MILO and Road Repair

 

Miles and Miles of Milo and Road Repair!!

I first met Milo when Tom’s Dad bought a farmstead in Eastern Colorado.  I believe this was before he drilled wells and installed pivot sprinklers.  It must be a great dry land crop as there are literally miles and miles of milo in Kansas, and not many sprinklers to be seen.  Of course the humidity in Kansas is higher than eastern Colorado.  Milo is also know as sorghum, broomcorn, great millet,  depending on where in the world you are trying to grow this grass – which is used as feed in its grain form.  According to Wikipedia,  Sorghum is the world’s  5^th most important crop AFTER  rice, wheat, maize, and barley.   Sweet sorghums are cultivars that are primarily grown for forage, syrup production, and ethanol and are taller than those grown for grain.  Miles and miles of milo here in rural Kansas!

 

Since we travel local roads rather than the high speed interstates,  we see a lot of road work being done this summer.   Road work requires diverting traffic to protect the workers and also the HEAVY EQUIPMENT putting down new asphalt, building new bridges, widening existing roads,  utility workers,  or even the crews filling potholes and resealing the cracks.   Some of the many TRAFFIC CONTROL measures we have noted to keep traffic moving while road or utility improvements are made:

               1 – Narrow the traffic to a single lane (minus the two feet where the cones are IN YOUR LANE forcing you to straddle the thump thump strips.)   Fortunately, in this one instance on the interstate,  they had paved the shoulder!

               2 – “Follow me” vehicle  - works well if you realize the long wait is allowing that vehicle to return with the long line of vehicles who were waiting at the other end of the one lane roadway.

               3  -- a portable stoplight seems to be gaining in popularity.  These seem to be either set on a timer or controlled by the traffic flow.

               4 – DETOUR – we had to have our trailer roof replaced when a “NOT HELPFUL” person removed the turn sign meant to signal the completion of the detour.  Since this was in a strange-to-us city we ended up using a residential street with low hanging trees!!  NOT enough UPS trucks delivering in that two block stretch.  We are now VERY aware of low hanging trees, especially those trees with any dead branches!

               5 – the single person standing in the hot sun with the STOP / SLOW sign depending on the radio or phone in his/her ear to the turn the sign once they get the word from their counterpart at the other end of the project.  They cannot be paying them enough to stand in the hot sun all day THIS SUMMER!!

You all be safe on our roads;  enjoy each day, and pray for all the FARMERS and LONG HAUL TRUCKERS who provide the food, meds, and household goods which we all need and enjoy.