Who Remembers The Phrase Knee High By The 4th?
Decades ago, say, five or six decades ago, "Knee high by the 4th" was a good thing. A very good thing. These days "Knee high by the 4th" would be a bad thing. A very bad thing. Things have changed down on the farm. Get our free mobile app  For those of us who grew up on the farm back there in what the young whipper-snappers call the old days, if that cornfield was knee high by the 4th of July, that meant the corn crop was in good shape. Fine shape as a matter of fact. If the farmers could get that just right amount of rain, and keep the hail off, this was gong to be a good year and maybe a bumper crop year. Heck, it could mean a hundred bushels an acre, and that would be dandy! Well, things have changed. Thanks in part to things like improved seed genetics and a lot more, hopefully corn is waist high, shoulder high or even above head high by the 4th. One of my favorite websites, thisisfarming.org, gives a lot more details on it. But one thing's for sure: Knee high by the 4th is a long-ago phrase that's in the dust bin of history along with the village smithy and the B Farmall pulling a scoop shovel around in the snow with a little kid on it. And that's OK. That's progress.