Glass House investigation

Lodging happens when the weather conditions are rather wet and the ground becomes soaked with water weakening and exposing the plants root system, then the leaf foliage becomes top heavy from the rain, which in turn makes the plant fall over.
A couple of problems that added and contributed to a rather large portion of this crop being affected by lodging was, the crop was planted in low nutrient soil due to the field coming off Zucchini's and was in need of nutrient replenishment. Kel Gowen had been advised sorghum was very good to grow and to put nutrients back into the soil quickly, but he had never grown it before now . This crop was new to him.

The Sorghum crop was only 2 months old and in places were the soil was wet it had grown to a height of 1.5 meters tall and in other areas the crop had only grown to 85 cm to 1 meter tall. The 10 acre block was at a 15 degree slop which allowed some of the excess water to run away even the top soil.

Diane digging for samples

Daniel and Diane noting samples

GLASSHOUSE MOUNTAINS CROP MYSTERY SOLVED
© By Diane Harrison
AUFORN INVESTIGATION MAY 17th 2003

Team members left to right
Daniel Sims, Robert Frola, Jan Stone,
Diane Harrison photographer

Our pilot, Bill of Caboolture War birds Flying School
On the morning of May 17th 2003 the AUFORN team headed out to do another interesting investigation.

Some Queensland ufo groups may have heard of the Crop Circles? which appeared on Kel & Sandra Gowen property over night May 15th 2003 said to have happened in the early hours of the morning. Even though this case had all the signs of a natural kind of phenomena accruing, the only way one can be sure was to go to the Glasshouse MT property and do a proper investigation.

The Auforn team arrived at the property at 11.05 am Saturday morning and were greeted by Sandra and Kel Gowen. Kel guided us to the location on his 40 acre lot which 10 acres was under sorghum. The sorghum appeared at first glance to have been affected by some kind of mysterious crop felling.
On first observation it was very hard to ascertain exactly how much of the crop had been affected, so Jan and Robert and I thought it best we hire a light plane and do a flyover. Kel thought this was a great idea has he had not seen any photographs from the air of his field.

We left the Gowen property at 12.45 pm arriving at the Caboolture Airport at 12.55 pm we booked our flight for an hour. We took off from the airport at 1.15 pm and headed north. The observation of the crop formation from the air was a little bit of a let down but it was what we had expected. However it was a great flight and Bill our pilot gave us a grand tour of the region and the views of the Glasshouse Mountains were magnificent.

The Gowen property is situated on Glasshouse Mountain road just north of Caboolture.

We returned to the Gowen property around 2.30 pm to do a full ground inspection of the sorghum crop. What we had to determine next was what had caused the crop to fall over. On closer inspection of the crop it was observed the sorghum did not look to healthy in parts and with help of the photos taken from the air we were now able to pin point each and every part of the crop fall. With advise sort from Bill Chalker the previous night, it was easy to work out what we should be looking for . However I have to be honest we all wanted a crop formation like the fabulous Wiltshire formations in the UK but darn it did not workout to be this way."

We spent quite a few hours walking the field observing and taking measurements and taking spoil samples from different parts of the affected area of the fall and as you can see from the above photo the sorghum appears to have fallen flat in no distinctive swirling pattern which is said to be common in most crop circles. We know quite a few people reading this report will say this is not always true and in some case they are correct but a large majority have the swirling pattern in them.


		AUFORN can only present our findings as we found them, it is you the reader that has to make up your own mind if these facts fit within your belief system. Kel and Sandra informed AUFORN that they had meet some strange and wonderful people over the past week and they had no idea how a simple crop formation could affect some many people in so many different ways. Conclusion: On good advised it was pointed out to the team to be aware of a more common natural cause of crop fall and this being (lodging).
Robert Frola Editor of The Australasian UFOlogist magazine & co National Director of AUFORN

Conclusion page 2 Sorghum samples.