{"id":10490,"date":"2013-07-01T22:00:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T02:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=10490"},"modified":"2024-12-04T17:54:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:54:37","slug":"knee-high-by-the-4th-of-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=10490","title":{"rendered":"Knee High By The 4th of July"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"01<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Des Moines, Iowa <\/i>\u2013 \u201cOh What A Beautiful Morning!\u201d Remember that Rodgers & Hammerstein tune from Oklahoma<\/i>? Driving through the Iowa countryside a few days ago, with early summer cornfields rolling across the hills to my right and to my left, I thought of a line from that song \u201c\u2026.the corn is as high as an elephants eye\u2026.\u201d Then I laughed, because the corn I saw was just beginning to get a grip on growing; it\u2019s pretty darned early in the season here. \u201cThat corn is only knee high,\u201d I thought. Later I learned that\u2019s the catch-phrase of corn farmers: \u201cWe look for the corn to be knee high by the 4th<\/sup> of July,\u201d I was told. That\u2019s the \"01<\/a>assurance that everything is on track; \u201celephant\u2019s eye\u201d corn isn\u2019t expected until late September; most harvesting happens in October and sometimes into November. Then there\u2019s a lot of harvesting going on; in 2012 Iowa corn farmers grew almost 1.88 billion bushels of corn, on 13.7 million acres of land; 2013 projections indicate 2.45 billion bushels on 13.97 million acres. Iowa has produced the largest corn crop of any state for more than two decades; in an average year, Iowa produces more corn than most countries! And it\u2019s been the dominant \"01<\/a>crop in Iowa for more than 150 years. The reasons are simple \u2013 a growing season that is long enough and warm enough, ample rain, and deep, rich soil. Iowa also produces livestock whose waste includes nutrients that are key to fertilizing the fields for better corn production. According to Iowa Agriculture farm statistics, in 2012 there were 195,000 sheep and lambs on hand, 3.9 million cattle and calves, and 20 million hogs. And, by the way, Iowa is the number one pork producing state in the country too. <\/p>\n

I went to the Iowa Agriculture website for some basic farm facts; I wanted to know how many farms there are in Iowa, overall. The answer (as of 2011) is 92,300 farms, covering 30.7 \"01<\/a>million acres of the state. The size of an average farm is 333 acres, valued at about $6,708 per acre. That long growing season I mentioned has temperatures ranging from an average of 13.2F in January to 75.3F in July, with an average annual rainfall of 45.10 inches. Soybeans, milk, and eggs are other biggies in the state; 466 million bushels of soybeans grown on 9.23 million acres in 2011; 4.33 billion pounds of milk produced; 14.5 billion eggs. Equate that to how many glasses of milk you drink in a week, or how many sunny-side-up breakfasts you enjoy. As to the bacon that accompanies those breakfast eggs \u2013 I pulled some numbers from the National Pork Board and the US Census of Agriculture. Iowa has about 8,300 hog operations; more than 39,000 jobs are directly related to raising and caring for hogs in Iowa; the industry generates nearly $950 million in household income for pork producers.<\/p>\n

Enough with the numbers; I wanted to know what kind of hogs are raised, and what is different about each breed. But first a little Pig Latin Lesson: \u201cboars\u201d are males of breeding \"01<\/a>age; \u201csows\u201d are breeding females; and \u201cpiglets\u201d\u00a0need no explanation; they are the unweaned little ones.<\/p>\n

From the Des Moines National Pork Board website, which also has delicious recipes for the use of pork, I learned that most hogs bred for consumption are the offspring of a combination of breeds \u2013 usually dark-breed boars bred to white-breed sows. Dark breed boars enhance meat quality; white-breed sows produce many piglets, plus their maternal instincts allow more piglets to survive. A producer will choose a particular breed, or combination of genetic lines, based on what they are looking for with regard to meat quality, farming method, and the hog market. Here are eight of the most widely popular.<\/p>\n