Oct 30 2009
Mystery Photo Friday: What Is This?
Living on a farm, our kids are quite adept at recognizing crops growing in fields. In fact, one of our car games is to list the fields as we pass them: “Corn — Soybeans — Wheat — Sugar Beets — Sweet Corn.” This field south of Madison, Wisconsin, however, had them baffled.
Here’s a closer look. Do you know what it is?
It’s tobacco, something I never thought of as being a crop in the fertile flatlands of Wisconsin. I had always thought of it as a Southern crop, until my husband showed me tobacco fields along the Mississippi bluffs of southeastern Wisconsin a few years ago, but near Milton in south-central Wisconsin, there were also some very large tobacco farms.
The shed is where the tobacco is hung to dry after harvest.
This is yet another thing we wouldn’t have seen from the freeway, but since we were traveling the back roads, we learned something new on our Sunday drive in Wisconsin.
To see more travel photos, visit Photo Friday at DeliciousBaby.
I guessed correctly before I scrolled down! Tobacco has that distinct large leaf…we saw tons of it while we were on our road trip to Virginia this summer…probably the only reason this girl without a green thumb knew what it was!!!
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Boy am I city girl. I had no idea what it was!
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I did guess it based on what the plant and flowers look like, but I would never have expected it in Wisconsin!
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The moment I saw those big leaves I said tobacco – do that many people still smoke?
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Wow! I lived in the farms of MN for 10 years, and I never heard of or saw tobacco being grown there. Fascinating!
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Wow! I have never seen tobacco before. Certainly not in Wisconsin!
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So glad you told us, it took the pressure off my dumb guessing. I was thinking – ummm, big, green leaves?
They grow tobacco in Western Massachusetts also, especially in the Pioneer Valley (where Amherst College is). I have lots of childhood memories of fields & barns that look just like that.
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This post reminds me of some of the scenes I always saw as a kid when we traveled to Kentucky for family reunions. My great uncle had a tobacco farm, drying shed and all.
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I thought it was spinach…shows how much I know!
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