Yellowish-colored Corn on the Hill

As a native New Yorker, I still find this grain farming gig somewhat puzzling.

Tom sat on the front porch the other day pondering his brother’s corn field. He said, “do you see the yellowish colored corn there on the hillside?” First of all, who has ever seen a hill in Illinois, much less in this section of his brother’s corn field? I did, however, finally see a slightly discolored bit of corn. He got out the farm notebook where he records when and what types of seeds he plants in each field.

This brings up another problem: seeds. In New York we call them corn seeds. Just like tomato seeds, green bean seeds, etc. In Illinois they are called seed corn. To further complicate matters, there are several kinds of seed corn in his brother’s field, and each type has a different number. His farm notebook indicated that the yellowish corn had been seed corn number 8920…funny, he remarked, he would have guessed that the yellow patch would have been 9107, not 8920!

Farmer out standing in his field