#2: [16-Mar-13]

22-Oct-2000 -- A continuation of my Quest: to visit all confluences around my home in Brookings South Dakota. This is my fourth visit. Once more, I chose a rather overcast day for my visit.

And like before, this colfluence is in a farmers field. This was easily the messiest-looking field I've ever seen. All kinds of junk on the surface, old corn stalks, really old corn stalks, amazingly old corn stalks, old soybean plants, new soybean plants, and things I didn't recognise. I ctahhed with a passing farmer on my way out and found this was a no-plow field, where the stuff leftover after the harvest is just left on the field and not plowed under. This has the advantage of holding the dirt so it doesn't blow away in a big wind, and the disadvantage that some of the nutirents from the slowly-decaying plants wash away in the runoff. And it leaves a messy field, so I suppose the aesthetic farmer won't use it. The last photograph is looking at the confluence close up, and you can see the tops of several year-old (I guess, possibly 3 year old) corn roots. Kinda cool, I thought.