Outstanding In Their Field
Last September, my wife moved to my farm, and she has a complaint about farm life: It is too damn windy.
Is she exaggerating, or has it been windier than normal this year? I tried to tell her that Illinois is known as a prairie state, where the lack of trees allows the wind to blow unabated. She did not find that comforting. Let me explain some and have a little rant as well:
My nearby town of Manhattan took a direct hit from a small, but severe, thunderstorm with strong winds on a recent Thursday. Multiple power outages continued into Friday when the infamous dust storm hit. Anything not anchored down, and some things poorly anchored down, blew away.
It was not only the dirt that blew; some of the residue in tilled and no-tilled fields blew. In one hay field that bordered a 130-acre field of soybeans planted in corn stalks, we baled close to 150 bales of hay on the outside round that were close to 90% corn stalk residue and only 10% grass hay. It was an epic mess of baling, broken shear bolts and plugged baler, that was only exaggerated more by guess what, another day of strong winds blowing dust in our face and the windrows apart.
As urban sprawl continues in Will County, the amount of plastic/garbage in our fields continues to grow. Even the garbage industry that is supposed to help keep litter in its place is at fault. Garbage trucks no longer have a driver and another worker riding shotgun chucking waste into the bin in the back to be compacted like when I was a kid 50 years ago.
Most trucks now dump hydraulically into hoppers that raise up and over to dump in the top of the truck. I cringe when I know local pickup is on a windy day; I have seen the refuse blow from the truck while dumping into the bin, as well as blow out while the truck transits the route.
I recently took my hay laborer with me into town when I dropped a lawnmower off for engine work. Blowing around was an empty chip bag. I scooped it up and made a comment about how even the city has plastic garbage blowing around like in my fields. That is when he stated something that troubles me greatly.
He said, “I cannot believe how many of my friends will throw garbage out the window of their vehicle when driving.”
I felt like crying; is this really our future?
Here is an anecdote that may help this problem. A couple of days ago, we baled a field along a busy highway. A local squad car sat on the shoulder at a bridge adjacent to the field. My helper and I both noticed how the traffic looked as if it was going slow motion. With “big brother” watching, everyone was driving much slower and obeying the speed limit.
How many more squad cars or flock cameras would we need to make a dent in the amount of litter along the roads? Have we truly become a society that obeys certain rules/laws only when we fear we will get caught?
Until then, you will probably see me and other farmers “outstanding” in the field picking up garbage.
Well, more like leaning into a strong headwind, with the way things have been lately.
John Kiefner farms in Manhattan, Illinois as the 3rd generation to earn a living off the land in Will County. He believes you are never too old to learn or laugh.