Dirt, Sweat, and Diesel by Steven L. Hilty

Author:Steven L. Hilty [Hilty, Steven L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826273574
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2016-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Fescue is a grass. Like many grasses, it’s in the select company of plants that are among the world’s most valuable to humans. Some varieties of fescue are native to North America, others apparently to Europe, but their true origins are murky. Like all grasses, fescue has a jointed stem, which is solid at the joints and hollow between, but identifying varieties of grasses, as anybody who has studied them knows, requires navigating a microcosm of arcane vocabulary and structural floral minutia daunting even to professional botanists. Julian Steyermark’s authoritative Flora of Missouri weighs in with eight species in the genus Festuca and numerous varieties; two species and five varieties mentioned are of European origin. That was in 1963. Today there are even more varieties.

The fescue the Montgomerys were swathing was K-31, a well-established variety first harvested in Kentucky in 1931. By the 1950s, other varieties had been developed. All of them are hardy grasses that remain green year-round but grow best during cool spring and fall periods. Fescue is tolerant of drought and poor soil, which makes it popular for erosion control along highways, in lawn-seed mixes, for pastures, and as a hay crop. It thrives almost everywhere except the South.

Originally, fescue was a bit player on the world’s stage of grasses, but plant genetics, fertilizers, and human-assisted introductions spread it far and wide. Looking at a field of fescue, you wouldn’t notice anything remarkable about it. It develops a dense, dark-green sod, and the stems are tall and slender. Seeds are born in spikelets at the top of the stem, but they are small and light in weight, not large and heavy like wheat or oats. For top yields, fescue needs hefty boosts of nitrogen. Its wide distribution across North America belies the fact that, as a seed crop, it is grown mainly in just three areas: Oregon, southeastern Washington, and western Missouri. In the northwest, it is grown for seed and yields a ton or more of seed per acre. Missouri farmers squeeze a seed crop, summer hay crop, and late-year pasturage from a single field but sacrifice seed yield for the accrued advantages of a hay crop and cool-weather pasture. A few midwestern growers forgo the seed crop in favor of an early hay crop when plant nutrition peaks and hay buyers pay a premium price for early-baled fescue.

Del and Zach started swathing fescue for seed at the end of the first week in June, when the fescue was green and moist. Ten days and thirteen hundred acres later, when they finished, the early-swathed seed would be dry and ready for harvest, so there would be no break in their work. Then they would bring two of their three combines out of storage sheds and attach small, stripped-down combine headers. On each header there was a pick-up attachment—a flat platform consisting of two wide rubber conveyor belts—mounted out front. The belts bristled with springy steel tines that deftly plucked up the windrows of dry fescue and guided them, like big, loose ropes of grass, into the throat of the combine.

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