kansasfarmer's blog

November 2007 - Posts

• Roller coaster temps

  80F Monday and Tuesday, 13F this morning.  I was surprised while in the UK to learn it rarely gets this cold there??  Just how cold does it get in the UK this time of year?  This is actually a little colder than normal, while the 80F was much warmer than normal.  Brings to mind a quote from one of my distant relatives in Yorkshire while we sat in their garden visiting one chilly July day this summer, "Global warming is a bloody disappointment as far as I am concerned".  I agree.  Posted Nov 23 2007, 02:23 PM by kansasfarmer with 3 comment(s)

• Happy Thanksgiving!

  I don't know if you celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK the same day we do, or if you do at all, but here is wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving.  Our holiday was started by the pilgrims because they were thankful they raised enough food that they would not starve to death the coming winter.  Turkey is the staple meat, pumpkin pie the staple dessert for Thanksgiving.  I will be thankful if our electricity does not go out, as the lines are starting to ice up, the wind is howling and a few crossarms are already broken.  At least our gas heat will work electricity or not.  All the best, Brian. Posted Nov 21 2007, 10:18 PM by kansasfarmer with 2 comment(s)

• Cold and windy

  After 2 days of temps near 80F, and southwest winds today of about 25mph, abruptly about 5pm the wind turned out of the northwest and within 15 minutes the temp had dropped 20 degrees, it now sits at 44F.  I was relieved to see this evening that the week of warm weather has brought my wheat up, I had been concerned it was too dry to even sprout it.  I attended the bull sale I purchase bulls at Saturday, this would mark the 20th anniversary of my buying bulls at this sale.  After reading what the bulls brought at Perth I am a little ashamed to say what I paid, a mere $3500 for an 18 month old Angus bull.  I paid $5000 last year for a half brother to this bull.  The bull will be delivered tomorrow and put with fall calving cows immediately. My wife had gone to bed early, as usual, and I was looking forward to watching something I liked on TV.  This was short lived as my fire pager went off about 9:30, calling us not to a fire but to a house in town where a 50 foot tall ham radio tower was about to blow over onto the house, a little out of our expertise but we dealt with it.  After discussion amongst those of us who answered the alarm(a farmer, an oilman, a truck driver, 2 workers at our local valve factory and a newspaperman) we determined, I thought, that we should go ahead and try to pull it down hopefully without bringing it down on any houses.  I was sent to seek the wisdom and supervision of an 83 year old man who is the town expert on things like this, I had to report over the radio I was getting him out of bed, one of my cohorts replied to make sure he put some clothes on.  By the time I returned a group decision had been made not to pull it down but to try to stabilize it, stand it back up and put new bolts in it, which we did.  Made for an interesting evening, but a bit chilly.  Posted Nov 21 2007, 04:47 AM by kansasfarmer with no comments

• Dry weather,again.

  Great weather here now, but dry.  I was surprised a minute ago when checking the forecast to see the NWS has already put us in a fire watch for Friday afternoon, actually I do not remember seeing this before, usually it is done in the morning.  None of my wheat has emerged and I doubt it will until we get a rain.  While I am concerned about my wheat, and the fire danger is also a worry, the near perfect temps and lack of mud to do chores in is very nice.  I will cross my fingers that tomorrow is fire free.  Posted Nov 16 2007, 04:22 AM by kansasfarmer with 1 comment(s)

• Finally

  Finished harvest yesterday, finally.  I also finished planting wheat I guess, although if I could find some more seed I might be tempted to plant a little more.  Seed was tight this year, the tightest I have ever seen.  My supplier said I could get some more, but I had to get a minimum of 200 bushels at $4 a bushel more than the seed I planted, I think I will pass.  What should have been a pretty satisfying day went south in a hurry when I did not latch my trailer gate while hauling cows and calves to put on stubble fields.  Lost 3 calves out the back, caught two of them(rather scuffed from the experience of bailing out at 30mph on gravel). The third was last seen headed south at a high rate of speed through the neighbors field.  I am hoping that he will end up with another group of cows I have to the south, or with the neighbors cows to the north.  He got into some chest high grass, we spent about an hour trying to flush him out of it, but he was tight to the ground, guess I would have done the same. Posted Nov 12 2007, 01:15 PM by kansasfarmer with no comments

• Midnight circus

  I realize alot of my blogs have little to do with farming, or barely tie in, this is one of those, just trying to give a taste of rural life in our corner of the world.  But hey, it is my blog! I thought I had been asleep last night for hours when my fire pager went off, actually I had been in bed about and hour and a half, the clock showed straight up midnight.  As I have said before, both the fire and ambulance here are volunteer.  Our ambulance crew has been shortstaffed so a couple years ago someone decided it would be good to put a defibulator(SP??) on a fire truck, and page us when there was a possible heart attack as well as the ambulance, a race to see who gets there first.  I live about as far away from the firebarn as anyone on the "brigade"(we don't call it that), I am always reluctant to dress and head out into the cold for one of these night heart attack runs because someone else always beats me, so I got up and turned my radio to scan and listened, not what you want your life saving people to do I imagine, but this is what you get when you do not pay money to rescue workers.  Just when I was beginning to think God was going to strike me down for not going(and everyone else) I heard familiar voices over the radio going "10-8", in service.  And, before you condemn me, it was within the time frame where I would be driving to the barn still.  It did sound however like the patient was dead, so since we have gotten the defib unit, we are 0 and 3 I think, all three have been DOA.  Returning to bed, I was just about to get back to serious sleep when our herd of dogs started barking.  I often think they bark at each other at night, certainly if we ever do have intruders I won't know to get up and do anything about it, as I am so use to it.  I have perfected the technique of telling Amy to plug her ears and bellowing "SHUT UP" from bed, generally my voice gets through the walls enough to shut them up, not last night,  Finally Amy got up and went outside and yelled at them.  Seems like we got about 45 minutes of sleep last night, so much for the peace and quiet of country life.  Posted Nov 06 2007, 12:51 PM by kansasfarmer with 1 comment(s)

• Pheasants and football

  Yesterday(Saturday) was both the opening day of Pheasant season in Kansas, and the end of our high school football season for our hometown team, since they were whipped in their playoff game.  Our town looked even more deserted than usual for a Saturday afternoon as a good many people drove the 4 hours to Hanover to see our 9 and 1 team become a 9 and 2 team.  I caught the game back home on the radio, it was preceeded by the K-State vs Iowa State game, I mention this because I thought the advertisers would interest you, CaseIH AFX combines, Fontanelle Hybrid seeds to name a couple, K-State is our Ag school, so the adverts for games are heavily dominated by farm products.  Most of the pheasants are in central and western Kansas, next Saturday will see the first day of quail season, this will be what impacts the east of the state the most, then at the end of the month, the real scary one, rifle deer season, opens on a Wednesday and runs 10 days to Sunday night.  Posted Nov 04 2007, 01:54 PM by kansasfarmer with no comments

• The verdict is in.

  A blogger on the TV news website said it best.  "In our small corner of the world, this trial is of epic proportions".  Another step in our rural loss of innocence was taken today.  The jury returned a guilty verdict Tuesday after 3 hours of deliberation, and handed out the death penalty this afternoon to the young man who killed our Sheriff in 2005.  Might seem strange to you in the UK for me to blog about it on this forum, but for one I need to write something somewhere and I also think it gives some insight into our society, a society that is not only different from yours, but in many ways different from the urban areas on the east and west coast of our country. We still live in a part of the world where there is respect for law enforcement officers, and our tolerance of those who would kill them is fairly low.   In our county, there are many sections(sqare miles) with no houses.  In truth, most of us know everyone else.  We had always felt quite safe here, didn't lock our doors or take our keys out of our vehicles.  Meth has changed all of that, and one January morning in 2005 a shock was delivered that would change us all forever I think.  A young man we all knew, who had been in and out of trouble for sometime, shot the Sheriff, a man we elected, who didn't even have his gun drawn.  When the police team went in to get him out of the house, the same young man, high on meth, emptied the gun into their shield, then put his hands over his head and surrendered.  What a surreal sight it was, farm fields and pasture as far as the eye could see, with a tiny frame house surrounded by 67 marked police cars and who knows how many unmarked ones and 3 helicopters circling.  The school was locked down, roadblocks set up everywhere.  It let us all know we may be 100 miles from a city of any size, but violent crime can still reach us.  Murder happens everyday in places like New York it seems, and it isn't that unusual for police officers to be gunned down in the line of duty.  We thought it could never ever happen here, and we were very, very wrong.  There were 4000 people at the funeral, hoping to get some closure.  We really didn't get it there.  We hoped to feel better after this trial, I for one thought I was all for the death penalty.  Strange as it seems, I feel much sadder now than I did the day it all happened.  There will be no happy ending to this story I guess, just another milestone in a society moving increasingly the wrong direction.  Posted Nov 01 2007, 10:15 PM by kansasfarmer with 1 comment(s)