Field Days!

General Mills holds a field days event every summer in which they bring together farmers, researchers, and customers to discuss advances in agronomics, crop biosciences, and then walk through a field of wheat test plots. I got to attend this summer in Blackfoot, ID.

I thought it was fantastic to see all the wheat varieties growing side by side - I never knew how visible the differences in varieties could be. Some had tall stems, some had short stems, some had many heads with few kernels on each head, and others had few heads that were really long filled with kernels.

My favorite field to look at was a plot of wheat I have been studying as flour at work! Seeing it growing in the field was almost like letting a chocoholic loose in a Swiss confectionary (if anyone thinks that is too strong a comparison, I am not above testing the theory. Feel free to make your research grant checks out to me, with Swiss Confectionary vs Wheat Field in the subject line).

My coworkers who went on the trip with me from Minneapolis. Erik Pederson, Melissa Miller, and Sarah Johnson.

Based on the smiles in this picture, I wasn't the only one who thought this was a fantastic way to spend a work day!