Identifying

[float5]

Who can identify these crops?

[sumac.rhus]

Is the bottom one millet?

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by float5

Who can identify these crops?

My friend David the Crop Doctor can!!



(I'll ask him tomorrow.)

[float5]

I just found that one. Maybe. Sorghum!

[Iowa Dave]

We would call that bottom picture Milo or it is also called grain sorghum. We’d hunt pheasants in it where it was left unpicked. They were very comfortable in there with the cover and food all in one. The pheasants would run out the end, go over about 10 rows and duck back in . Worked good for them until the German Shorthaired Pointers would figure the game out. They grow it in SW Iowa.
Iowa Dave

[dfandrews]

Soy beans and Sorghum

[float5]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

Soy beans and Sorghum

I always see soybeans at a distance so they look different to me from close up. I love yellow soybean fields but usually see green. At least, I think I know when I am looking at yellow soybean fields!

I am used to seeing soybean fields low to the ground. These seem much higher. Maybe a different variety.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by float5

I always see soybeans at a distance so they look different to me from close up. I love yellow soybean fields but usually see green. At least, I think I know when I am looking at yellow soybean fields!

I am used to seeing soybean fields low to the ground. These seem much higher. Maybe a different variety.

Got to talk with my friend Dave today, and mentioned the yellow soybeans. He said it's probably from too much water (unless you're in So.Calif., then it's too little water; similar result!). The dilution inhibits the rate of nutrient absorption. Green is the best color for plants, generally.

[Iowa Dave]

Where we live in East central Iowa, soybeans are widely planted including adjacent to our property every other year and every year as part of the rotation somewhere on our farm ground in Tama County Iowa. They grow about theee feet highb bloom, set pods and mature in about 65 days. By late August and into September the leaves turn yellow, dry up and fall off by the end of September in most years. The stem and seed pods remain and dry down to about 15% moisture. Then they are harvested with a combine with a bean head that clips the whole plant off, separates the pods, shells the pods and ejects all the chaff back onto the field and the beans go into the hopper where they are off loaded into carts, wagons, waiting semi trailers etc. If you want to see them harvested, run them through your fingers, see crop dusters flying 15 feet off the ground, under the electric lines as they spray for aphids, let me know and we’ll do it next summer. We only have to walk about 200 feet out the back door. We had corn behind the house this year, next year it will be beans. They say I’m outstanding in my field.
Iowa Dave

[Steve Clark]

Your Field of Dreams....If you build it, they will come........

[Iowa Dave]

Originally Posted by Steve Clark

Your Field of Dreams....If you build it, they will come........

One day in the country is better than a month in town. Not to mention unlimited squirrel corn.
When the corn is about this size and you get a nice rain in the daytime and the temperature and humidity both go to 85 that corn really grows. If it’s calm I go down to the corner of our property and build a little campfire for ambiance, I set about 15 feet away so I can’t feel the heat. Then I set quietly in my lawn chair. The creaking and snapping sound that comes out of the corn on those calm night is easily audible. You can hear the corn grow. And that’s no fooling. Lightning bugs so thick you can’t tell where the fireflies end and the stars begin. Four miles south a Union Pacific Train approaches a crossing and blows the horn. And I know I’m home.
Iowa Boy Dave

[gbaglo]

Have me feeling warm.

[Rossue]

Sounds like fodder for a Howlin' Wolf number.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by Iowa Dave

One day in the country is better than a month in town. Not to mention unlimited squirrel corn.
When the corn is about this size and you get a nice rain in the daytime and the temperature and humidity both go to 85 that corn really grows. If it’s calm I go down to the corner of our property and build a little campfire for ambiance, I set about 15 feet away so I can’t feel the heat. Then I set quietly in my lawn chair. The creaking and snapping sound that comes out of the corn on those calm night is easily audible. You can hear the corn grow. And that’s no fooling. Lightning bugs so thick you can’t tell where the fireflies end and the stars begin. Four miles south a Union Pacific Train approaches a crossing and blows the horn. And I know I’m home.
Iowa Boy Dave

Now I'm super envious, Dave.
Bought a $30k Escape to experience the kind of stuff you describe out your back door. The clincher was gettin' to hear a Nathan 3 or 5 chime horn. Wow.
Edit: (We do get to hear and see ocean wave action a few miles away from where we are! Have to promptly wash the salt spray off afterwards, though!).

[Iowa Dave]

Hi Don
Here’s a couple photos for you. This caboose is in Belle Plaine Iowa. An old Northwestern Railway town in the extreme SW corner of Benton County Iowa. My uncle scrapped so much metal during WWII that they put a four car siding in for him across the road from his home in Belle Paine.
Nice sunset tonight too

[cpaharley2008]

That caboose would make a hell of a rv to tour the rails. My dad hoboed it from Alabama to Chicago to attend the 1934 Worlds Fair, he was 17 then. If you ever make it to Lancaster, Pa, you can visit the museum there https://rrmuseumpa.org and sleep in a caboose
Red Caboose Motel Review - Strasburg Pennsylvania, Lancaster Amish Country and finally visit the National Toy Train museum located there also National Toy Train Museum

[Vermilye]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

That caboose would make a hell of a rv to tour the rails. My dad hoboed it from Alabama to Chicago to attend the 1934 Worlds Fair, he was 17 then. If you ever make it to Lancaster, Pa, you can visit the museum there https://rrmuseumpa.org and sleep in a caboose
Red Caboose Motel Review - Strasburg Pennsylvania, Lancaster Amish Country and finally visit the National Toy Train museum located there also National Toy Train Museum

Or, you could build this one for the road! Link

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by Iowa Dave

Hi Don
Here’s a couple photos for you. This caboose is in Belle Plaine Iowa. An old Northwestern Railway town in the extreme SW corner of Benton County Iowa. My uncle scrapped so much metal during WWII that they put a four car siding in for him across the road from his home in Belle Paine.
Nice sunset tonight too

Thanks, Dave.
The Caboose and the Belle Plaine Area Museum are now on the list.

Jim,
Yup, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has been a bucket list item for a long time, along with all the other stuff to see. (maybe some chocolate in Hershey as well!).

Sometime, we're going to travel back to my hometown of Williamsport, PA, visit relatives, and in the process, visit as many rail-related spots as we can (or that my wonderful wife signs off on!). Since it's a long way (2700 mi) from the Calif. coast, the whole trip is really in the bucket list category. Hope to see you all on the way.

Jon,
A friend of mine was going to buy an old SP caboose, to put in his back lot for a "railroad room", but the county planning dept. said NO. So, he built a "shed" in the shape of a caboose, 'cause planning said OK to that. Go figure. Cabooses are 10 ft. wide and 8 ft. high from floor to roof , so trailer... not so much.