Crop knowledege

June 22, 2016

We strayed off of our planned route several times today. The first time was to visit the Isle of Wight county court house. When the court house was built it was common practice to have an adjacent house where people with business at the court could get food and lodging. Boykin's Tavern is one of the few preserved lodgings.

Boykins Tavern next to the Isle of Wight county court house

Isle of Wight county confederate monument.
They bravely fought, they bravely fell.
They wore the gray, they wore it well.

We have been attempting to keep track of the different crops we see. This morning we passed our first field of strawberries on our way out of Suffolk. We didn't get a chance to take a picture of the strawberries. For some reason team S was reluctant to make a U-turn to go back and photograph the berries.

It's fascinating to see how agriculture varies from one region to another. It's discouraging to discover how little we know about agriculture.

At some point in the past while riding around the Midwest the idea that the two basic row crops are corn and beans got lodged in our brains. If we see something growing and it doesn't look like corn, we assume it must be beans. Today we stopped to talk to some local guys at an inspection station and discovered that most of the "beans" we have been passing (and erroneously reporting in this blog) were in fact peanuts and cotton. In fact it is unlikely that any of the beans we saw were soybeans.

Beans. Or peanuts. Perhaps cotton. We don't know.

We are also weak in the amber waves of grain department. We noticed that there were two different types of seed heads on the wheat. We picked up some samples for further analysis back in the lab. A few hours later we recalled that we don't have a lab, so we asked one of the guys at the inspection station to identify our grain samples for us.

"Can you tell us which is wheat and which is barley?"

The old man stared at the seed heads for a while, shook his head sadly and said "That's rye."

"Rye! Well what's the other one?"

"They're both rye. When it gets more mature these little hairs fall out, that's all. Those are the same plant."

We need to get back to the lab to determine if we have been riding past rye fields for the last few days, or if perhaps the local folks don't actually know what crops they are growing. What on earth would anyone do with that much rye? Are reuben sandwiches really that popular?

In an effort to increase our agricultural IQ we visited the farm and forestry museum at Chippokes plantation. We didn't learn to recognize rye vs. wheat vs. barley but we did learn that tobacco seeds are so small that a single tablespoon of tobacco seeds is enough to plant 7 acres. We also learned that there has been unrelenting change and innovation in agriculture for the last couple hundred years. Every time an new machine is invented to plant or harvest crops it becomes obsolete within a few years.

It was warm enough in the afternoon to enjoy a dip in the pool

Unidentified Virginia flowers. This is not a crop, so no need for identification.

We enjoyed yet another ferry ride today, this time across the James River.

Team S tracks their miles with 2 GPS units. These units continue to log miles during ferry crossings (necessary to appreciate our speed and the speed of the birds swooping around the ferry). Team A uses one GPS and one old school bike computer. Naturally the bike computer does not register miles on ferry rides since the wheel is not turning,

A passenger we met on the ferry was from this area and was named James. This would seem to make him somewhat of an authority on the James River. He is also a bike racer and coach. This would seem to make him an authority on bikes and bike computers. So we put the question to James: "Do miles crossing a river on a ferry count on a bike tour?".

Very diplomatically James voiced the opinion that the idea of keeping track of miles on a bike tour is to determine "how far you have come", so miles on a ferry should count. After we smiled at this sage opinion he added that if anyone he was coaching reported doing a 3 1/2 hour training ride, 30 minutes of which was on a ferry, he would send them back out for another half hour.

Following the ferry crossing, the final 5 miles to the condo we were staying at was on a bike path.

Or was supposed to be on the bike path. After about 4 miles on the path we came to a chain across the path indicating that the path was closed. We could see some kind of construction taking place up ahead on the path. So we ducked off of the trail, through a parking lot and around a closed gate to get to a road. This serendipitous diversion took us past the 5 Forks Diner where we decided to eat lunch. They had pretty good Greek food and a humorous waitress.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0