Returning from my weekly journey to Osceola, I came home to some beautiful clouds. At the end of my street south is the remnants of a farmstead. All the barns are gone, and the tornado damaged the house, so there is a new prefab house, that was brought in on wheels.
In the pasture are young heifers. The calves from a dairy, south of here are being raised in this farm pasture to eventually become a part of the milking herd. It has been fun watching them grow up this past year.
The water in our ditches of our town flow down hill toward this pasture and the indention in the pasture is where our water drains to before heading south to the Beaver Creek.
The rolling hills are blamed on the glacier action in the area and south of here are larger rolling hills that are made up of loess. The loess hills are made up of a very refined clay filled, powdery soil and all around the area are lots of rock deposits. The true loess hill are next to the Missouri River where it is lined with bluffs made up of loess all along the river.
The farmer who owned this farm passed away a year or so ago, so his son-in-law helps to maintain this area. It is his heifers in the field and he uses the sheds in this picture to store his feed. The silos haven't been used in years as the silage that they use to store in them were used to feed cattle for slaughter. Ironically the large feed lots have driven all of the small farmers out of that business and it is rare to see Iowa farmers raising beef cattle. But the silos are still all out there for us to see. In fact the silos are the first things we see when we come into our town. The next thing is a convenience store-gasoline store.
9 comments:
These are my kind of pictures, simply lovely pastoral scenes with gorgeous clouds. It doesn't get any better.
Sunny :)
There should be some kind of way in which we can not only sample the view - the rolling hills and the blue skies - but also the temperature. I suspect that it is not as warm as it seems in your splendid pictures.
Your pictures are wonderful-and your post really informative. Learning a lot from you about Iowa and it's surroundings.
vickie
The name Osceola peaked my attention. Where is it? Osceloa was a Seminole Indian chief in Florida.
I like the wide format of the first shot, Larry.
Osceola is in southern Iowa. It is a county seat and Iwoa was Indian territory for many years in the plains. Other relatives to Osceola have towns named after them here in Iowa. Ottumwa and Oskaloosa are also in Iowa and I really don't how the names became name for a city. I am assuming that Iowa came from the Kiowa Indian tribe. I will have to look in to this.
Larry, I read your comment. I'll be all so happy to help with the transplant that I can.
Jim
Wow...the field goes on forever, doesn't it?
Flat area!
I would so miss the hills where we live there, but it has its own beauty.
I really enjoyed your photos, the wide expanses of fields..I do enjoy a wide open prairie view..especially for clouds:)
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