Standing Guard

Today I photographed several inmates harvesting red potatoes at the Bossier Minimum Security Facility near Benton. The inmates were harvesting the vegetables after planting about 350 pounds of seed potatoes earlier in the year. They expect to harvest about 9000 pounds of the potatoes that will be eaten by the inmates in Bossier Parish.

Red potatoes and Inmates dressed in black and white jumpsuits were everywhere on the parish's 160-acre farm in the 90-plus degree heat. I made a couple of decent photos then while wiping sweat from my face I noticed something in the next field. It looked as though it might be an inmate, but it wasn't moving and they were picking potatoes today, not corn.

After making my way around the potatoes, and past the squash I figured out that it was a scarecrow standing guard in a nearby field of corn.

I was told that this scarecrow was one of two on the farm, the other standing guard in the watermelon patch. I was also told that neither one of them did a very good job keeping all of the blackbirds away from the crops, but I they helped me do a good job today.