crop)? Or is this an area where irrigation is normally not needed, but Global Warming came along this summer and that extra two degrees dried up all the crops? Or is this just a normal part of farm life - some years, the crops get all dried up, so you try again next year? How does the economics of this work?

Any thoughts?

4 comments:

mandy said...

The very, very simple answer:

The beans have to get to a certain level of dryness so that when they are harvested they can be separated from the rest of the plant.

The corn is definitely feed corn for cows or pigs, and is chopped up when it's all dryed out.

So no worries. Everything is as it should be out there in Ohio. ;)

Enjoy the fall foliage for us; we're not seeing any here in Cally. But I'm pretty sure that's normal.;)

Dan said...

Hey, thanks, Mandy! That's a relief. :)

And yeah, the leaves are just starting to turn colors here, in a couple spots... I doubt it'll be as striking as NY & VT, but should be quite pretty none the less...

revolution said...

when i moved out to the country, i had to learn the difference between field corn and normal corn the hard way. i went out to the field, picked some corn, cooked it and ate it. it just didn't taste right. that's when i learned the difference.


revolutionfl.com

Unknown said...

Hi

Can you tell me the name for this?

An egg is fertilized. The hen lays this egg. Something goes wrong and for some reason the egg cannot hatch (perhaps it was too cold or something like that). Does this type of egg have a special name in English?

I am trying to translate it into English but I can't find the word anywhere.

Thanks