A Snowbird in Paradise

Friends of ours are staying in a campground to the west of Lake Okeechobee and we took a day trip to visit them. We had never driven across the state and never been on Okeechobee Road. I guess I expected the ride to be like the one up to Orlando...an expressway through wilderness...same thing for miles and miles.


I was pleasantly surprised. Land must have been cheap in the center of the state. There were huge tracts of and used as dairy and beef cattle ranches. I have never seen so many heads of cattle. I thought it must have looked a little like this in the Old West.


Other huge areas of land were devoted to sod farms. SOD FARMS? I didn't think anyone HAD grass in Florida. All I have ever see is St Augustine Grass...like our crabgrass in the north, and, I thought, something to try and kill.


However, nothing prepared me for the vast citrus orchards. they went on and on for miles on both sides of the road. When the trees were planted so that you could look down the rows, they stretched clear to the horizon! The bus loads of workers were picking and it looked like the job would never be completed. Big semi-truck loads of oranges were heading out to processing plants. These orchards were so vast that they HAD to be corporately owned.


The last surprise was a huge strawberry farm.