Q: What new crop did the farmer plant?
A: Beets me.
Check out this and other incredible images at “A Close-up View of the ‘Canada Thistle’ (Cirsium arvense)” by Brian Johnston at http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag//artaug06/bj-CanThistle.html
These scrambled letters form the 10-letter word CULTIVATOR; an implement for loosening the soil while crops are growing or “to further, encourage, or foster the growth of.”
Stiller, David. Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande. United States: University of Nevada Press, 2021.
“Water has always been one of the American West’s most precious and limited resources. The earliest inhabitants—Native Americans and later Hispanics—learned to share the region’s scant rainfall and snowmelt.”