gleaning II

running saturday morning errands took me past the cornfield so i stopped by to see if the local critter population had been gleaning what the combine missed...there's still quite a bit of corn out there both loose and on cobs...it's difficult to quantify what was there in the first place 9 i wasn't in the mood to count cobs and individual kernels ) but i have noticed that the left over corn on the periphery of the field is diminished while the interior still has a ( for me ) surprising amount of grain laying about...the harvest has highlighted the suburban location of the field...with a walmart, sears hardware, and a lowes on the north, condos on the east side, and "improved" roads all around its days as a farm field are probably numbered...we'll see in may. "the united states paves over roughly 170,000 hectares ( 420,078.5 acres ) of cropland per year" [gardener 1996]