Have you ever put a decimal point in the wrong place? In the movie Office Space, the employees hatch a plan to steal from their employers by installing software that will funnel all the minute fractions of a dollar of each transaction into their own account. The plot goes astray when someone gets the decimal point in the wrong spot. Two weeks ago, I did a similar thing. No one was cheated; however, I misled the readers of this column.
After 12.5 years of writing, I made a glaring mistake. I quickly calculated that Will County had about 100,000 acres of corn and that farmers plant an average of 35,000 PPA, plants per acre. That is 3,500,000,000.00, or 3.5 billion ears of corn. I erred by looking at the decimal point wrong and wrote 3.5 trillion. I realized my error several days later. Let’s do some quick, but hopefully accurate math, to see what the difference is.
In today’s dollars 3.5 trillion ears of corn would be worth about 140 billion dollars. That’s a lot. But the reality is Will County will only produce about 3.5 billion ears of corn worth 140 million dollars. Rest assured; I have double checked my math on this. The simple solution to solving budget/finance issues is “accidentally” getting the decimal in the wrong place.
That is enough back-tracking for now. Here is a rundown on the current state of farm fields in Will County. The waterhemp, marestail and giant ragweed have finally shown their dominance in the fields with “sketchy” weed control programs. Some of the weeds that plagued my father are not even worrisome for myself. Cocklebur, morning glory, and foxtail were crippling his crops when I grew up. These three weeds can hardly be found in my fields today. Waterhemp and marestail did not even exist until long after he retired; now they give me nightmares while trying to drain my bank account and emotionally break me down.
Much of August has been cooler than the earlier part of summer. This is beneficial for ear fill on the corn plants. The plants must rest, preferably at temperatures below 70 degrees. If nights are warm, the ear may cannibalize sugars from the stalk which may cause serious problems with lodging of the plant later in the season.
With the county fair and the Labor Day holiday over and the schools back in session, it is the downhill stretch to finishing the season. Halloween and colder weather will be just around the corner, and we can all start complaining about the cost of natural gas and propane. Complaining about the cost would be better than complaining that we do not have it or cannot get it.
Maybe, just maybe, when I get my next delivery of 1000 gallons of diesel fuel they will put the decimal point in the wrong spot and only charge $0.549 a gallon instead of $5.49. Do you think anyone in accounting would notice? I must go now and find my red swingline stapler.
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