A Summer in the Corn

This summer I gained my first career applicable work experience as I worked for a Phd student in the Crop Science department.  I spent countless hours out in corn fields taking measurements and crossing certain pedigrees with others.  Not only was the work tedious and repetitive at times, I also had the pleasure of doing it during the hottest month in U.S. history.  All that said it was a great time with great co-workers, and I was able to learn a lot about field trials which was very useful for me to see.  During the summer I didn't carry my camera out to the field everyday for obvious reasons, but I did have my iPhone and decided I'd record the events of the summer and the cool things I saw through Instagram.  I ended up taking a couple hundred decent photos of the things I saw, but I won't bore you with all of those here.  I'll be posting the top 25 or so images to give you a taste of what I saw.  Hopefully it gives you a new perspective on where your food comes from, it sure did for me.Seed PacketsCorn field at sunriseA rare muddy dayStarting to growSeeds to hand plantDusty TractorDown the shootCorn EmergenceSeed BuildingSpreading RootsThe work truckSilks starting to appearInfant corn earPollinating bagsIrrigating the nurseryTassel shedding pollenDragonfly landing on tasselDragonfly hanging out on leafDrying out tasselsA view from aboveCollecting tasselsGrasshopper!7am sunriseWe liked our popcorn seasoningThis work by JD Maloney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.