Iowa roots and Father's Day

I think there's a perception that the midwest is the midwest and there isn't a great deal of difference between the states in flyover country, but this just isn't true. My part of Minnesota, an hour's drive north of Minneapolis, is rural, but the topography is less conducive to large farms and is usually left in a more natural state for homes on acreages or hobby farms. The land is carved up into smaller plots, with a few acres of beans or corn here and there among the small lakes and marshy areas. I've just returned from driving straight down I-35 into the heart of Iowa, and the land there is farmland like none other.

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, farms were smaller, and the scenery was dotted with the barns and silos of farmsteads that were four or more to a square mile.I always loved looking out over that Iowa countryside, and I remember visiting those farms with my dad as I rode along on his route selling and servicing milking equipment. Nearly every farm had some cows to milk, but that's no longer the case, and farms have gotten much larger, resulting in fewer homes and views of miles of uninterrupted crops. This time, in particular, I was struck by the flatness of it, and oh, the green! Shades of green, rather actual topography, is what provides the relief in the landscape of central Iowa. There's a beauty there I sometimes think one has to have lived with in order to appreciate; only Nebraska tops Iowa in the contest for the number of disparaging remarks made about the lack of scenery its highways provide.

It was hot; the temperature as I drove up I-35 was over 90 degrees. I recalled my dad never complaining much about the summer heat, saying hot weather was good for the corn-- knee high by the fourth of July and all that. Although now, if corn is only knee high by July 4, a farmer worries about crop failure. I wondered what my dad would think if he were here to see the way countryside has changed due to corporate farming and the use of highly engineered seed, chemicals, and fertilizers. I thought about how being my father's daughter, growing up in Iowa, provides a unique persepective as the Iowa summer landscape rolled by on this Father's Day.