What was I expecting Iowa to be like? I had heard from my mother that it was a grid work of fields on the flattest land you’d ever see. HN had informed us that Garden City would be a tiny, farming town, miles away from any substantial businesses or populations. ‘Iowa in Your Pocket’ showed pictures of wind mills, barns, corn, silos and tractors, and the articles on moodle talked about the mass production of corn and soy beans. However, what did I really expect May in Garden City Iowa, to be like? Why, I expected it to be like Tolu, Kentucky in July. ‘Why?’ You might ask. ‘That would be silly, clearly it is much earlier in the season, and you are going to a different part of the country!’  Of Course, you would be right. May, in Garden City, Iowa, is not in any way reminiscent of the minuscule Kentucky town where I spent summer weeks as a child, visiting the farm of my late grandmother. While the farms in Tolu may grow corn and soy beans, the main production is cows, an animal I have seen very little of, apart from in the USDA Veterinary Labs pasture at Ames.

What has struck me most about Iowa during this first day, is how incredibly brown the landscape is. During an after-dinner talk in the barn, we learned that only a few famers had managed to lay down any seeds before the big snow last week. This lack of seedlings and plants immediately explains the lack of green across the land, but does not take away from the bleak lifeless feeling that it provides. Without plants growing, or animals grazing in the fields, Iowa appears as a brown, barren wasteland from horizon to horizon, broken only by graph-paper roads, silos and towering windmills, however, there is hope. Sprinkled around the house and in the pamphlet are pictures of the farm in its full green splendor. Knowing that the fields will soon be filled fast-growing and economy, if-not-life, sustaining crops is an encouragement. The dark brown soil of the plains is not barren, but full of nutrients. The fields are not lifeless, but fertile, and prepared for the exciting season ahead, and so am I. I cannot wait to learn everything I can through this trip.