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LESSON 1: There's a lot in This Spoonful (Language, Music, Dance, Art)*
LESSON 2: Corn Eats Lunch (Science)*
LESSON 3: Topsoil Dessert (Science)*
LESSON 4: Farmers Till With Care (Social Studies, Current Events)

*All Lesson plans are adaptable for ALL ages!

ANN LEARNS TO PLOW

Prologue:
There's something humbling about tilling the earth. It's a time to bury the old crop and prepare for the new. Throughout history, cultivation of the land has revolved around this turning over of the soil; plows have been used since agriculture began.

But the machines and tools, and the management systems that go hand in hand with them, have continuously improved. Today there are new tools and improved systems that were unimaginable only 30 years ago. Farmers today can raise corn with less tillage than either their parents or their grandparents. Less tillage leaves a protective layer of residue, which protects the soil from wind and water erosion. Today, Ann would use a different method. But it was 1969.

It was the first time they'd let Ann drive a tractor by herself. It was the 1650 Oliver, the biggest tractor on the farm; olive green, wide front wheels, plenty of horsepower.

Her brother, five years younger, had driven a tractor many times, and that wasn't fair. But her mom and dad couldn't stop her any longer. She had her driver's permit and knew how to drive a car. A tractor couldn't be much different.

They had dropped her off this morning at the field called "The 120" because it was 120 acres. Now, here she was, plowing by herself.

A day or two before, they'd finished harvesting the corn, so the ground was covered with dried corn stalks and leaves. She couldn't see the ground through that residue. But it didn't matter. All she had to do was keep the right wheel in the furrow made by the plow on the pass before. It was like following a ribbon cut into the field. Simple.

Behind the plow, the freshly turned soil was dark and shiny. The Native Americans had named it "blue earth." She wondered why they hadn't called it black earth; that's how it looked to her.

Hundreds of gulls trailed after her. They swooped down to eat fresh worms uncovered by the plow, then flew back into the air. She was a parade queen, riding a tractor. Behind her came a plow, a flock of birds, a ribbon of blue soil.

The sun was bright. The air was crispy cool. She loved the wind ruffling her hair, the tractor engine roaring, the cornstalks mixing with new soil. She felt powerful.

She plowed down the field to the end, lifted the plow by pushing the hydraulic lever the way her dad had taught her, turned around, put it back into the ground, plowed back the other direction. Back and forth. Up and down the field.

It was repetitive, peaceful work. Down the field one way. Back the other. North. Then south. Back and forth all afternoon, watching the soil turn, the gulls swoop. Following the furrow.

She had lots of time to think as she plowed. To think and to daydream. Her dad used his time on the tractor to invent new pieces of machinery. Ann liked to let her mind wander too.

She remembered the science fair project about soil that she'd done in the sixth grade. She'd written a letter to every county in her state and asked someone to send a bag of soil from his or her county. More than 20 people had answered, and she'd put those samples into clear baby food bottles, with a string taped from each lid to a map of the state. The soil type was different in every part of the state. It was dark black, brown lumpy, tan sandy or soft powdery, depending where it came from. She had never realized there were so many colors and textures.

Before that project, her mom used to call it dirt.

Ann thought of what she'd learned in junior high science: in every handful of soil are millions of tiny plants and animals, so small only a microscope could make them visible. All those creatures were hiding in there, living and working, decaying old corn stalks, feeding new corn plants. The bugs and worms that were big enough to see made tunnels for air and water to move through. Soil was a busy place.

By the middle of the afternoon she was hungry. She wondered how corn ate. She knew there were minerals in the soil, like those in her food and vitamin pills. Once she'd seen a root under a microscope, so she knew it was covered with tiny hairs that helped get those minerals and water into the plant.

She'd also heard her dad talk about feeding phosphorus and potassium to the corn. "P and K," he called it, and she'd seen the fertilizer trucks spreading it; small white pebbles sprinkled over the ground. She'd also seen him pulling a white tank through the fields that he said had nitrogen gas in it. He said the plants used nitrogen to grow tall.

Thinking of corn plants eating their supper made her laugh. She wondered if baby corn was fussy about its food. Or if teenage corn liked junk food. She was in the middle of a daydream about a plate heaped high with soil, little root hairs reaching for it, when all of a sudden there was a clunk.

The tractor tipped forward.

It felt like she was tipping down, down, far down to her left. Her heart stopped. She grabbed the steering wheel and squeezed so hard her hands hurt. She pushed the clutch in with one foot, the brake with the other, and closed her eyes.

She was shaking and dizzy, but not dead, yet. The tractor quit tipping. She opened her eyes.

The plow was still there. So were the birds, and the sunshine. The left front wheel was in a hole, but she could still see the top of it, so maybe it wasn't too deep. She climbed down.

The hole was four feet across. The wheel was in it, one foot deep, resting on solid ground. But two feet to the west she couldn't even see the bottom. She gasped. Only two feet from disaster.

It was a washout! She'd seen one before. It had been caused by a tile breaking, deep in the ground. Years before, her dad had hired a crew to put cement drain tiles into all his fields. Those tiles helped drain water down through the soil; otherwise rushing water could carry soil off the fields. They also helped drain excess water after heavy rains; otherwise the corn could drown. Roots needed oxygen to live, just like people.

But now, here was Ann stuck in a hole caused by a broken one. She had two choices-to walk home and get her dad, or try to back out.

No, there wasn't a choice. There was no way she'd risk her brother seeing her walk home.

She carefully climbed back into the tractor, put it in reverse, lifted the plow, said a prayer, and backed out. Then slowly, very slowly, she drove around the washout, leaving a big circle of unplowed ground.

She would tell her dad about it later.