Eastern Iowa Farmer Fall 2020

Reader
and ranchers who produce it. That’s what is
behind the popularity of The Eastern Iowa
Farmer. Even in Iowa where agriculture
is a very big deal, the majority of readers
don’t climb into a tractor cab to start
their day. Nevertheless, agriculture makes
for important and entertaining consumer
information.
Readers may punch a time clock or
pound a computer but there is something
compelling about the land no matter how
distant the connection. The Rural Reader
column should help satisfy that curiosity
with news of titles and writers that focus
on farming and everything associated
with it.
The literature of agriculture, both technical
and entertaining, continues to crowd
a sagging shelf devoted to farming, rural
living and the Midwest.
The Rural Reader will highlight some
of that literature, old and new, to help you
learn more about the importance of farming
and the food you eat.
Good weeds?
You may snort in disgust at what comes
next but I’m going to say a few good
things about weeds. At our farm
west of Andrew, life in
the summer is all
about at least
controlling if
not eradicating
weeds. In the renter’s corn and soybean
fields big self-propelled outfits from the
local farm cooperative make short work of
crop weeds with 120-foot spray booms. I
mow, trim and chop around the farmstead,
and Brenda hoes with precision around
delicate plants in her gardens. And still
weeds persist. Is there a higher power at
work here?
Richard Mabey is perhaps England’s
foremost nature writer. Mabey’s definition
of a weed in his 2010 book Weeds: In
Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants
(Harper Collins, 324 pages, $26) is subtly
admonishing in a sly way. Mabey says
plants become weeds when they obstruct
our plans, our tidy maps of the world. He’s
right. In fact, the naturalist believes weeds
are sometimes exactly the right plant in
the right spot at the right time. They cover
exposed raw soil, they indicate soil fertility
or sterility, even the soil type and moisture
holding capacity.
The impression that weeds are more
successful than farm crops or garden plants
is correct. Survivors, hardy and adaptable,
weeds are the first to the scene of soil
disturbances of any kind. Annuals, then
biennials and finally the perennials, they all
rush to fill the void. Thus, the fireweed that
invades burned out forest land or Canada
thistle on drought stricken dryland fields. It