Since I was traveling again this week, I got behind again…. so I am going to catch up somewhat quickly. P is for prairie today, because I was traveling through a bit of prairie over the last few days. A lot of us have heard of prairies and may even get a photo in mind. We see beautiful grasses, growing for acres on end, maybe as far as the eye can see. Trees are few and far between but you may see some shrubs or brush. That was certainly the scenery I saw much of the time I drove around North Dakota on my vacation last August.
As I looked around online it seems that prairies are a distinctly North American type of land, though there are some prairies in other parts of the world. This map from the Northern Arizona University geography department website shows that prairies extend over a good bit of the central United States. These are also areas which are home to farmers and ranchers.
This weekend as I drove across the prairie in northeastern Kansas, I had to stop several times to take photos. One thing I always notice on the prairie is how expansive the sky can be!
And here are a couple of photos of the North Dakota prairie from last August/September:
P is also for Pinto Beans 🙂
As I looked through my North Dakota photos, looking for the prairie shots above, I was reminded of a crop grown on the prairie that I had never seen in the field — pinto beans! Yep, my friend Katie from Pinke Post took me up to visit her parents farm and her dad Fred (aka Farmer Fred) showed us around. The first crop he showed me was pinto beans which was awesome as I hadn’t seen a field of pinto beans before…. and I enjoy chili!
This is Farmer Fred showing me the field of pinto beans
pinto bean plants as harvest looms, you can see the leaves are falling off the plants!
closeup of pinto beans
If you’d like to learn more about pinto beans, a great first stop is this post showing a full season of pinto bean production on the farm Katie’s mom wrote on their Griggs Dakota blog. You can also check out these posts on the 2012 crop of pinto’s on the Griggs blog:
Q & R Coming Soon!
See the other posts in this series by clicking on the logo at right and reviewing the letters, or by browsing the A to Z ag tag archives. You should also feel free to add ideas for upcoming letters!
Janice, thank you so much for highlighting two of my favorite P’s! Prairie and pinto beans. You are always welcome on our farm and in our home. Visit again in the WARM summer months!
Thanks Katie! Am sure I’ll find my way back now and then. I’m not sure North Dakota will be having warm summer months anymore! Seems you guys may be the new polar ice cap with the way this spring is going!