Coop's Corner: Quest For Corn Pickers (Picking!)

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Quest For Corn Pickers (Picking!) - 2022/10/28

Last year I was out with the drone, doing my very best to get views from above (and beside) of the grain harvest in our area, both corn and soybeans. Shelling/combining corn is the de-facto standard these days so finding farms that are still harvesting ear corn, cobs with kernels is a challenge around here. I tried last year, finding none while harvest was actually going on. There are tell-tale signs after the fact if you know what to look for of fields that were harvested with that 'older' method. Only yesterday realizing that I'd have done myself a huge favor of marking down, creating Way Points in the GPS or just plain, flat out remembering where those locations were. These days I too often can't remember where I left the 10mm wrench but I'm still quite good at remembering a farm, a corner, 70 miles from home. Again, yesterday it dawned, if only I'd have been better at paying attention to where corn cribs full of yellow corn were.

Like this one.....only full of corn rather than weeds. They're out there, definitely more prominent in some neighborhoods than in others.

Our Friday was another unseasonably wonderful late October day, perfect for ear corn harvesting I told myself. So I went in search of. Not directly to, but with multiple passes past a location that I actually did stop and drone a couple of years ago. The problem then was, by the time I was setup and in the air, he was pulling out of the field and taking his load home. Not what I'd hoped for and I didn't have the patience, or time, to wait and see if he was coming back. Hopefully I'll do better next time.

Total mileage for the day was 139 and you can see that a good portion of those miles were necessary to get over to the Wisconsin side and back. That western-most 'rectangle' is 5.2 miles from our home for a crow but not for a Royal Enfield. It won't fly, I've struggled with water and have done some ice, but not that far.

I haven't done one of these charts for a while, thought it would be interesting to see what they looked like for the area of Corn Picking Exploration. Here's the Elevation chart.....this is not for the entire trip, primarily the Wisconsin portion of the ride.

And here's a zoomed in section of the Speed chart. Close examination reveals highway/County road travel, Named road rates and where during the day I completely stopped. It doesn't take much to determine at which mile, location along the way that a particular event was taking place.

Note my average Moving pace....if you ciphered out 32.4 you'd be nigh on.

What I saw, you already know what we didn't fly over.

The back way into Read's Landing....

Crossing the river at Wabasha...

The Mississippi River bottoms into Nelson...

Lunch in Pepin..

Elevators, not augers, were what I was watching for. I saw some, some that were not buried in the woods. I might have to go and look some more.

I love these choices!!

I wave....I always wave as I quietly pass by. I see myself as a helmeted Ambassador.

Here he is for Sighting #2....there will be a third. Having thought about it since yesterday, I wonder if this GS rider is the same guy I Saw What You Did a few years ago??

His choice of roads....what is it they say about pretty good minds?!?

I can't get enough of these low sun angles and autumnal light.

There WERE, no longer, 3 dogs that would run out over more than one summer at this place. The big huge one was always last and formidable.

I stopped for the view when I heard something coming down the hill behind me....yep, BMW GS for my 3rd and final sighting. I'm quite sure I knew where he was off to next but I let him go on his own...he seems quite comfortable with the area.

In the Spring when this road still has snow and ice, that barn and silo, on the south side, will be bare and dry. No promises on the back side.

I disturbed an eagle on this quiet road.

A gated community in our neighborhood....

Was it a disappointing day because I didn't get to aerial photograph corn picking in process?

Have you been paying attention??

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Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)