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A Field of Yellow
Flowers
We are enjoying our midday meal at Caroll’s
Kitchen in Odebolt in late June 2005. Warren Hanson
comes over to say hello, and enthusiastically
invites us to see his field of yellow flowers. We
accept his invitation, of course. Later that afternoon he takes us to the top of a
high hill on his farm, where there are glorious
drifts of rudbeckia, or blackeyed susans. He says,
“That’s really yellow, isn’t it? They’ve just come
within the last couple or three weeks. It started to
get yellow, then I think those will dry up and die
and then there’ll probably be some other show.”
Looking
south down the hill you can see the lower part Warren says it’s part of CRP—Conservation Reserve
Program—and according to a printout he shows us
later, it’s a “diverse planting of native grasses,
cool-season grasses and filter strips.” Warren says
there are “80 acres in the whole piece. Some of it
wasn’t seeded. There’s brome and orchard grass from
last year. They’re good erosion controls. The yellow
reseeds itself; there was a little of it last year.” There’s “tall stuff coming here; what it is I
don’t know. It should be a place for birds. And then
there’s some grasses in there too.” Fingering a tall
stem, he says, “See, this here is different. It has
buds on, whatever it will be. There’s quite a lot
other than just the yellow. There are sure a lot of
yellow ones.” He tells us that the purple, white and
yellow sweet clover blooming here and there is not
part of the seed that was planted; it was in the
soil. We ask him if the clover is a prairie flower,
and he says, “I don’t know. Sweet clover was grown
as long as I can remember.” “I hope some pheasants have some place to make”
[their home here]. We ask about hunters. “I keep
everybody off; I try to give the pheasants a
chance.” We ask him if he knows that there used to
be prairie chickens around here. He says “When I was
a kid I saw prairie chickens. I think I must have
been 8, 9 years old.” (Since Warren is now age 93,
that would have been about 1920-21!) We tell
him that in the 1880’s the prairie chicken hunting
season around Odebolt began on August 15.
The field
is on the well-known high hill a couple miles west
and a bit “So is this the highest spot in Sac County?” we
ask. “Gee, I don’t know. I think probably over
there”, he says, pointing to the hills to the west.
Then he turns east to the gravel road next to his
field. “There’s a marker on the ground over on the
other side of the road in the fence line. Years back
they were measuring altitude. There’s a marker about
yay big, brass. It’s grown over.” Back at the farmstead we sit outside in the shade and visit. We listen to the birds singing in the high trees. We look up and see a Baltimore oriole. Warren’s gray cat comes to visit us. It’s a perfect summer afternoon, sunny, with a gentle breeze. The quiet is interrupted only by the sounds of nature. Warren doesn’t want to live in town, and we understand.
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