Tuesday, February 06, 2007

soy-bean field

The soy-bean field up the street has been harvested.
We live in a mostly rural area.
There are a few houses, but we’re mostly surrounded by cultivated farm-fields. The field up the street was soy-beans this year, corn last year, and wheat the year before that. That field is also behind our 93-year-old nosy neighbor.
Behind us are more fields that used to be farmed, but I don’t know anymore since our new unknown neighbor bought them. One field appears to be fallow, and the other may have been tilled.
We can’t see the second field, since it’s obscured by trees. But we could hear a tractor.
Another field is down the street past the intersection (and its motorbike store), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on it. It abuts a ramshackle farmhouse with rundown farm-buildings, including a collapsing barn.
On Routes 5 & 20 in town is Bonna Terra Farms, a giant operation that doesn’t cultivate contiguous fields, but those all around us and all over.
Every once in a while a giant tractor goes by, usually towing a big tanker of pig-slop they use as fertilizer. The tankers aren’t as big as gasoline semi-trailers, but are on eight huge all-terrain tires, and are full trailers.
Going toward Canandaigua on 5 & 20, I pass a farm raising veal-calves in tiny shelters, a dairy operation, and a guy raising hay in Centerfield, source of “Centerfield hay,” which finds its way to horse-tracks all over the country.
We pass a vegetable-farm on our way to the so-called elitist country-club. They raise acorn-squash, butternut-squash, pumpkins, and cabbage. They also have a raspberry patch.
Illegal aliens are often out picking in the morning dew. A rudimentary two-story shelter had been built to house the illegals, but it’s since been converted to a barn.
At least we think it’s soy-beans. They sure don’t look like string-beans or peas. We did a Jack and just surmised.
Quite often farmers raise soy-beans.
The current West Bloomfield supervisor is a farmer.

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