Harvest time

Last spring, the farmers harvested a grain crop -- I'm gonna say wheat but I don't know for a fact -- by laying it out on the side of the road to dry and thresh it. I never got any good pictures of how farmers used blacktopped lanes, roads, boulevards and parking lots on the outskirts of the city to process their crop because I was always in a bus or a car and couldn't get a good shot.  But a few weeks ago, we spotted this little pile of corn by the roadway leading to the school. This is not sweet corn -- it must be for corn meal or popcorn. The kernels are hard.

Well, that's interesting, we thought. So I snapped a picture. There you go -- some corn.

Then more corn appeared in the lanes that line the boulevard and we soon realized that first little outbreak of corn, that was nothing....

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The yellow pools of corn spread and grew, until both sides of the boulevard were covered with corn for miles in both directions. The corn doesn't encroach on the actual highway, but all side streets and lanes are converted from two-lane to one-lane streets,  The large paved area in front of the entrance gates to the campuses was also taken over by the farmers and their corn:

Also, you can see the difference between a photo taken on a day when the pollution is bad (right), compared to a day when it's only at the "hazardous for sensitive groups" rating (left). Golden cobs in the foreground of the picture on the left, and in the background, the kernels are spread out for the final drying. 

And we have been riding our bicycles past the farmers and their corn quite frequently. They stare and smile at us, we smile back and snap some more pictures. We provide novelty and interest on a reciprocal basis.

The whole family is at work --- grandmas stripping the kernels from the cob, grandpa raking and re-raking the kernels, sons and daughters shoveling the corn into large sacks. The farmers set up camp beds under tarpaulins, or nap in the back of their electric carts. 

The cobs are piled up and also hauled away, we're guessing for pig feed. The corn is scraped off the pavement, then more corn is brought from the fields. 

I've enjoyed the yellow streets and lanes, except for when I tried jumping over a pile of corn after getting off the bus, slipped on the hard cobs and hit the pavement. Luckily I only bruised my dignity. Ross and I bought some corn meal from a sidewalk vendor and I managed to turn out a loaf of cornbread (!) with my little toaster oven. It was not bad.

Because I don't like to take close-ups of the farmers, I don't have a picture of the very elderly grandmas and grandpas perched on their little folding stools, under the shade of some bushes, carefully picking through bits of broken husk and gravel and dust to find every last kernel. They have lived through times when every kernel mattered.