Alfalfa, Potato, and Air-Fields in Maine

Date: June 2018
Category: Flying and Airplanes
Type: Post

June 16, 2018

Emilie Phillips

Jim was all excited the alfalfa field next to his favorite diner had just been cut. He invited the whole supercub.org crew up, but either they were busy or too far away at Cub speed. Tyson and I showed up, as did Jim and his son Andy. That made 4 planes — a Carbon Cub, Bearhawk, RV-4, and Citabria.

I did a go around on my first approach because I anticipated giving up 500 feet. Landing in a farm field takes me out of my routine. Should I land before the packed dirt farm road and risk a sharp dip, or land after the road? I picked the latter. My second attempt, I stalled 3 feet high of perfect. I wanted a short rollout to minimize the chance of cracking my wheel pants. The divots, hillocks, and apple trees turned taxiing into a maze. I should consider bigger tires.

After brunch, Andy led us to Jim’s airfield for a tour of the family potato farm. Potatoes are their primary crop, but they rotate with feed stock corn to keep from depleting the soil. We looked down into their computer controlled cold storage building. It’s the size of 4 groceries stores. Their tractors were neatly parked and folded up in another barn, but just imagine what they must look like with the conveyor belt wings extended, gobbling up dirt. Andy said their corn harvesters extract the corn kernels straight off the plant and leave everything else, even the cobs, chopped in the field.

Tyson and Isaac headed straight home while Emilie bagged a few more airports in Maine.