FAIRVIEW: The green and yellow

By ANDY KEGLEY/Columnist

John Deere’s iconic green and yellow trademarks are so recognizable they’ve become usefully branded in our mind. I don’t know the story behind when the Illinois farmer-turned-businessman came up with that marketing scheme 150+ years ago, but now, during the blah doldrums of late February and early March, I have a hunch.
Green and yellow in February you say? When the colors of the season tend toward the grays and whites and browns. Late winter seems interminable. Spring is just a hint on the calendar. This year, spring is an extra day away, further contributing to the insult of the Earth’s seasonal tilt and passage around the sun.
But here’s where I think Mr. Deere had his flash of inspiration: He undoubtedly had memories of walking across the pastures of the New England farm where he was born, or in the deep-soiled flatlands around his adoptive Illinois home. Anyone can take a walk across a pasture. During that walk, though, you’ve got to be a little like a dung beetle, and kick a cow pie or two with the toe of your boot to reveal the secret to Deere’s marketing legend.
And there it is! Sleeping dormant beneath that cow pie, or a rock, emerged into the sunlight, are wisps of that same green and yellow—little tendrils of grass waiting for more direct exposure to the energy of the sun’s rays. If I remember my botany right, the chlorophyll in the plant chemistry is biding its time against the warmth of the earth, til the sun’s energy sets it free. A little free nourishment from the manure feeds the plant’s soul as well. The brightness of all that color is stunning to the eyes, normally accustomed to the winter’s sleepy blahs, no matter the chemistry though.
Deere and company captured something with their audaciously trademarked attachment of those colors to their products—as if natural colors can be protected by law!  The green and yellow have commanded a premium in terms of quality and pricing over the years. Even when a once proud and productive agricultural community in transition such as ours loses the John Deere dealership, the green and yellow live on, and not just in many barns and hay fields, but in strategically placed corporate partners, such as Lowe’s.
A couple other observations from this late winter pasture walk, in the spirit of the dung beetle. A writer many have forgotten from three-quarters of a century ago, Louis Bromfield, reminds farmers what the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius observed centuries ago: “the farmer’s best fertilizer is his footprints across the field.” In a time when the rising price of petroleum is causing the cost of fertilizer to escalate beyond reason, paying a little more attention to the pasture, much like those dung beetles rolling around in the summer, might be good advice.
Here in a few days, on one of those really frosty mornings, when the soil is lifted up and cracks exposed, I’ll head out to one of the jobs which provide great satisfaction. Taking advantage of nature’s frost heaving of the soil, and broadcast seeding in a clover/seed mixture from the back of a four-wheeler is one practice which comes close to being a free lunch, or at least a heavily discounted practice. Frost seeding gets the seed deep down into the soil for very little investment, and the clover makes its nitrogen contribution (depending of course on survival of late spring frosts—which nipped this practice last year).
So when you see what looks like an Eskimo bundled up on a four-wheeler, ideally on a morning with a light skiff of snow, with a little whirly-gig on the back, don’t think I’ve completely gone beetle. I’m just enjoying the view and thinking about a good hay crop later this summer. There’s always another season on the calendar to keep one’s hope bright.
Andy Kegley manages a non-profit community development agency, in addition to a non-profit family farm in the Fairview section of Wythe.