Farms, Corn and the First Whiff of Sunflowers


ON THE SECOND DAY of our adventure, we drive. And we drive, and drive and drive and drive. And we make it to South Dakota! Twelve hours, from Elkhart, Indiana, to Sioux Falls.

Though we miss tons of things we might have pulled off to see - crash site of Buddy Holly's plane,  a 55-foot-tall Green Giant statue, a town full of murals in Kewanee, Illinois - and it breaks my heart to pass them by - there isn't time for everything. We see beautiful farms, bring Carol to Minnesota for the first time, and start sleuthing clues about sunflower fields. I am pretty sure we will find them today! 

***


THE ONE STOP we make is at Antique Archaeology, in LeClaire, Iowa. I've been there before, but Carol hasn't, and so we go. We've both watched "American Pickers" over the years, and the fact is that the place is fun - though truly, it is mostly filled with American Pickers merchandise. There are very few antiques here, and what is here is pretty much not for sale. 

One thing that is not here is Danielle. A woman visiting is tremendously excited about the place, (even more than we are!) and she badgers the cashier for information, and I eavesdrop unabashedly. Danielle no longer works at the store. With the departure of Frank from the show (he is in the hospital as I write this, but he and Mike parted ways a while ago), Danielle and Mike, along with Mike's brother, are the main pickers. So Danielle works for the show, not the business, and lives in Puerto Rico when the show isn't filming. 

Carol and I have fun looking at the rusty stuff, and the fake-rusty stuff, and hit the road again, each with a few pieces of American Pickers merchandise - and a fun break in a long day. 

***

FARMS OUT HERE are big. The average farm in Iowa and Minnesota is 386 acres. There are 86,000 farms in Iowa, according to the Department of Agriculture. The majority are family-owned, even the ones that have $1 million in annual sales. About 10 percent of Iowa farms fall into that category. 

Corn is certainly the main crop, at least along the roads we travel. We see soybeans and sorghum (at least, we think it is sorghum), but mostly corn, corn, corn and more corn. After hours of corn, I begin to be amazed that there is use for all this corn. I know that corn is in almost everything, and that America uses corn in gasoline, that chickens and cows and all sorts of livestock eat corn - and I consume my share, as well! (and maybe part of yours, too...) - but even at that, it's still a mind-numbing amount of corn. 

Iowa is not as flat as I think of it, either. There's another thought for the day. It is a beautiful state of small, rolling hills... and corn. Minnesota begins to get a bit hillier, and South Dakota continues the trend. Interestingly, we see nearly zero livestock until we cross into SD. Almost no cows or horses the whole trip, until SD, and only two fields of sheep! 
 


***
THE SEARCH IS ON for sunflower fields. We look for them in Google-directed areas of Minnesota, but don't find any. We start asking people, and no one knows, and no one knows, and then our waiter at a restaurant in Sioux Falls says that he moved here from Huron, and while he doesn't know any sunflower fields around here, there are plenty in Huron, which is north. 

We talk to a woman at the hotel desk, and do more research, now being smart enough to look for the locations of sunflower-seed producers. (Duh). Carol finds a marvelous photographer, Lijah Hanley, who located and shot a scene I hope to find and paint, and we find more clues on the web, too. All point north and west.

So this morning, with our sleuthing begun, we will set out, with information and hope. I'm going to wear my lucky shirt and my lucky tie-dyed undies (thank you, Trasi) and my road-dirtied white shorts, and we will spend the day hunting for sunshine growing on this earth of ours! 

***
Dog of the Day


ALAS, WITH ALL OUR DRIVING, we see no dogs on Wednesday! But Dave sends me a photo of Woody, old and smelly and dirty, but happy enough on his new pink bed. You've got to love that old guy! He is pretty much deaf, pretty much blind, and about a million years old, but he's happy to eat, sleep, and be part of the pack. 


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