On the road before 9 a.m., with my belly full of oatmeal. The wind wasn’t a factor when we started out but about 2 ½ hours later when we reached the Dalhart, TX, stockyards we were feeling it pushing against us. And it continued to be a presence for the next 5 hours, almost all the way to Carrizozo, NM. However, the sun was out and the temperature topped out at 65o so we had that going for us.
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Yesterday our route took us through Kansas
City where there were billboards and flags proclaiming it to be the home of the
World Champion Kansas City Chiefs. That
got me thinking about the phrase ‘world champion’ in this context. The Super Bowl isn’t a world-wide
competition; it’s a culmination of a season of football played by just American
football teams. Therefore, why ‘World Champions’? At best the winners of the
Super Bowl are US Champions since other countries weren’t involved. I know that the winners of the Super Bowl will
continue to be declared World Champions and though it’s an important sounding
title, in my opinion it rings a bit empty.
And yes, whenever the Lions win the Super Bowl, I’ll call them the
Super Bowl champions, not World Champions.
I have to honor the word nerd in me.
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I am not a gardener, never have been and probably never will be. I have made attempts in
the past but reached a point where I can accept that I don’t have a plant
mentality. But that doesn’t stop me from being curious about the farmland/crops
of rural Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Today
I wondered out loud if changing the row direction of a crop on a yearly basis
(east-west one year, north-south the next) would increase the yield. I know
about crop rotation and letting a field remain fallow every so often but not
about the impact of the actual direction of the row. After a short discussion between two
uninformed people, Kim suggested I consult Google, which I did and proceeded to
read about farm crops, smaller vegetable gardens and even coconut groves.
I read about the benefits of row planting
vs. broadcast planting which led to a paper on single cropping vs. multiple
cropping. As the name suggests, this
addresses one crop planted in a field vs. two or more crops simultaneously
planted in a field. Anyway, this led to the sub-category of single row planting
vs. multiple row planting which introduced me to regular intercropping and
strip intercropping and the possible yields of both types of planting. Frankly, this explanation with its use of
bananas, papayas and coconuts as a way of explaining layout and determining
yield read too much like a story problem and my brain just wasn’t up to the
task so I quit at that point. I'd read enough already anyway.
So, the closest I got to an answer to my
original question was on the website farmprogress.com about a study done in Australia: Situating the crop
rows at a near right angle to the sunlight direction can influence the light
interception. Crops can create a canopy over weed plants, giving the weeds more
shade than sun, suppressing weed growth and maximizing crop yield. Wheat and
barley crops experienced significant yield increases when placed east to west
rather than north to south. It appears an annual change in row
direction isn’t even a thing to think about.
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Stopped at the Pow Wow Restaurant in Tucumcari, NM, for lunch. We were
greeted by a young lady with Down Syndrome who stuck her hand out, smiled and
said, “I’m Heather and I work here.” After we shook hands with Heather and
introduced ourselves, we were shown to our booth by a gentleman who said, “You
can have the Cooper table.” I didn’t
know what that meant but the wall had a mural of two full-sized people positioned
like they were sitting at the table with us. Maybe they were the Coopers. I thought
it was a cute gimmick so I took a selfie then we got serious about eating. It wasn’t until we stood up to leave that I
realized every booth had a similar mural but with different people and that the
booth behind us not only had a mural of a woman and two children but also a
smaller painting of a man in a cloud looking down on the scene. That’s what made me think these paintings might
be of actual people so I went in search of someone who could verify my hunch.
Found our waitress who said that the paintings were of people who had
played a part in the life of Tucumcari but were no longer among the living. Then she went down the row and told me who
each of the people were and their significance to Tucumcari. It didn’t matter that real people were sitting
in two of the booths eating their lunch; she introduced the paintings anyway.
*Note: the mural in the booth behind us honored the death of the young man and depicted his mother and two of his children. Kim heard the waitress mention that he was a tow truck driver named Bobby and that he was stuck and killed when he was out on a job. He then found articles about Bobby’s Law…this is an excerpt from an article on the Quay County Sun website, dated April 19, 2017:
The recent passing of “Bobby’s Law” will help to protect the lives of tow truck operators like Bobby Unruh.
Unruh, 37, of Tucumcari was killed on Feb. 19, 2017, at mile marker 318 on I-40 near Montoya while attempting to tow a commercial vehicle.
Senate Bill 76 was signed into law on April 6 by Gov. Susana Martinez.
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Kim did a lot of driving today but less than 275 miles remain and for that reason we both agree that a big
day of being on the road was worth it. Five
hundred seventy-nine miles after starting out in Liberal, KS, this morning, we’re
relaxing at the Best Western in Deming, NM.
Looking forward to arriving in Picacho tomorrow.
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