Pods

     Another day dawns on Owyhee County. The wheat harvest rages on. (Yes, Rages.) But the other crops continue to grow.

     This tangled mess is what the Alfalfa has grown into. It's clusters of flowers have become clusters of seed pods.

     The interesting thing about alfalfa seed pods is that they are spirals. Alfalfa seeds are tiny, and a mass of pods like this can hold a lot of them.

     Another pod. This is a bean pod. What variety of bean it is, I do not know.

     Alfalfa and beans are both Legumes. Legumes are pretty nifty plants, you should check out the link if you want to know more about them. They will be hard at work making their seeds. Which reminds me, I better get to that truck. The wheat won't haul itself in.

The Middlemen

     Not much time for me to write today, readers. (I should have written this last night...) There are trucks that need moved, and I'll be the one who's doing it.

     This is a retired fire truck who now does a few odd jobs as a farm truck. At the moment, it's full of wheat. This wheat is also headed for a silo, but not a silo on the farm. It's headed all the way to Adrian, Oregon. (about 17 miles or 27 kilometers)

     In Adrian (or just outside of it, rather) we bring the seed to the scales of a seed company. The scales are just a very large version of the one you have in your bathroom. We take a full weight, and an empty weight, and the difference is how much wheat the seed company pays the farmer for. (Next Thanksgiving, do this to see how much you eat!)

     Then its off into just past downtown Adrian. The wheat is lifted by this elevator (the tall thing) into this very large granary. When the time comes, the seed company will take the wheat, sort and clean it.
     I'd better get moving. Agriculture waits for no blog! This middleperson has to take some wheat to another middleperson. Go out and eat some wheat products today.

Underground

     Some crops are grown for their seeds. Others are grown for their parts. Our subjects today are two such crops.

     These are Onions. If you look close around the base of them you'll see the top of the bulb. The onion grows the bulb to store nutrients for itself during lean times. The bulbs on these onions are purple.

      One of the main issues with onions is Owyhee County is nutsedge infestations. This non-native, noxious weed grows thick and will not only choke out the onions, but also clogs the machines that harvest onions. It's a bad deal.

     This verdant mass of leaves are sugar beets. Sugar beets also store nutrients and chemical energy, (as sugar)  but they do it in a tuber. A tuber is a fat root that plants store food in. (a bulb is different in that it's not a root)

     Right now it's a race against time for both crops to get the most amount of growth. As long as they receive plenty of sunlight and water (as well as having enough nutrients in the soil and carbon dioxide to breathe) these plants should grow like crazy.

Potpourri

     Today is a potpourri in the figurative sense, a mix of things rather than an aromatic blend. (Although some of today's things are aromatic.)

     This is an evergreen field. Spruces on the left, firs on the right. In most parts of the world, evergreen farms are a rare thing. Here in Owyhee County we have one, as far as I know. I'd like to do a full post on it someday. It has a pleasant piney aroma.

     A dragonfly on a peach leaf. Agriculture, with its large tracts of crops and tendency to bring water to dry places, draws in a lot of little bugs. Dragonflies eat little bugs, especially mosquitoes. We have bunches of them here and they come in every color and shape. I'm not sure what they smell like, probably not very good...

     Here we have a feedlot. It's a place where cattle (or other animal) live and eat. There are several of these in the county. My grandfather says that cattle smell like money...

     As the combines continue to cut the wheat, most of the cover disappears. This means that a lot of rodents that were hiding, now cannot. This brings out the hawks and their kin. This one was trying to act nonchalant. I think he was either hiding his breakfast, or now that I think of it, maybe he couldn't take off because his wings were hitting the stubble. He may have had to hop over to that sprinkler to get a bit of height. Wheat stubble has a pleasant smell, so long as it's clean. As for how the hawk smells, I'm guessing probably a lot like feathers...
     All joking aside, Owyhee County is as pleasantly aromatic (most of the time) as it is picturesque. Depending on which way the wind blows, you can smell all kinds of things. My favorite is the smell of distant rains on the sagebrush.
     There's always more work to be done, which means there's always more posts for me! I'll be back on Monday with another post, have a good weekend!

Meanwhile...

     The wheat harvest continues, but it's not the only thing going on. All the other crops are still growing. Today is a bit different, though. Instead of the sun cooking down, we awoke to thunder.

     Or at least I did. Not much rain fell here where I live, but the clouds are kind of a nice change from the 100+ °F days.

     These critters certainly don't seem to mind.

     Irrigation continues. During the long hot days, a great deal of the water will evaporate before it can soak into the ground. Much more should make it to the plants today.

     This whipper is broke down. It wore out a bearing and getting it out was quite a chore. The new bearing is just now going in. Seems like there's always something breaking down.
     Agriculture is never about one thing, that's definitely a positive if you're the kind of person who likes variety. Jobs tend to come in cycles, as does the weather. But sometimes, you get a bit of a change, and sometimes, it's a nice change.