Round Straw Bale in a Harvested Field

Settlers in the Nebraska Sandhills had plenty of grass but hardly any trees. Once horse-drawn balers arrived in the late 1800s, some of them stacked bales like bricks and built their houses that way. A few of those houses still stand. Straw bale walls are still built today, plastered over, because they hold heat so well. This round one sits in pale stubble after the harvest, its spiral end toward the camera, in a straw bale jigsaw puzzle under a heavy gray sky.