kansasfarmer's blog

March 2008 - Posts

• Women versus technology

  This ties in with the blog I made about 6 hours ago, or less. The weather radio worked as promised, at 2 am a loud alarm woke us, however it was with information we already knew, that our county was in a watch, which is not the same as a warning.  It is on Amy's side of the bed(the radio, not the watch), she handled the situation and I went back to sleep, confident our new technology would alert us from here on out if a tornado was imminent.  About 4 am, 51 minutes ago, I slowly awoke and gradually became aware of a roar outside.  Suddenly gaining my bearings I asked my slumbering wife, quite loudly, "is that the wind?!?!?".  She calmly and quite sleepily said, "I think it is".  I replied, "I am surprised the radio has not gone off" to which she replied, "I shut it off".  My next comment, which managed to get her wide awake was, "Dammit, why did you do that??".  Even in her relaxed state, this seemed to irritate her a little, and she grabbed the radio and rather carelessly banged it down next to me.......turning it on before she did......when it was full on, and not in alarm mode, it came across that we were in a "significant weather alert" for 50mph winds, no tornado, BUT that we needed to be alert as this storm could rapidly increase in intensity in a short time.  Rather grumpily I remarked to her "THAT is why the radio should have been left IN ALARM MODE, sweetie(gotta throw that in, because she was obviously a little out of sorts over my tone of voice).  As a rule but not always the firemen are paged out to spot when we get in these situations, my first line of defense has been my pager, as I stumbled through the house I found she had also shut it off.  As I scrambled to switch on the TV and computer to get the most up to date news about the storm, my better half went right back to sleep.  I wonder if I should tell her when she awakens that I went ahead and took cover in the storm cellar, but decided she could just ride the storm out like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it would be interesting to see her response. This reminds me of my grandparents and the carbon monoxide detector. Before my grandparents went into a care home I bought them a CO detector.  The only phone number they could ever seem to remember in a pinch was my cell number. I awoke one Sunday morning to find two messages from about 2am, both with my grandmother saying "this thing is going off and we can't make it stop" while I could hear my 91 year old grandfather in the background swearing at it.  Enough time had passed to definitely have killed them, alarmed I jumped in the truck and headed to their house, to find them quite contentedly eating breakfast. "I threw the damn thing out the door and went back to sleep" my grandfather remarked about the entire situation when I questioned him about it.  I retrieved it from the yard and explained that was not the way you handled the carbon monoxide warning.....it happened again 2 weeks later and he did the same thing.  So, this morning I am left to ponder the question, who is less able to grasp technology to make our lives safer, old people of 90+ or women, maybe more specifically my wife?  Since she may someday read this blog, I think I will keep the answer to myself.    Posted Mar 31 2008, 10:52 AM by kansasfarmer with 2 comment(s) Select Tags... SaveCancel [Edit Tags]

• New Technology for my farm

  It is not what you think.  Not a new herbicide, GM seed, or piece of equipment. Nor is it new software, GPS, or animal ID.  It is a weather alert radio.  We have had it for over a year, and not gotten it out of the box until tonight. Mrs. KF is much less concerned about catastrophe on any level than I am, and is content to sleep without fear of tornado, flood, or air raid.  As we are in the fairly unusual position of being in a severe storm watch for the nighttime hours, I thought it would be a good idea to get it out of the box and figure it out.  The idea is, should our county be issued a warning, either tornado, thunderstorm or flood, this radio will get a signal that will set off an alarm on it, waking us up so we can take cover.  The government has urged all of us to have these radios for several years.  They are now adding things that will set them off, like missing children alerts(called "Amber" alerts over here, after a missing girl of that name) and some national security issues as well.  Hopefully we have set it to the correct frequency, now we supposedly can sleep more soundly with the knowledge a storm can't "sneak" up on us in the middle of the night.  Posted Mar 31 2008, 04:15 AM by kansasfarmer with no comments [Edit Tags]

• Spring?!?!?!?

  Could it be our seemingly never ending winter is at an end??  Saturday morning it was 9F when I got out of bed, Sunday turned out to be the nicest day since October, with a high maybe in the 60s and not even a whiff of wind,bright sunshine all day long.  Today we are to get close to 70F, and while there is a slight chance of rain later in the week, for the first time in what seems like a decade, there is no snow in our forecast.  I was able to get most of the N on the wheat and cool season grass Friday and Saturday while the ground was frozen. The signs are unmistakeable that spring is around the corner.  We have done our income taxes, the time changed Sunday, the garden seed catalogue came Thursday, the cattle are reaching through the fence for the green road ditch grass.  I increasingly shed my heavy brown coveralls for my lighter and more fashionable pinstriped ones, and the furnace doesn't have to run all the time. The last heifer has calved, I have about 30 cows to go.  Soon, very soon plumes of smoke will dot the sky as the Flinthills are turned black.  We have a love/hate relationship with fire here.  It is an essential management tool to prevent trees from taking over the prairie, take the fire away and you get acres of brush in 10-20 years.  But, we don't want it burnt to early, or even every year in many cases.  A grass fire in October-February results in a flurry of activity to stop it in its tracks....by the first half of March a wildfire is usually kept away from structures and unless it is a very windy day, allowed to burn itself out, generally by hitting a road or tilled field.  From the last half of March on it is just a matter of stopping fires when the wind changes direction unexpectedly or there is a problem burning up into a neighbor who doesn't want to burn.  This spring,with the heavy growth of old grass from last year and ample subsoil moisture, I would predict 90% of the pastures will be burned.  The surest signs of spring in the Flinthills are bright glowing fires all around in the evening with the heavy smell of grass smoke in the air and the frogs serenading.....you know for sure then any cold snaps will be short lived, and it is only a matter of days before the cattle are munching green grass and the corn planters are running. Posted Mar 11 2008, 01:14 PM by kansasfarmer with 1 comment(s) [Edit Tags]

• Signs of Spring

  Thought I would write another blog, since I now know at least 6 or 7 people read it.  Had a sure sign of spring yesterday, the seed corn was delivered.  You can't tell spring is on the way from the weather.  We had 4 good days in a row, Thursday through Sunday, Saturday and Sunday were in the high 60F range, but very windy, 30plus mph all day.  Sunday evening we got a hard rain, over an inch, and then some light snow.  Monday the wind blew from the northwest at 30plus, and we had a high of about 35.  Today we are suppose to get into the low 40s, with strong winds.  The calves are coming along nicely.  I have been shutting the likely cows in an empty haybarn because of the weather, but my ability to tell who is about to calve is lacking, as each time I do a sort, one of the cows I let out calves.  The flip side is one cow has been shut up now for 16 days and still has not calved, even though she looks like all I would need to do is tip her up and the calf would fall out. Another sign of spring, or at least a sign I need to sell last springs calves, is the fact that when I open the gate to drive in and feed them a number of them escape while I am driving through.  Monday I did quite a chase through a field on the tractor.  About 35 gave me quite alot of grief.  If I can put up with them until the end of March I will sell them the last week of the month, one more rain and more mud and I might sell them next week.  On the subject of cattle, as grain climbs the price of feeders falls, looks like the cattle are going to be a real challenge as far as making money goes for a while.  As I have posted on the forum, our wheat is not looking good at all.  I think there is absolutely no way we can hope for more than a very average crop at best, and probably a below average crop, at least on this farm.  Too much rain, too much cold weather, and I am beginning to suspect seed with below average vigor.  Posted Mar 05 2008, 02:10 PM by kansasfarmer with 6 comment(s) [Edit Tags]

• Calving

  Hands down the cattle are my favorite part of farming.  I couldn't care less if I never plant another seed, but take away my cows and I would feel my life was not worth living.  I calve twice a year, which lately has worked out to be about 9 months of the year.  The fall calving cows are much less effort, so even though I had 110 calves last fall, they came with much less fanfare then the 80 or so I will have this spring.  I have 34 of the spring calves on the ground now, and have managed to get most of them tagged with just a little snot blown down my collar from mama.  Our 70F day today will be replaced by thunderstorms tomorrow and snow tomorrow night. It is forecasts like these that make me try to remember why 80% of the cows in Kansas are calved in February and March, and to tell you the truth, I don't have a clue, I guess we just like pain and misery.  Posted Mar 02 2008, 05:15 AM by kansasfarmer with 1 comment(s) [Edit Tags]