The Final Crop?

We live in eastern Sussex County, Delaware, an area that has grown at what sometimes seems an alarming pace in the 21 years we've been here. Sussex has traditionally been a rural county, with an economy dominated by agriculture. Eastern Sussex, where our town of Lewes is located, is a retirement and resort area, featuring beaches, ocean and bays. We still have farmland, but it is devolving into developments around us.

That's why I'm fascinated by an art project in Arizona, near Phoenix. Matthew Moore is an artist who is watching his family farm fall to encroaching development. His response has been a series of art projects using the remaining fields as his canvas.

Rotations: Moore Estates is an exact replica of the first planned community being built on my family's land. The homes have been planted in sorghum and the roads in a black-bearded wheat. The project is a third scale of the actual development, which can be seen to the east of the project.

Mr. Moore has also carved a new-home floor-plan into a 20-acre field of barley.

I've always enjoyed corn mazes, but this is something bigger.

(With thanks to WFMU's Beware of the Blog)

Don't You Mean....

A headline on the WGMD News RSS feed caught my eye yesterday. They ran a short news item about a fire in a local chicken house.

The headline -- Millsboro poultry house fire - chickens spared -- left me thinking, "Yes, but for how long?"

I think the lede could be re-written. They ran:

Fire crews saved 35,000 chickens from becoming dinner after fire broke out in a poultry house in Millsboro Wednesday afternoon.

It more accurately might read:

Fire crews saved 35,000 chickens so that they eventually will become dinner after fire broke out in a poultry house in Millsboro Wednesday afternoon.

I think we all know that those chicken houses aren't housing pet chickens.