Apple Ochard Weekend

This quote is sort of tangentially related to what I’m writing about but it struck me when I ran across it.

We went out to get pumpkins this weekend. Not that we carve them but they are nice to just put out on the porch. Although, since we’ve discovered that raccoons love pumpkins, we keep them in the garage until just before Halloween. Also picked up some apple cider because nothing says fall in the midwest like apple cider.

I’ve written about the orchard that we go to. It sits just into the next county and is only a short drive away. In the years we’ve been going there, they’ve ended up becoming a fall weekend destination. They’ve added a grill so you can eat and a whole bunch of activities for kids. I’m sure it keeps people on site a lot longer when it was just a place where you came to pick apples.

It is so crowded now that they have to hire people to direct people into the parking area and to stop traffic so people can cross the road with their pumpkins and other things. They have to add all kinds of seasonal help to deal with efficiently moving people through the food lines and in and out of their little farm store (where you get the cider).

It is nice to see so many people there. I think as we get crowded into cities, we do risk losing touch with where food actually comes from. I mean the apples don’t magically spring up in the grocery store so more people really need to see the trees full of apples and vines loaded with pumpkins.

Unfortunately, every year, we notice that sprawl is intruding on the farmland. Rather than houses, what has been springing from the farmland are these ugly giant warehouse/distribution centers (including one for Walmart). We passed several signs showing additional farmland for sale so it won’t be long before they are gobbled up to be used for “better” purposes.

I get the reasons. There is a lot of land and many highways intersect with our city so I guess it makes it easier to get places. These aren’t right next to a highway but I guess they are close enough to make it attractive. Of course, whatever municipality that rubber stamps the zoning changes has visions of tax revenue so they’ll never say no.

And these places do provide jobs and it is hard to argue with that. It is sad though that these places really don’t make anything. They just exist to move stuff from one place to another. And, I expect a lot of this could be automated so I do wonder how attractive those jobs really are.

The other problem is that they build these things first and then hope that the infrastructure catches up. These are all two lane country roads that probably aren’t built to handle significant truck traffic. But it eventually means we’ll see further construction to widen roads and add lights and things to manage the increased traffic.

And if you have people working there, then you’ll eventually need ugly strip malls with food options and gas stations because, right now, there is nothing really around these distribution centers. Lots of changes to come and I hope that it doesn’t stretch all the way to the orchard.

And, yes I hate certain types of change. I don’t think land is always “improved” by adding buildings.

This is an interesting quote that isn’t related but I just stumbled across it. What is interesting is that Urban Meyer was a successful college football coach who flamed out in half a season at the pro level and his behavior lead to his firing. Quote is still true but leaders can create bad culture just as easily as good culture and bad culture leads to bad behavior and so on.