Dad retired from farming in May, 1994.  The cows were sold six days before graduation and the land that he had helped his Uncle Charley clear was rented out to two young neighbor brothers who were trying to make a living farming the land.

Back in 1994, wheat and barley were still king of the countryside.  There were still the occasional dairy farmer that would grow oats.  There was still a fair amount of alfalfa grown for livestock feed.  There were some corn and bean fields.  The corn was primarily for silage, though a little was saved and sold for grain.  The soybeans were planted on a wing and a prayer - a good crop would pay for itself, an early frost spelled disaster.

Times change.

Through the use of breeding and new technology, corn and soybean varieties that can withstand cooler temperatures, mature in shorter amount of time, and grow under cooler, and sometimes drier weather - all with good yields - started coming onto the market about the time that Dad retired.  Sugar beets, once the mainstay of central Minnesota and the rich soils of the Red River Valley were being debated as a viable alternative - could they grow in the soils outside of the Red River Valley?

Driving across the countryside around the family farm today, the change is almost complete.  Rows and rows of corn reach for the sky.  Bean fields sometimes stretching as far as the eye can see.  An occasional wheat field still growing under the sky’s of the northern plains, sometimes interspersed with the sweet sugar beets that grow exceptionally well in the rich loamy soils.  Sometimes the eye will even spy a hearty stand of winter wheat, surviving under the heavy snow cover, growing thick and rich like a carpet on the black soils of my home county.

The transformation is almost complete.

Walking down the road past the home farm this last weekend, where the sweet smells of alfalfa, clover, wild flowers, and sprouting wheat used to greet the senses, the nose was met by the smell that to the untrained nostril might appear to be a greenhouse.  But to a nose that knows, it was the combination of the heat, humidity, and rain from the night before, mixing with the fast growing corn plants, reaching for the sky.

I’m not sure what it is, but it is a smell unique to summer throughout the corn belt, and it was the first time that I spelled it so beautifully pungent on my home road.  I had smelled it before in my travels and visits to the corn belt - my time in grad school in Illinois, working in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, a girlfriend in southern Minnesota (it wasn’t the wind rustling the corn leaves…).

Part of me loves that pungent smell of the natural greenhouse - of the heat, humidity, and ground moisture coming together to push the young corn and bean plants to reach to the sky.  Part of me misses those familiar smells of growing up, of the alfalfa, of the clover in the pasture.

Call it the smell of change.  Call it the smell of progress.  But in the end, for better or worse, it smells like Iowa.