View from the Cab: Summer certainties

By Kent Casson

As summer comes to a peak, there are some certainties here in Central Illinois.

You are sure to spot grasshoppers, yellow butterflies and other insects along the field edges. I always remember as a kid thinking it meant back to school time when I saw these creatures. The butterflies are visible by mud puddles especially after a big rain and the grasshoppers will smack you right in the face while mowing.

The smell of summertime fills the air. For me, this is corn pollinating and the aroma of fresh cut grass. They always say you can almost hear the corn grow if you listen carefully but the smell of corn is noticeable throughout our part of the world. Soybeans even have that “fresh plant” smell.

Locusts humming and crickets chirping can be heard at various hours of the day and evening. Mom always used to say the sound of locusts made her kind of sad as she thought about summer coming to a close and the fall and winter seasons to come. It seems we hear the locusts sooner each year, typically following the Fourth of July.

Crickets hopping across the basement floor is something I expect by about the first of August. While it can be nice to hear chirping outside at night, no one wants to see them coming out of hiding – especially in the house. When I see them inside, this means I haven’t done a good enough job spraying for bugs around the house foundation, which reminds me I still need to do this.

If venturing outdoors on a 90-plus degree afternoon, sweat dripping down the forehead is almost guaranteed. This is especially worse when working hard like cleaning-up farm equipment, mowing or even worse – walking beans. Not too many farmers do that anymore but some still head out to the field edges to pull waterhemp and other pesky weeds.

What would summertime in Central Illinois be without sweet corn? We always help my in-laws freeze corn in late July so we can enjoy it for months to come, but nothing beats corn straight off the cob freshly picked from the field. Corn on the cob goes with about any meal, whether it is lunch or dinner.

Planes buzzing the skies above corn and soybean fields really make it feel like summer. Small planes dive bombing the fields are armed with fungicide and insecticide to get these crops past the finish line successfully. Each time a plane flies above the house, I can’t help but stop whatever I’m doing out in the yard and gaze up at the sky to watch the fancy maneuvering by the pilot.

Let’s hang on to summer as long as we can because the seasons will change in no time and we will soon be bringing in this year’s harvest.