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Farming 101 (or, The Difference Between Hay and Straw) I've never lived on a farm but for some reason, I've always been interested in farming. Maybe its because of my agrarian roots in the Midwest (that I've been discovering on this trip). Don't laugh, but when I lived in Portland, I went to Portland Community College each spring to watch the annual Draft Horse Plowing Exhibition (I asked you not to laugh – now stop it!) During the all-day event, some local farmers dusted off their draft horses and riding plows and demonstrated how farmers used to plow their fields (see News: May 19, 2001). Each May, when I would excitedly ask my friends if they were going to the Draft Horse Plowing Exhibition too, they either laughed or gave me a blank stare. Well, I thought it was cool.
I've learned a lot about farming while traveling through the Midwest during the past few weeks, so to complete this agrarian-themed page, I thought I'd add a brief primer on farming.
Even though I'm interested in farming, having grown up in the suburbs of California I never knew know much about it. Well, I DID know more about farming than this cute girl I once dated in college who I'll call "Monica" – because that was her name. Monica was a sweet girl and a darn good chess player, but she was definitely not, shall we say, a future homemaker of America. I learned this one night at dinner in the U.C. Riverside cafeteria when we started talking about bread and I realized that she didn't have a clue where it came from (here's a hint, Monica: "flour").
I'm certainly no expert on farming and there's a lot more to it than this. But in case Monica's reading this, I wanted to pass along a few things I've learned these last few weeks. Here it is for your, um, consumption:
Here are some photos if you'd like to learn more:
Above left: Before you can plant seeds, you have to break up the soil. This is at the Draft Horse Plowing Exhibition in Portland, Oregon a few months ago. Of course, these days they use tractors to plow the ground instead of horses, but it's fun to see how they used to till the land. Above right: Here's a three-horse team and riding plow. Many farmers back in the 1800s used a single horse and a hand plow, which is more work and slower than using a riding plow.
Above left: Draft horses are the largest and most powerful breed of horses. They're descendants of the horses used in battle by knights in shining armor during the days of King Arthur. Each draft horse weighs about 2,000 pounds and eats about 20 pounds of hay every day. Above right: Alfalfa is a long grass that's grown throughout the Midwest. "Hay" typically refers to cut alfalfa, but can also refer to other types of cut and dried grasses. Hay is usually harvested in the late summer. After it's cut, the grass is spread out to dry, then is often bundled into round bales, shown here. Farmers feed hay to their livestock during the winter months when the fields are covered with snow. Each hay bale feeds one horse or cow for about a month.
Above left: Wheat (shown here), corn, and soybeans are the three main crops in the Midwest. Wheat needs less water to grow than corn or soybeans and therefore is found in drier areas that can't support corn, such as the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. The two main types of wheat are "spring wheat" (used for bread) and "durum wheat" (used mainly for pasta). I took this picture at the Laura Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, South Dakota. Above right: A head of wheat, shown here, contains numerous kernels, one of which is visible. A wheat kernel is hard, similar to a popcorn kernel. After the wheat is harvested (i.e., cut), it's threshed to remove the kernels from the chaff (the non-edible portion). The hard little wheat kernels are then ground up at a mill to produce flour, which is used for baking bread or making pasta. The wheat shaft is called "straw," which is used mostly for bedding in barns. When a farmer harvests his wheat fields, he'll often make two passes. In the first pass, he'll cut off the heads of wheat. During the second pass, perhaps weeks later, he'll cut lower and harvest the straw. Although farm animals prefer to eat hay, they can eat straw in a pinch.
Note: In 2012, an astute reader named Trev wrote to me and clarified that alfalfa is not actually a "grass" but rather a legume (a bean species). As he pointed out, legumes like alfalfa are important because they add nitrogen to the soil rather than extract it, while grass consumes nitrogen. That's why soybeans, another legume, are often planted after corn on the same land, to replenish the soil with nitrogen. Thanks Trev!
Above left: Corn was a New World crop, totally unknown in Europe before the 1500s. These little corn cobs are from the 1200s, if not earlier. I saw these at Grand Gulch in southern Utah during a backpacking trip that I took through the Anasazi ruins there a few years ago. They're only a few inches long, not at all like the huge corn cobs that are common today. Above center: These are corn's larger descendents. This field is in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, near Plum Creek where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in the 1870s. Corn requires more moisture than wheat, so in the Midwest, corn is typically found in areas to the east of wheat-growing areas, including Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The Midwest truly is the breadbasket (and cornbasket) of the world. Above right: Most corn stalks have about two ears of corn. Corn is used in a number of ways: as corn-on-the-cob with melted butter, as livestock feed, for corn syrup, and converted into ethanol and added to gasoline. My favorite corn product, though, is Nacho Doritos.
Now wasn't that even more interesting than the Draft Horse Plowing Exhibition?
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