Nebraska Football

Jenny ate 3 pieces of bacon and 3/4 sausage patty for breakfast at the B&B.

As you get closer to Lincoln, it becomes hillier and more green. Except for small personal gardens, we didn’t see any vegetable farms. West Nebraska receives very little rain and the crops are all irrigated. According to the couple at the B&B, if they don’t get enough rain this year, there will not be enough water in the reservoirs for another year of crops. Coupled with the rising cost of fuel, it may not be profitable to farm there any more. (Fuel is needed to pump ground water.)

The B&B hosts seemed open to the possibility of turning the fields back to native grasslands. They are protective of their small towns and farming economy, but its already being lost. The small towns are extremely well kept, but appear to have little disposable income. The populations are primarily retirement age.

We spent the afternoon in Lincoln, population ~ 230,000. The woman at the visitor’s center said the university is great, but maybe there won’t be a football team next season. She went on about so and so coach being fired and another coach being hired. We looked at her kind of blankly. “Other states have mountains, lakes and trees…Nebraska has football.” The university has a tractor testing track and other agricultural labs. Mac thinks he’s going to convince me to move there for his PhD.