On a work tour of Canada a few years back, we drove the countryside and it was filled with fields of yellow…canola. To the local Canadian attendees, it was boring, the usual, and what they really wanted to see were the test plots of field corn. Corn? But I guess I can’t blame them. There’s something about a beautiful field of green with tassels that reach to the sky and ears of golden corn that remind a person of home. (At least this ol’ Nebraska girl thinks of home.)

You see, I’ve never actually been lost in a field of corn, in the literal sense of the word. And from what I hear, I don’t want to be. But if you walk in about five rows, you can hear the breeze as it flows through the leaves and it’s almost like the field is telling a story about agriculture and the land. So in a misty-eyed, sentimental sense of the word, being “lost” in a field of corn does feel a little like home.

Maybe corn is what led me to a career in agriculture. When I work, I feel as though I’m supporting the community that helped raise me, supporting all of those farmers and ranchers who know what it’s like to enjoy feeling lost as they look at their crops in the field. And now I understand why my father gets a little depressed each fall when the fields are barren and the combine is in the shed.

It’s because seeing corn reminds us of home.

Until we walk again…