Lee University

In The Cornfields, 2006 (Cont.)

	At that point, knowing the size I wanted the “early summer” corn to be and taking into consideration the depth of the drilled holes, it was time to cut each of the toothpicks to what I considered to be the correct height. One of the best choices I made was the use of Raffia for the leaves. I have no idea what people REALLY use this stuff for, but I choose the color “garden green” and later, “dark green” for hybrid varieties, and set about cutting it into very small pieces . . (actually much, much, much smaller than you see in this picture!) For your information, this wasn’t much more fun than drilling holes.
	Each toothpick was dipped in Elmer's glue and pulled through a bowl containing my cut raffia and allowed to dry - A procedure remarkably similar to battering itty-bitty fish cutlets!
At that point, I stripped excess leaves from the “stalks” until each resembled something on the order of this one.
	And then, tedious job number 7 was to individually insert each stalk in the fields. There are, in the five areas of cornfield on my layout, approximately 8000+ toothpicks inserted one by one. This job alone kept me off the streets and out of trouble for a number of weeks! Only set-back to this procedure is that the corn can have a tendency to “shed” leaves, so once I cleaned up the area, I gave each field a pretty healthy spray with diluted white glue to help seal the foliage.
A few hours ago, as I looked thru the new Walthers catalog, I discovered that Busch has developed a ready-made cornfield kit. I must admit that each stalk has ears of corn and tassels and looks REALLY REAL. Each kit covers a four-inch square and contains 400 stalks. So now my choice is - At $14 a kit, I could spend about $380 to cover the area I have in cornfields with this new product. Or as it is, I've spent less than $25 for circa 8000 stalks. Of course, I've consumed a large amount of time, however valuable that may seem. However, I feel a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that I finally “personally manufactured” a somewhat “major element” on my layout. And frankly, I’m not about to pull up 8000 toothpicks at this juncture in time, no matter how well that German corn is engineered! (incidentally, as in the past, I raided my wife’s sewing cabinet for the lines on the poles. Plain old gray sewing thread . . . what can I say? Certainly not “High-Hobby-Tech”, by any degree.)
There’s a busy season just ahead, so any work on the layout for the next few months will be minimum. Probably some work on the right-a-way around the lower part of the layout would be appropriate and help to somewhat “finish off” a section. I’m rounding the corner, disappearing from sight . Everyone, be careful out there.

Trains:  Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34

Page 1 - Box Canyon Layout
Page 2 - Any Time, Any Spring Disclaimer
Page 3 - Starting Over, December 2003
Page 4 - March, 2004
Page 5 - June, 2004
Page 8 - Layout Design
Page 9 - August, 2004
Page 11 - January, 2005
Page 16 – January, 2005 Redux
Page 17 – First Day of Summer, 2005
Page 20 – August, 2005
Page 21 - In the Farmland, February 2006
Page 23 - Layout Potpourri, February 2006
Page 25 - In the Cornfields, 2006
Page 27 - July, 2006
Page 30 – November, 2006
Page 33 - MARCH, 2007 – A Break In The Action