Illinois Farm Families – Lemon Drop Pie

My kids love watching Monsters, Inc. One of my favorite scenes is at the beginning, when Mike Wazowski, the one-eyed green monster sits down to watch a new commercial about his company. Mike appears on the screen at the end of the commercial…and is immediately hidden by the Monsters, Inc. logo. We expect that Mike will be heartbroken, but instead he bursts out excitedly, “I’m on TV!”

Saturday morning, I sat down with my laptop and Ed picked up the Chicago Tribune. It took him a couple of minutes, but then he saw an article about the Illinois Field Moms, and the trip to the hog farm that I recently took. One of my friends was on the front page holding a piglet! After I read the article (which you can read here) I headed to my computer to send my friend a link to the article, and found a picture gallery. Guess what?

My left foot is in the newspaper! (Kinda sorta…the virtual version of the newspaper, anyway. Click on the link; it’s the third photo down. You can’t miss my foot!)

As we were preparing to go into the pig barn, I sat down at a picnic table to pull on plastic boots. These foot coverings were to keep me from tracking in bacteria or viruses on my shoes that could harm the herd. As I pulled on one boot, the photographer from the Tribune knelt down in front of me to take pictures of my foot. As we entered the barn, the photographer tagged along with a different group, so he never took a picture of my face. Just my foot.

I feel just like Mike Wazowski!

coveralls — Here I am, ready to go into the pig barn. Coveralls and hairnets are sexy!

When my brother was a little boy, he got to go on a combine with one of the farmers from our church. I was always secretly jealous of him…until now! As part of the Field Mom program through Illinois Farm Families, I was able to go on a field trip (literally)! Last Saturday, it was my turn to climb up the ladder and get in the cab. The corn was a little greener than it should have been. The wet spring we had in Illinois delayed planting, and as a result the corn isn’t quite ready to be harvested yet. As part of our experience, the farm family we visited wanted to show us how a combine harvests corn. Even though the corn is a little green, they will be able to feed it to their livestock. When the rest of the corn is ready, they will harvest it and put it in a dryer to prepare the corn for storage.

Did you know that most of the corn you see growing in fields is not sweet corn? It’s feed corn for livestock such as cattle and hogs. Corn is a type of grass, but unlike your lawn, farmers need to plant corn every spring.

As I was up in the cab, I watched the driver aim the large cone-shaped thing-a-ma-jigs (I don’t want to get too technical on you) at the corn rows. Once he had the combine in the right position, the guidance system took over and we could enjoy the ride. The monitor up front showed us how many bushels of corn each acre was yielding. The screen is color coded; dark green is the best yield an acre can have, and red meant that acre was low yielding. Farmers use this information to help them prepare the fields for the next growing season; while we were harvesting this year’s crop, the information we were gathering was already being used to plan next spring’s planting.

I was also able to ride in the tractor pulling a corn cart. We followed a combine, which dumped corn into the cart as we slowly drove beside it. I’ve often seen combines and tractors in the fields as I drive on I88 across Northern Illinois. This time, I was the one in the tractor! The small field we were in was right next to I88, so from my seat, I could see the cars racing by.

Soon there will be a lot more combines out in the fields, harvesting corn and soybeans before winter sets in. I love being a Field Mom and learning so much about life on the farm! Watch for my article about cattle and more, coming soon!

If you are interested about reading more about farm life and what it takes to get ready for harvest, read this article on the Watch Us Grow website by Roganne Murray. As a farmer’s daughter and a farmer’s wife, she knows a little something about combines!

Is there something you’ve always wanted to know about farming? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to find an answer to your question!