Farm Thoughts

Recently we cut back our satellite TV package.....if we hadn't, I'd probably be watching "Hitler's Bodyguard" right now. Hubby may be somewhat sad, but I don't share his pain!

We had a nice trip to the cemeteries this morning. We took the "country route" instead of the highway, something we hadn't done for quite some time. It's always interesting to see how the landscape has changed. It's been a couple of years since we had normal rain in the springtime, and it's nice to see the ponds full and everything so green. We've had a late planting year for crops - I actually saw a couple of fields where the corn was visible. The crops should be much further along than that by now.

I'm a farm girl, and I love driving around the country, looking at the crops growing. In the mid '70's, I moved to Oregon. I lived in the northwestern part of the state, in the Willamette Valley. It's a heavily-farmed area, but in such a different way than I was used to. I grew up here in the Midwest, where the main crops are field corn and soybeans, with an occasional wheat field mixed in. In the Willamette Valley, it was flowers and food crops. There was one certain area, near Newberg, where there were a lot of nut groves - hazelnuts, to be precise. There were also orchards, and a few lucky farmers had contracts to grow hops.

There were also mint fields. I love mint. I love the smell, the taste. There is one week in early August when the daytime temps in the Willamette Valley hit the low 90's. That's also the time the mint is ready to harvest. It's a delicate crop with a short window for harvest - so the harvesting runs 24 hours a day. That particular house was between the mint fields and the mint still, the apparatus that crushed the oil out of the mint leaves. The first couple of truckloads smelled great. Then that feeling started to wane, as the heat caused the overwhelming mint smell to hang in the air. The first harvest I lived there, I was eight months pregnant. The next year, I was five months pregnant. I got to the point my stomach would start doing flip-flops when I heard those trucks come rumbling down the road. Time heals......I still love mint.

I was fascinated with watching those different crops grow - sugar beets, green beans, sweet corn, pumpkin. One day on the way to the grocery store, I drove past a field of onions that had just been harvested. It's a little hard to drive with tears streaming down your face! The flower fields were fascinating. There was an iris farm along I-5 just north of Salem, and it was just beautiful when the flowers bloomed. Each different color had its own section.

As interesting as those crops were, I was glad when I got back to home base in the Midwest. But I'm glad I had the opportunity to see a different side of farming.