Make sure the rows are straight!

This GPS monitor attaches to a large tractor.
I wouldn't be surprised  if we try this out for straighter rows.

In a few weeks, our garden will be plowed, rototilled and laid out for the season. One serious point of our garden is that my mother insists that the rows be straight. I wouldn't say that she was obsessive about this, but she wanted her garden to be neat and organized. For her, part of the quality of the garden is translated into the straightness of the rows.

We originally eyeballed the rows and she trusted all of us to make the rows straight. After a few years, she decided that the precision was inadequate. I distinctly remember my father making a contraption that had a notch on a standard board that you could lay out and that solved the problem of unequal spacing. However, if the first row was crooked, all of your rows were crooked. We needed a better system

So we used the old stakes and string. These were two stakes that were connected with a taut piece of string. We would sometimes use these, but the string would move if you made a furrow too close with the hoe (or if it was windy). And when asked about why our rows weren't straight, it became a running joke that "it wasn't our fault, it was windy that day!". My mother wanted an even better system in her quest for straight rows.

The last few years, we entered the 21st century with our straight row technology. My father took his laser level, and set up the laser at one end and pointed it at the other end at the second stake. This created a straight line that wouldn't be affected by wind, and was always straight. I chuckled when I noticed my dad doing this, because it looked more like a surveyor site rather than a grower preparing for the season. Our rows were laid out with laser precision. This was maybe a bit ridiculous, but we have the nicest rows in our garden around.

While we may laugh about my mother's quest for straight rows in her garden, it's been a quest for people in the ag field for thousands of years. Precision agriculture has been a growing trend in the past 30 years. Growers now have options of using GPS and robotics to ensure that their rows are pinpoint accurate. Whether or not you see a significant yield is negligible, but there's something to be said about driving down a road and being able to see down the rows of corn to the end of the field. Perhaps there's something within the human brain that yearns for organized rows.

Growing up rural

I got a hay fort whenever we baled hay, you jealous?

Growing up in the country, you face the problem of not a whole lot to do. Looking back, I don't know how I survived. I mean, we just got high speed internet a few years ago. We weren't allowed to have any video games in the house, which explains why I'm no good at COD, (unless it's with the riot shield, then I just kinda hide behind it and run into people). We didn't have cable, though we did get satellite TV when I was about 10 or 11.

Growing up, we spent a lot of time outside. Summertime was, and still is my favorite time of year, mainly because it's ideal outside time. Growing up, I would help bale hay when the time came, and swimming was always a good memory. Looking back, we didn't run the air conditioners a whole lot (compared to other households), which probably explains why I'm used to the humidity. I came from a household, where, as long as you put on your sunblock, the sun was good for you.

One very fond memory I have is for my second or third Christmas, my parents had bought me one of those toy jeeps, the ones that were big enough to drive around in. Well, my father is pretty handy, and rigged a way to take the measly 6 volt battery out and drop in a car battery. After a few tweaks, there may have been a small electrical fire along the way, I had a super-jeep. No, really, I used to hitch that little jeep up to my father's trailer, and pull it around. This jeep was a beast. So, at a young age, I was "encouraged" to spend as much time outside.

Later on, as I became older, I took up other hobbies after harvest. Another fond memory while I was homeschooled was making air cannons with PVC pipe. I would shoot anything that would fit down the barrel, though vegetables were my favorite, as they would explode on impact. Ah, the joys of being a strange homeschooled kid with a mad-scientist's brain.

And while I may have said multiple times that I wanted nothing more than to live in a place with sidewalks and street lamps, looking back, I don't think I could sleep in a place where anyone could walk up to my front door, or have a street lamp flooding my bedroom with artificial light. I'll stick to my starry nights and empty spaces.