Cold and colder with a touch of snow
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Black & Whiteon: November 12, 2019 at 1:34 am
Sigma DP1 Merrill. Early morning with clouds so I did not have major contrast problems.
Small ladder to get high enough to work the image on the roof.
Sigma DP1 Merrill. Early morning with a light snowfall and overcast skies. About 1/2 inch of new snow, temperature in the mid teens, not cold yet.
Ice and slick conditions had me on the ladder and bracing against the edge of a shaky roof for this one.
The place will be demolished soon. They have already taken down a few other outbuildings and a nice grove of trees by a good pond.
We are losing the old places. Many so the extra acres can be put into crop production. A whole ‘nother set of challenges for fine images.
Depending on the crop and market prices each acre can be worth $100-$700. That is each growing season, year in and year out. It adds up. During planting, spraying and harvest you don’t “stop and talk” as the 20 minutes taken can mean 10 or more acres not planted, treated or harvested. Facing incoming rain or snow conditions, depending on the season that short visit hits the bank account.
This fall we are seeing a number of fields not harvested. Was wet late and wet fields don’t let combines and grain wagons and grain trucks on too well. Then the blizzard hit a few weeks ago and most of the Wheat not harvested was flattened and the snow melt after left standing water and wet fields. Finally drying out a bit and farmers harvesting dry areas and leaving wet for later. If we don’t get much snow but good cold – a week or more of single digits to sub zero temperatures the ground will freeze hard enough for combines to get to work. For soybeans and late Canola in windrows it allows for a harvest.
Sunflowers and Corn can be cut even with some snow or left til spring without too much of a crop loss.
In the midst of it all are the old farmsteads. The small places built by early homesteaders and improved through the decades. Finally left vacant as the kids moved away, the older generation had to move out for health reasons and the land is leased to others to farm. A complex set of conditions that keeps a way of life in production even as the modern machinery means fewer workers are needed for the field jobs. Some go away while mechanization and computerization open up new opportunities on the farm.
Many of my neighbors who farm and ranch have College degrees, AA to PhD – the whole range. Agronomists, soil specialists, computer science to work with machinery and GPS systems accurate to +- one inch in the fields. A lot more involved these days than “160 acres and a mule”.
"A good still photograph, studied by an inquiring mind, frequently yields more information than a mile of moving images". Walter Cronkite, New York, June 1989
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