More Amber Waves of Grain - Bob Kelly Photos

The amber grain this time is oats, another crop that is not grown by many Iowa farmers.  My grandsons love Cheerios, which is made from oats, so it brought a big smile to my face when I first saw this large field, which would have made lots of Cheerios!  Chances are these will be used for cattle feed, and the soft straw that remains will be baled as bedding for cattle or horses to keep them warm on cold winter nights.  

 When I was a boy, my Dad and his farmer friends grew oats as part of a crop rotation process that eventually went back into corn, but now for several decades, farmers harvest corn, add more fertilizer, and grow corn again, skipping the oat and hay crops that used to be part of the rotation.  I still fondly recall the warm fall times in the oat wagon seeder with my Dad driving the tractor, and my Mom scooping oats into the seeder, which scattered them all about, along with clover and alfalfa seeds to begin growing in the spring.  

 The idea was that all the seeds would grow, but the oats would be the dominate crop, which allowed the hay crop to get established, so that the following year one could harvest several cuttings of hay from that field.  Agriculture has changed, and not totally for the better.