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July 4, 1997

Publication date July 9, 1997

Notes from the Cadillac Ranch

Knee high by the Fourth of July

We had such a cold late spring that it didn't seem like anything would be knee high by the Fourth of July. My glad bulbs stayed underground a record time. Even peas were slow getting out of the ground. Those expensive corn fields were balky getting started. For a while it seemed like we wouldn't have knee high corn by the Fourth. But that wasn't taking into consideration those long, long days of June. Just when it was time to pick up hay, just when the corn and the flowers and the gardens were wondering where their next drops of rain were coming from, we got rain on Father's Day. Next came heat and humidity and more rain and everything grew in a rush to catch up to where it should have been.

The zipper tractor has been plowing corn. The IH 706 is the first diesel tractor we bought, and over the years its engine's interior has seen more daylight than any motor we've ever owned. I could give you an inventory of its afflictions but I'd have to ask the farmers and I have a pretty strong feeling that they don't want to see that list in the newspaper. Lately the harder tasks have been assigned to other machines and the zipper tractor has been holding up pretty well. It's wearing a 4-row cultivator and it's been busily tooling up and down the rows of quickly growing corn. It only takes a few weeks for corn to go from spindly stalks measured in single digit inches to strong deep green solid fields that threaten to get too tall for the cultivator.

Watching the five tons of iron delicately push its way though belly deep rows of Iowa's finest, I marveled at its everyday grace. Thirty year old technology but still it does the job.

The tractor historian said it's the movable wheels that let tractors pick their way through growing row crops. He said Farmalls were the first to let farmers move the wheels in and out on the axles to accommodate various crop growing tasks. The F-12s and F-20s were the first Farmalls, fathers of the As and Bs and all those other letter tractors. Before that tractors were used to plow and prepare soil but delicate maneuvers like planting corn and cultivating were done with horses.

That same night the last of the corn was plowed, all firmly certified knee-high, I pulled button weeds out of the sweet corn. It's been a couple of years since we've had sweet corn but it got planted the same way it usually gets planted. It filled up parts of two rows that the planter somehow missed. We planted it with the push planter and the rows weren't perfect enough for the cultivator. I'd meant to weed it weeks ago but I kept forgetting. A fair number of three-foot tall button weeds and a few clumps of grass.

I started pulling the button weeds with bare hands. The ground was soft and they came out pretty easy, filling the air with the oddly nutty smell of button weeds biting the dust. I have this weird skin allergy, mainly to nettles I think, but I decided to quit before I was totally miserable. I went to the house and, to get the nasty button weed poison off my hands, I washed dishes in cold water (it was a pretty warm evening). Then I went back to the sweet corn rows with a plastic bread sack on each hand. Button weeds are satisfying weeds to pull. The roots all come out, and unless you get a rain right away, they won't root back. Getting rid of all those velvet canopies generally improves the appearance of whatever you are trying to grow, too. In fact I had to show off my two rows of Bodacious to the farms when they got home. Looking good.

(This was written during a severe storm warning, with chances of hail. Let's hope all this pretty corn gets a chance to get ripe.)