The growing season on the farm can be measured by the corn rows.
See at first when you first plant the corn you anxiously wait to when you can start to ‘row’ the corn. When I say row the corn, what I mean is that you can literally see the corn up and you see the actual rows of the small corn plants peeking through the dirt. Now sometimes this is good… and well sometimes this is bad. It’s good because you know that your planter monitor was working and it was actually dropping the corn in the field rows. But it can also be bad. The reason that I saw that it can be bad is because if you didn’t drive straight when you were planting the corn, not only will you notice it but I’m telling you that your neighbors and friends will also notice it!
Next comes ‘filling in the rows’. Now this one is a good one if you didn’t plant straight and a sure sign that your crop is really taking off. Filling the rows means that the corn has grown so much that you can’t see the ground in between them. And up until now it’s just a habit when you’re driving by the fields to always look at the corn rows to see how it’s growing. Kind of sounds weird I know, but I’m betting more people do this than don’t do it! So with the warm weather last week and a couple of good showers to go along with that, the rows finally filled in late last week by us.
Soon it’ll be the 4th of July and with that comes the ‘knee high by the 4th of July’ check. This one is pretty self explanatory and with all the advancements in the seeds these past year, you sure hope it’s much higher than your knees! But in a couple of weeks we’ll go out in the fields just like we did when we were kids and stand in the corn rows and take a picture. Even when I’m writing this I can feel myself smile. It seems like no matter what we’re doing, this is a traditional picture that you just have to take.
And finally in the fall when the corn is really drying down and ready to be harvested, you can get a good feeling about how dry the corn might be by looking at the stalks and noticing that you can start to row the corn again.
This process happens every year and stays pretty true every year. So now when you’re by someone who you know isn’t a farmer – just casually say something like ‘man the corn will sure be knee high by the 4th of July and it seems just like yesterday you were able to row them’ 🙂
