Knee High....

"Knee high by the Fourth of July!"

Most everyone, cappuccino or cornfield folks, probably know what that saying means here in the good ol' US of A.

I always, always thought it was odd when I started to dip my pedicured toes into the world of cornfields.

The blasted corn was ALWAYS much higher by July 4th.  In fact, July is one of the most beautiful months in the land of cornfields.

Everything is beautiful and everything is green.  The usually continuous August heat hasn't quite hit yet, and there have been enough rainy and enough hot days for things to green up and become lush.

I brought the saying up once to my gentleman farmer, and he told me it was hogwash.  Just an old saying.  

This year, my first Independence Day close enough to cornfields where I can smell them, I decided to figure out why the corn is so high - and where the saying comes from.

I did a little bit of research (ok, I don't really have time nor do I have patience for research, so I should say a quick google search showed me what, I will take, as the answer),  and found out that it is an old saying and frankly the past century or so has made the saying obsolete. 

Corn is many times very high - higher than your head as in the photo above (taken July 18th, 2015) in July.

It seems to me that the modern world that has made that saying obsolete.  The world of technology & commercialism - the need to be better and bigger and produce more has changed the world of farming over the last century.  Which is a good thing!

Think about it - if you were a farmer in the 1800's or even first quarter of the 20'th century, you either planted your fields like Charles Ingalls, strapped to a plow and a horse, or had an old tractor that hummed a long slowly planting corn. 

Besides, in Minnesota, the spring time can be farm friendly or make farming very difficult. 

Anyone in the Midwest can probably imagine what the snow-nami of April 2018 did to the farming spring planting season. 

Modern day technology allows for not only the best of hybrid seed that has been revolutionized to produce incredible fields of produce, but also machinery that quickly plants acre upon acre coupled with specialized fertilizer, weed control processes and water drainage tiling systems to ensure that the environment this precious corn is growing in, is superb.

It's actually quite intriguing and very 'cappuccino-like' I think.

What's next?  Remote control drone-esque machinery that will plant for you while you sit in a coffee shop sipping a cappuccino watching the action via an app on your iPhone?   

Actually, they may already have that...I'll have to google, I mean research that.

Click HERE to read my "research"