Chapter 44

Tale of Two Bean Fields, Part I

Getting hot already. Just a faint south breeze rippled across the 22 acres of soybeans in front of them at eight a.m. on an August morning. Here were straight green rows on flat land, almost enough to make an Iowa farmer sigh with joy. There was just one thing.

Ruthann Garcia’s first field of transitional organic soybean plants looked really healthy. Sure, there were a few grasshopper-chewed holes in the leaves, and some concern about aphids further west. Rain had come at nearly the right times. The market was not what it had been when the Japanese economy was flush. Still, the price for these feed-grade beans would double the field run price of regular Iowa soybeans. There was just one thing.

The earlier big red ball sun now glowed yellow and smaller. Sweat waited just below skin surface of the walkers approaching the field chatting, carrying water jugs. No volunteer corn towered above the knee-high beans. A one-time platoon of kids had taken take of the corn last month, but most only lasted a day. But now, there was just the one thing.

The cockleburs. Not so much the pigweed, the velvetleaf, or the waterhemp; the beans would stay ahead of them. But, the cocklebur, now there was a weed. Xanthium strumarium, bane of the soybean farmer, let it go and the devil could take 60 to 75% of your yield, and leave you generations of trouble to come.

Ruthann surveyed her Saturday morning crew. This bunch did not come cheap: husband Rick on a day off, daughter Rachel, age 13, son, Ramon, age 10, her neighbor, single parent Alexander Murphy, his kids -- Michael, age 11, and Rose, age 9, -- and of course, Ruthann’s good friend, Laura Paruzzi (lately Alexander’s sweetheart). A promised picnic this evening with pork ribs on the grill, corn on the cob, green beans, greens from the garden, French bread from the bakery in town, and chocolate cake and ice cream should inspire them until noon, anyway.

They left the pickups in the shade of the nearby grove of old walnuts, and walked across the wide red clover headland to the beans. The sweet fluted call of the western meadowlark, Sturnella neglecta, greeted them from on old hedge fencepost off to the east. The last of the dew collected the dust from their boots and pant legs. They pulled cotton or worn leather gloves from pockets and fanned out to Ruthann’s count of rows already done.

Across the meadowlark’s line fence Harold Mundt’s beans shone like a perfect green carpet, weedless, almost rowless in their dense stand. These soybeans sat eight inches on center, and “glysophate-ready,” a three pass crop so labor efficient that his hired help would never greet the neighbors, except to wave three times, once from the planter, once from the spray rig, and once from the combine.

The bean walkers waded into their work, into the long, straight green rows seeking rogue cockleburs. They began to ask and to tell each other about the stories of their days -- past, present, and future. The sun wetted their backs. The meadowlark sang.

[To be continued…]

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Next... Chapter 45.

Thanks for these resources:

Meadowlark songs, http://www.junglewalk.com/frames.asp,

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 44 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network and The Upper Basin Chronicles © 2003 Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.

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The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.