Farmer expresses dissatisfaction with crop prices by carving a message in his grain field.
Aficionados of crop circles may continue to debate whether those phenomena are earthly or extraterrestrial in origin, the result of human activity or natural forces, and carry meanings or are purely random, but there's no mystery about the creator, intent, or meaning of the crop field message shown above.In November 2004, a 46-year-old, third-generation North Dakota farmer named Curtis Wiesz was poring over some of his great uncle's records from 1946, and he discovered that corn sold for $1.45 a bushel that year - the very same price his corn crop had fetched in 2004. Frustrated by this seeming lack of economic progress, Wiesz decided to make a point about it by hopping on his tractor and carving a giant message in his 160-acre harvested barley field.Wiesz spent about two hours making two passes with a 40-foot-wide tillage tool (i.e., a mechanized plow) to create his message and accomplished the feat without the aid of any Global Positioning System (GPS) device. He initially declined to own up to his handiwork ('People suspected me, but I tried to blame it on those aliens that do the crop circles,' he told the Associated Press), but after a crop-spraying friend took him up for an aerial view in April 2005 and he saw how well his efforts had turned out, he finally began to acknowledge his work.As for his future plans, Wiesz explained:'Farming,' Wiesz says, 'is cotton-picking hard, but I really love it really I do.' Wiesz says he doesn't have any plans to etch more messages in the landscape if farming picks up. But if it doesn't, he says he already has another big message in mind: 'Send Money.'
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