I had my first ever experience on Monday of shooting with another photographer – Mr. Bob Towery was driving through town on his way to a workshop and we arranged to spend a few hours together.  Bob told me it was up to me where we went – talk about pressure!!  Have you seen where I live??  It’s a small town in the middle of farm land!  The closest town of size (around 6,000 – is that considered sizable?) is 25 miles away (and where I work – don’t want to go there on a day off!).  Bob likes architecture.  We don’t really have architecture in my town. 

We started off with breakfast and then headed out of town – about 15 miles north and got some shots of an old tumble down building that was actually the first image I ever posted (architecture!), and just a few hundred yards down the road was a tumble down garage with a tumble down pickup.  Inside this tumble down garage was a prime example of repurposing – these Skippy lids are nailed to a shelf and the lids once held their jars which probably contained screws and nuts and bolts and nails and other odds and ends that you find in garages.  I thought they were kind of cool.  It will be interesting to see what images Bob got from the day and how they compare to mine – if he saw things the same way I saw them.  I’m guessing there will be some similarities and some differences.  When do you get home, Bob?

After re-reading Wednesday’s post I realized that I might not have been exactly clear when I stated the pivot follows a straight line.  It does, it’s just a circular line.  The pivot goes around the center post, where I’m standing in the the image above, and pivots in a circle over the circumference of the field.  This particular pivot doesn’t have a swing span on it, as the previous post did, consequently three corners are utilized for stacking hay - you can see one stack in this image, covered by a tarp, and the fourth corner has a sub-station.  When setting the telemetry, you program in how many inches of water you want applied and over what period of time.  Typically, watering is set for anywhere from 12 – 48 hours, with one to two rotations.

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If you have a moment or two, check out my recent post at Vision and Verb and then linger a while to read the other fantastic posts there.

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I found out that my photo of Buster that I submitted to Diane Schuller Photography’s Pet Photo Contest was selected as one of the finalists!  How cool is that!!!  Please go to Diane’s site and vote for #5 – Buster is the Boston sniffing a bouquet of roses – see photo at left.  The shot wasn’t set up at all, with the exception that I took the bouquet outside to take some photos in the morning light and Buster came over to sniff the roses all on his own.  He’s such a sweetie.  Go vote – you have until Sunday at midnight.

For all you city folk stopping by, this is a center pivot used for irrigating crops.  Over on the right where the dragonfly’s head is pointing is the center this pivot, which is in the center of this field…hence the name center pivot.  As you can see, the majority of the pivot follows a straight line, with the exception of this last span, which is at an angle to the rest.  This last span is called a swing span, because it swings out from a 90° angle to fall in a straight line with the rest of the pivot before folding back to a 90° angle again.  This enables the swing span to water most of the corners of a field — picture the field as square with rounded corners.  Most of the field can be utilized, rather than just a circle in a square with the corners sitting idle.  Also, if you have a rectangular field, the swing span waters the long ends of the field when fully expanded.  Center pivots can also be configured in a half circle, quarter circle or three-quarter circle (or anything in between, really). 

Pivots these days can be operated through the use of telemetry and a laptop, eliminating the need to babysit the pivot.  The telemetry sends various notifications via email to a designated operator’s cell phone or laptop.  The telemetry also tells the swing span when to turn on and turn off the sprinklers.  Oh yes, in case you are wondering how the swing span knows when to swing out and swing back in, there is wire buried about three or four feet deep all the way around the circle in the path the swing span needs to follow and it sends out a signal to something located on the end of the swing span. 

Some farms don’t utilize swing spans on their pivots and make use of the corners in different ways.  They are good locations for homes and shop yards.  Utility companies utilize them for locating their sub-stations.  Farmers can also utilize the corners for CRP – Conservation Reserve Program through the USDA, wherein native grasses are planted to provide cover for wildlife and to help prevent erosion.

This shot is actually a compilation of nine different shots.  I let Photoshop do all the work of stitching the images together.  It does it automatically and takes only a few minutes rather than who knows how long it would have taken me to do it myself.  The only thing I had to do was crop it afterwards to even the edges up.  I don’t think I needed all nine of the original images, but you are supposed to have quite a bit of overlap for each photo used.  PS did a fantastic job merging them all together.

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I almost forgot!  I’m up today at Vision and Verb.  If you have a moment or two, check out my post and then linger a while to read the other fantastic posts.

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One more thing…I just found out that my photo of Buster that was submitted to Diane Schuller Photography’s Pet Photo Contest was selected as one of the finalists!  How cool is that!!!  Please go to Diane’s site and vote for #5 – Buster is the Boston sniffing a bouquet of roses – see photo at left.  The shot wasn’t set up at all, with the exception that I took the bouquet outside to take some photos and Buster came over to sniff the roses all on his own.  He’s such a sweetie.  Go vote – you have until Sunday at midnight.

This is taken from the front end of the potato digger, where it digs up the dirt and potatoes and brings it through the machinations that sort the potatoes out from the dirt and vines.  Don’t ask me how that all works, because I haven’t a clue.  I just know the dirt and vines go flying out the back end and the potatoes are routed to a conveyer, which you can see in the image below.  The conveyor takes the potatoes up, turns a corner where a vine puller removes any vines, rock or dirt clods, etc., before loading into a truck.

I mentioned in the previous post that after the truck is fully loaded it is tarped before it proceeds to the storage or processor.  Tarping is one of the requirements for passing the USDA GAP audit.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed a set of criteria that the processor and grower must implement in order to pass the audit, Good Agricultural Practices for the grower and Good Handling Practices for the processor.  The GAP audit is actually a voluntary process, but the companies purchasing product from the processor are more and more requiring GAP/GHP certification.  Some companies such as McDonalds and Sysco require even more stringent requirements.  All of the criteria are things that most conscientious growers do anyway, it is just a matter of documenting the act of doing it, because if it isn’t on paper, did you actually do it?

A lot of physical labor, sound and timely decisions, and the paper work to document it all, goes into raising a good crop of potatoes, whether they go to fresh market or to the processor, so that you the consumer can enjoy french fries and mashed or baked potatoes.  If you enjoy cooking you can try the delicious sounding frittata, bread, manicotti, gnocchi, latkes, scalloped, au gratin potatoes…too many recipes to list here, but you can download the recipes from the Washington Potato Commission who compiled recipes created by chefs from Eastern Washington or some recipes from Puget Sound chefs.  Personally, I’d start out with the Eastern Washington recipes, because after all, this is where the majority of the potatoes are grown…we should know how to cook them, right??

Here are a couple of bonus shots to complete the series.  Next up will be some images for November in Black and White, which is hosted by Maya at Springtree Road and you can read all about it here so that you can participate, too!

I’m trying to get the processing done on the organic farm shoot and I’m about two-thirds of the way there.  Hopefully tonight will finish it up and then I can get back to regular blog visits.  Fingers crossed!