Ye shall reap what you sew
(With any kind of luck)
With the practice of planting winter crops as soon as the spring and summer crops are harvested comes the problems of the detritus left by the former crop. In some cases, farm operators will plow and/or disk the remnants of last crop. If time is of essence; they often will burn the fields which gives the best cleanup as Mother Nature intended.
When a field burns, in most cases it gives the appearance of the inferno that Sodom and Gomorrah experienced. Since the preferred burning time is in the absence of wind, the smoke tends to pillar which exacerbates the Biblical vision. The truth is, fields don’t have much fuel to to sustain a fire for a long time, so the wicked look is short lived and the fires die out quickly.
See a field burn-off up close and personal on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com, as in: see how one farm gets the blaze underway.
Harvest time in LA (lower Arkansas) is a frenzy of combines, tractors, trucks, and still to some extent cotton pickers, all of which, if a farmer wants to reap what he sows, need to come together at the right time, Mother Nature permitting.
A week or so ago, all of the stars came together at the right time and harvest in our environs got under way in a big way. The ground was dry enough to support harvesting machinery and the crops were sufficiently dry to avoid financial penalties due to excessive moisture.
Thanks for looking,
Joe Dempsey
Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind
http://www.joedempseycommunications.com/
http://www.joedempseyphoto.com/
http://www.corndancer.com/joephoto/photohome.html
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