kansasfarmer's blog

 While still officially in winter, it hardly feels like it today with a very warm and humid 80 degrees.  Cutting up two big trees that died near my well, I got pretty sweat soaked this afternoon.  The 10 day forecast shows the lowest high to be 66F, the new 30 day came out today for April and shows a broad area of the USA with much above normal temps for the upcoming month.  There are already bugs out everywhere, the frogs are singing in the evening, trees budding, and I keep reminding myself to watch for snakes.  

 I suppose the cause and reason for this warm weather is up for debate, my Yahoo homepage trumpeted the fact that 250 locations set record high temps for this date today.  What is not up for debate is that on my farm this winter we never had a real winter, in fact we only had 5 really cold nights.  It was warm enough it never killed my winter feed turnips.  This warm winter was fortunate for our drought stricken area given hay was in such short supply.  Of course it was also easier on the livestock in general, the ax I use to chop ice sits undisturbed in the corner of the machine shed, where I put it when I decided I was done chopping ice last winter.

 A mild winter is great in my book, but day after day of high temperatures 20 or 30 degrees above normal make me worry about what our summer will be like.  Our drought situation has improved some and our ponds have gained water, all mine are full but a few aren't so lucky.  The weathermen blame La Nina for all of this, the question mark seems to be if La Nina will persist, or break down.  If it breaks down, I gather we should have decent rainfall prospects this summer, if not, according to many forecasters we can figure on another year of severe drought.

More or less a rhetorical question.  We know it can stay dry for much longer than it has been.  My theory has always been we had 4 very wet years in a row, and it would stay dry for as long as it was wet, very pessimistic I know.  If I am in fact right, then we are only one quarter of the way through out drought.   While my view has been regarded as overly gloomy by many of my associates in Kansas, there is a growing acceptance that we are in for more than just one dry year.  NOAA has once again put our county in the "extreme" drought category, I am not certain how they determine this, but I believe there is only one more step on the scale.  They also indicate there is a high likelihood this drought will persist at least through the beginning of next summer.

I guess I have made the decision not to seed any wheat this fall.  Some has been planted in my neighborhood, and light rains have brought it up.  I am driven by the economics of crop insurance and the markets, my guarantee is better on corn and soybeans, and the price of wheat today multiplied by what one might reasonably expect to grow is quite a bit less than any of the three major spring crops I could grow, grain sorghum being the third.  With topsoil moisture levels so marginal, and subsoil levels depleted, it just doesn't excite me to plant wheat.  I would just as soon take my chances with a spring crop.

Certainly grain sorghum will play a bigger part in my cropping plans next spring.  "Milo" as we call it has always been the crop of choice for hot dry conditions.  Over the last 15 years with reasonably decent rainfall it has fallen out of favor with many farmers in my area, I expect to see at least a slight resurgence in its popularity and acres.  

With most of the wheat planted that will be planted, and spring planting 6 months away, the number one concern today is stock water.  I heard from a reliable source last week one contractor with a track hoe had 100 ponds on a list for cleaning out.  One of the farms I winter cows on has absolutely no water in the creek or pond now, I am watering out of a drilled well and hoping it will successfully water 95 stock cows and 2 bulls through the winter.  You can buy feed, but when you are clear out of water you are done.

I believe most of the folks in the UK are at least familiar with the term "dirty thirties" referring to the epic drought of the 1930s, listening to the old timers it appears the 1950s saw a dry period that might not have been quite as severe, but was much longer.  The law of averages would indicate we are overdue for a long lived drought.  It will be very interesting to see how our farming practices compare to those of the '30s and '50s.  We are told that no till will conserve moisture, and that seems to be an obvious conclusion, what I think is an unknown is will it conserve enough to make a real economic difference?  

The other point of interest for me is the future of the USA's beef cow herd.   The drought is centered in an area of this nation that has a huge percentage of the beef cattle.  With strong prices for cattle of all classes, many cattlemen may not try all that hard to hold on, it may be more attractive to cash their cows in and either never buy any back, or wait for the day that hopefully is not too far in the future to restock.  The question then will be, restock with what?  Our national beef herd is already at a many decade low, it would seem to me if it would rain enough to break the drought, the demand for breeding stock would drive prices too high to buy back.

I believe I may be repeating myself when I say I have new found respect for my grandfathers and great grandfathers being able to hold on through the '30s and '50s, without crop insurance and many of the conveniences we have today to deal with hot dry weather.  In those two droughts there wasn't even a rural fire service, wildfires here were fought with buckets, wet burlap sacks, and backfires and the entire neighborhood either pitched in to help, or lost everything.  

There is one more nagging question that goes through my mind daily now.  Is this a drought like all the other ones this area has seen over the centuries, or is this driven by climate change?  If it is driven by climate change, could it perhaps be permanent?  Quite honestly I believe this is a normal cyclical drought, but until it is actually over there will be some lingering doubts in my mind regarding the future of farming in this part of Kansas.

 As the drought intensifies on my farm, the main issue now is water for the stock.  I have one pond completely dry, another that is just a mud puddle with a tiny bit of water in the middle the cattle can't get to, a third that will be dry by spring.  Others are in better shape, a few are spring fed in some of the pastures and I wouldn't expect them to go dry. 

All over the countryside bulldozers and track hoes are digging out ponds, making them ready to hold more water whenever rain may come.  At any gathering of farmers now the main concern is water for the livestock, we have come to the point where our crops have done all they will do.  

I winter most of my cattle on two branches of one "river" that many people would refer to as a creek.  It has not run for nearly a month, and when the leaves fall in the few remaining holes the water will be awful.  We have a number of detention dams for flood control, at times when it is dry they release water, I was told yesterday by my father who is on the board they will not release water this fall because of a fear of a prolonged drought through next year.  As disappointed as I was to hear this, I am hard pressed to disagree with the decision.  When the river doesn't run, here at the house our well pretty much dries up, it will make about 100 gallons a day, not enough to water many cattle.  

Our drinking water comes from the town water supply, that comes from one of the detention dams, perhaps 100 acres.  My dad told me one of the board members went to the middle in a boat and measured 28 feet of water,so other than tasting odd we will have water for the house as long as we pay our bill.   It appears I will have to water cattle this winter from that water.

We have been getting a few rains, very light in nature, that have greened up the grass and laid the dust some.  We just can't get enough to be a real drought breaker though, one that runs water, fills the cracks, and puts you in a position if it gets dry again you have some subsoil moisture to run on.  This summer our subsoil moisture together with one freak rain(the 5 incher) is what saved us from total disaster.  We absolutely have no subsoil moisture to run on now, from here on out things get really interesting.

NOAA says La Nina has returned, so there probably isn't much chance of a turn around this winter.  

 Our local TV comes out of Wichita, about 100 miles to the west.  According to their records 1936 had the most days with 100F(in Wichita), 50.  Tomorrow they figure on tying that record, and will break it Thursday.  Medicine Lodge has now had 60 days over 100.  I believe in my lifetime 1980 was the worst, I seem to remember 55 days above 100, and I know it was drier.  All in all though, 2011 has been very hot, and very dry.  On my farm we have been VERY fortunate to start with outstanding subsoil moisture this spring, and luck out and pick up some good rains several weeks ago, rains that would probably cause flooding in the UK, but barely ran any water here.  Had it not been for the random 5 inch rain I got about 4 weeks ago, followed by a couple more inches 2 weeks later, we would be completely burned up by now.  As it is only our corn has been ruined, but the beans and sorghum are not far behind, and our hay crop was very short.

It was about 6 months ago we registered -25F, we had a day or two around 112F, so we've had about 137 degree spread from high to low in 6 months.  I keep thinking about my grandparents, they were married in 1937 so weren't in this house in 1936, but suffered through the summer without electricity to even run a fan(this territory got power in 1948).  We complain today, with our deep ponds dug with bulldozers, crops covered by crop insurance, air conditioned cars, houses, tractors and pickups.  How miserable it must have been in 1936.  I heard a farmer say once 1936 was so hot and dry he was conceived in '36 but wasn't born until '39.

In those days my great grandfather bossed my grandfather and his 3 brothers who were in their 20s.  At that time our family had lots of oil production, which worked out nicely in the Depression because it kept them solvent.  They ran 2000 head of cattle.  With no feed, my great grandfather was forced to buy corn to feed them, lots of corn, 88 box cars full of corn.  According to my grandfather, the big cars held 1100 bushels, the little cars 900, in your terms that would be about 25 tons per car, give or take.  He and his older brother were in charge of getting the corn from the train to the farm.  Grandpa learned to scoop left handed, so they could stand side by side and shovel corn into a 2 ton IHC truck.  They had the day the train arrived and two more to unload the car, or they would be charged a fee called demarage.  They scooped it from the train to the truck, from the truck into the burr mill, the mill blew the ground feed into a wooden bin above the granary.  They could pull a slide and most of it fell into the feed wagon or truck, but then they had to scoop it into the bunks.  

They also had to haul water, grandpa said some days that was all they did.   There were deep enough holes in the river they didn't run dry, with a tank on a wagon they hauled water to cattle nearly every day.  The simple thing would have been to sell the cattle, but since cattle weren't worth anything and my great grandfather could afford to keep them, they toughed it out.

My mothers parents were not so lucky.  They did not have oil, and had already been battered by drought in 1933 and 1934, not to mention the Great Depression as a whole.  In 1936 they ran out of water, feed and finally money, and were forced off their farm.  My grandpa only told me about it once.  It was a long time ago and much of the details are vague now, but what little crop they had was eaten by a plague of grasshoppers, insects are always much worse in a dry year.  I have no idea how my grandparents survived, my grandmothers father was a fairly well off Mennonite farmer and probably had to help them.  They finally recovered and bought a farm in 1948, but were always very frugal for the rest of their lives, even when they had money.

My paternal grandmothers folks had an irrigated farm in eastern Colorado.  Grandma was still living with them in 1936, they could irrigate out of the canal, but still had to fight the grasshoppers.  Her father rigged up a canvass in a dump rake with a few inches of kerosene in it, he drove back and forth through his hay fields and when the hoppers jumped into the canvass they fell into the kerosene and died, when he had a load he dumped it at the end of the field and set them on fire.

From the UK I imagine it is hard to fathom how I can be complaining about drought in a month with over 7 inches of rain.  You just have to understand how fast the ground dries out when it is over 100F with a strong and very hot southwest wind.  On those days you can mow hay in the morning and it is dry enough to bale by the middle of the afternoon.  I do mean dry, dry enough to keep.  There are a whole list of things to concern yourself with when it is this dry, aflatoxin in the grain, blue green algae in ponds that kills stock, cattle getting stuck in the mud around ponds and dying, cattle overheating and dying, tractors and vehicles over heating, sorghum and a few other forages being high in nitrates and prussic acid, fire(a few this summer were caused by hay mowers hitting rocks) drinking water that tastes like crap, and very high electric bills from running the air conditioner 24 hours a day, that covers most of it.  Still, I guess we are lucky.  It could be 1936 instead of 2011, and instead of sitting comfortably in my air conditioned house typing this message on the worldwide web, secure in the knowledge I do at least have crop insurance, I could be out on the front porch, with bugs biting me trying to sleep, wondering how on earth I will feed my family with no farm and no money, just like my grandpa did 75 years ago.

 It might seem from watching news of the American heartland the last month or so, and perhaps even reading many of my posts, that tornadoes are as common in the middle of America as fish and chips are in the UK.  While it is true we have many more tornadoes than any other place on earth, they still scare us, and actually are not that common.

Most tornadoes don't kill anyone, they touch down in open country, may hop scotch along for a mile or two, tear up a fence and a few trees, maybe blow down a barn, or tear off a roof, and then they are gone.  Many tornado warnings end up coming to nothing, the tornado either never forms, or hangs harmlessly in the air.  

Occasionally though, a bright sunny day can turn into death and destruction nearly in the blink of an eye.  Saturday was one of those days in Kansas, Sunday was one of those days in Missouri.  

For the rest of my life I will remember what I did the day of the Reading tornado, and I will always remember the Joplin tornado the next day.  Saturday I worked on building fence in a wide open pasture, on what you would call a "brilliant" spring day in Britain, the sky was clear, the wind just enough to keep you cool.  As the afternoon went on cumulus clouds towered in the sky, first to the north and then to the west, flattening out on top into the unmistakable thunderhead we see so often.  The least impressive storm, the one to the west, is the storm that ended up building strength as it moved northeast, after nearly falling apart about an hour before it formed a tornado.  

I spent my Saturday evening under clear sky with few worries eating out with my wife at one of our favorite places, while 20 miles from where we were the sky turned green and a tiny Kansas farming community bore the brunt of natures fury, in the process one man lost his life,while many others lost their homes. 

The following afternoon from my farm 125-150 miles away I could see the lightening flash in the towering storm over Joplin, the huge flat top of the storm was impressive from that distance, the unfolding tragedy as the evening wore on was hard to comprehend, even harder to comprehend was I could stand outside in clear weather and see the storm, so far away, with no fear of harm to me, even though it brought so much death and destruction to others.

The first thing you do when you hear of such death and destruction is thank God it wasn't you.   I think the next reaction for most normal people is "how can I help?".  I had seen enough harmless tornado damage to know what I could do was help clear debris, and by Sunday evening had a plan in place to go with 4 others from our town to help with the clean up, taking a skid loader belonging to one of them.  The first thing that hit me as we got in view of Reading was had the storm been a half mile north or south, the town would have been spared.  Had it raised up for just a half mile or so, the town would have been spared.  It really wasn't horribly destructive over a very wide or long area, it just so happened the area it was destructive over was that town.

We got out of our vehicles next to the grain elevator and walked through town to the command center to register as volunteers, walking that half mile or so gave an overview of the town.  One home might barely have damage,the next be marked as not habitable.  Parts of trees and shingles and all kinds of debris was everywhere.  

When we got back to our equipment, I simply walked to the nearest home and asked if they wanted help clearing trees.  They were waiting on an insurance adjustor, so I walked across the railroad tracks to where an extended family was busy cutting up trees.  All that was left was the frame of a mobile home wrapped around the trunk of a tree, the tree had been destroyed except for the trunk.  All their worldly possessions were scattered around, most in some state of destruction. 

A couple of us helped the man with the grain elevator get his pesticides sorted out, the other three ended up cutting up trees and removing debris for 5 households, all people we did not know.  I had a chainsaw problem and was sitting on a log working on the saw, looked up and saw one of my neighbors walking by, she and her husband had also come for the cleanup.

By 6pm we were beat, the skid steer had picked up a nail or something and had a flat, so we loaded it on the trailer and walked to the firebarn where relief workers were cooking hamburgers and hotdogs, filled our plates and sat down with the volunteer firemen to hear their stories about the storm.  

Like me, none of them had ever faced a huge tornado head on.  The one who ended up setting off the siren said he was spotting at the bottom of a little hill and saw a huge green cloud, with what he thought was just a lower cloud.  When it topped the hill he was just 2 miles from it.   When the town was hit, so many trees and power lines were across the roads it was hard for the firemen who had been spotting to get back into town to start the search and rescue, the chief told me it was nearly an hour before they could shake the shock of what happened, and that with no street lights and so many trees blown down, it was hard to even know where they were.

It is hard to know or understand why one town gets destroyed, and others go untouched, or even more baffling how one house can be destroyed and the house on either side still stand.  Some people would offer a religious reason, others a philosophical reason, us honest people will say we don't have a clue why life works this way.  What I do know is that tragedy brings out the best in people, and farm people are always at the fore front of tornado relief efforts, a fact touched on by NBCs Brian Williams last night when he remarked that since Joplin was in farm country, the roads were cleared much more quickly because of all the agricultural equipment available.

Before we could even go into town we had to sign papers we wouldn't charge people for our work, of course none of us were there for that reason, but evidently not all of the residents knew that.  I observed a man trying to pull a large log out of his yard with a pickup and making no effort.  I walked over and told him we could cut it up and move it with the skid loader, his question was, "how much will that cost me?".  When I told him we didn't come to make money tears came to his eyes and he shook my hand saying, "there are just so many good people around here".  That was all the pay I needed. 

...........one of my neighbors with a way with words used this term not long ago.  After so many years of excess moisture, all of us know deep down in our hearts we are way overdue for a prolonged drought.  Many times I have a tendency to confuse a dry spell with a drought, and have predicted dry weather on my blog, the NOAA made it official about a week ago, our part of the state along with much of the nation farther south is now in a moderate drought.

20 years ago a dry period inevitably led to comments about "the '30s".  So many of that generation have now died  that you are more likely now to hear references to "the 50s" when dry weather is brought up.  In my relatively short life the reference point to all hellish years is 1980, for my paternal grandfather is was 1936, and to my slightly older maternal grandfather and our now deceased 102 year old neighbor 1913 ranked right up there in terms of hot and dry.  My grandfather lost his 10 year old brother in 1913 to heat stroke, and often talked about doing field work at night because it was too hot for the horses and the farmers during the day.  He told a story about church being interrupted one hot summer Sunday because a neighbors cows had gone into his well because they were so crazed with thirst.  The people rushed to the farm from church to find a dozen cows down the well.  A tripod was erected with a pulley and most of the cows got out alive.  I didn't believe this story until I saw something similar happen 10 years ago myself.

Dry weather during the winter isn't a bad thing.  There are only nagging reminders of how quickly we will suffer when the weather warms up, like chopping a hole in the ice and getting down to mud and no water in the pond or creek.  On the farm where I winter my spring calving cows the creek is nearly dry, and so is the pond, I took a tractor and loader and dug a 10x5x3 feet deep hole several weeks ago,  and put the entire water load from that pond into that hole.

Droughts proceed in stages according to the time of year they start.  The first concern has been getting the wheat up, this is still an issue for much of the 8.8 million acre Kansas wheat crop.  For most stock water problems won't really emerge until spring and warmer weather, our next issue will be fire.  Those of us on the fire service are looking back to 1996 for a guide of what to expect, the fires started in mid-February of that year and peaked in the middle of March.  We are working hard to get the fire trucks in the best possible repair.  Sooner or later you get nearly everything burned off that will burn, then the next issues will be growing grass, and getting a spring planted crop out of the ground.  The overriding issue for everyone in our area that is mainly devoted to raising cattle will be feed for next winter.  

I have been busy trying to buy up any excess hay I can find in case it does stay dry.  I was able to rent two extra pastures, a 40 and a 320 that will allow me to spread the cattle over more acres.  For the first time in about 10 years I am planning to plant oats and undersow it with red clover and crabgrass for hay, this mixture tends to make more feed during dry weather than many other types of hay.  I also am going to carry over about 3000 bushels of corn that can always be sold if it breaks loose and rains, but may be invaluable as feed if it doesn't.

I have lived long enough to know this can all turn around nearly overnight.  A month from now I may well be half way to my knees in mud.  But the fact is, as my neighbor says, we are due for a duster, you just can't get past that.   So, I will continue to plan for a very dry 2011.  If the year turns out to be like 1996, that might not be bad at all, because although it didn't rain much that entire year, it never got hot and always rained when we needed it.  Hay was short that year,but our corn and soybeans were some of the best ever.  On the other hand if it turns out to be like 1980, we will have nothing.  A combination of nearly no rain, 50+ days over 100F and billions and billions of grasshoppers wiped everything out, hay, crops, grass, all of it.  I was just a kid then, but I well remember we had absolutely nothing, my father and grandfather put our entire spring planted crop up for silage, and filled half the pit.

A decade ago I would have been a nervous wreck.  I guess I am more mellow now, and maybe slightly better off financially.  I am more able to accept that there is nothing I can do to make it rain, I can only deal with the issues that arise.  I have crop insurance, extra grass, will round up some 2010 hay, keep my fire pager turned on and wait and see what happens.  There is nothing else I can do.

 ........because I couldn't be a cop.  I have had the most entertaining evening in a long time.

 We had just finished our fire meeting, when over our pagers came a call from one of the deputies to county dispatch he was in pursuit of a vehicle that wouldn't pull over.  Our ears perked up when we realized he was in town, and headed right past the fire barn.  We listened as they went off the highway and onto the gravel, it didn't take a great deal of intelligence to realize they were going to wreck at some point.  Myself and another guy followed the dust in our pickups, and in less than 2 and a half miles out of town heard the deputy radio back the truck had gone off the road and hit a tree, and there were at least 3 people trapped in the truck.

The other fellows we had left behind rolled our rescue truck, I got to the scene almost immediately, with the first guy(our fire chief) just ahead of me.  He didn't get very close, and when I pulled up next to him I figured out why, the deputy that had been in pursuit was on the ground wrestling one of the guys who was trying to run away, with handcuffs on.  I got out of my pickup and didn't know for sure what to do, the best I could come up with was to offer to lasso the guy with my lariat rope from behind the pickup seat, and tie him to a tree.  The deputy got the better of the dummy who was trying to get away, and jerked him to his feet and started manhandling him back to his patrol vehicle.  All this time the guy was protesting he hadn't been trying to get away, even though he had run nearly 300 feet from the totalled pickup.   When we got to the patrol vehicle, the deputy told me to open the door and get his ankle chains from behind the seat, soon drunken idiot number one was chained hands to his feet, and simply couldn't understand why. 

In the wrecked pickup were 4 others, bloody as all get out, who appeared to be trapped.  However, before we started to cut them out, we asked them if they could get out on their own, and to our surprise all 4 wiggled around and got out of the truck.  There were two 40 year old drunks with 3 teenage boys, real fine role models.  The ambulance, Sheriff, Undersheriff and a few more deputies arrived, and then the parents of the teenagers.  

After tonight, I am sure I could never be a policeman of any kind.  It takes entirely too much patience.  Wrestling a stinking filthy drunk around on the ground for 5 minutes, then have to listen to him whine about how mean you were too him, and he wasn't doing anything wrong(the deputy asked a very good question, if you weren't doing anything wrong, why did you try to get away from me??).  It was like my own live episode of "Cops".   People can say whatever they want to about the police, I think it takes a heckuva person to have a gun, yet not shoot more people than the police do, out of disgust if nothing else.

 It's that time of year again, when the countryside is crawling with people of dubious intelligence carrying high powered rifles...deer season.  For the 10 day stretch that started the 1st of December,  I have a bright orange hat, the kind hunters are required to wear, "hunter orange" it is called.  The idea being nobody can mistake someone in bright orange for a deer.

I've probably said it before, deer season is a mixed blessing.  The countryside is lousy with deer, I read in  a farm paper yesterday Missouri hunters took 188000 deer in their November rifle season.  The problem is, deer are only slightly more of a nuisance than deer hunters. 

Starting in 2000 we began leasing our land to out of state hunters for a fee, this didn't go over well with the locals who were accustom to hunting for free.  As time has gone by I have refined the deer hunting business some, it now provides a huge percentage of my yearly net income.  There always seem to be "issues" though, either with getting paid, or unhappy hunters.  One of my 5 rifle hunters had a very unhappy day today, someone shot too close to him this morning, then drove too close to him this afternoon.  He didn't see a big buck, and this evening discovered someone had stolen one of his deer stands.  Something tells me he might not be back next year.

Lucky for me, the USA is full of people hungering to take a shot at a deer.  I have had hunters from Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Colorado, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania.  I have a list of people who will pay to hunt should any of these fellows decide not to come back.

There were nearly 10000 car deer accidents in Kansas last year, Mrs. KF was involved in one of them, doing over $6000 of damage to her new Toyota RAV 4.  Deer do considerable damage to growing crops.  Lease hunting is one way to recover some of those losses.   I think overall I get hunters that are more cautious about where they shoot, but it still makes me a little nervous each day as I go about my business knowing there are so many rifles pointed who knows where.  A round from a .243 or 30.06 goes a long way. 

Life in small town America, really small town America, is dominated by church and school.  You have to live in a complete bubble to escape that fact.  Right or wrong, high school athletics dominate school life in a small town.  Many of the signs marking the entrances to communities say, "Home of the Eagles" or something like that in reference to the mascot of the school, and water towers often have the likeness of these mascots painted on them.  Football in the fall, basketball in the winter, track in the spring, we follow our hometown teams both because we are proud of our kids, and because truth be told, in small towns we don't have much else to do for entertainment.

We are hard on our coaches.  The movie "Hoosiers", called by a title I can't remember in the UK, is stunningly accurate in its portrayal of the way communities critique high school coaches.  In the 8 years I served on our local school board nearly all of my stress was caused by one coach or another, and the way the parents and kids interacted with them.  Nearly everyone is an expert on coaching in a small town, since nearly everyone played one sport or another.  You hardly ever hear "the other team was just better than we were" after a defeat, generally losses are caused by poor officiating or bad coaching, or a combination of both.  Just ask the parents.

There is no question a losing season drags the morale of a small town down.  Conversely, a winning season generates enthusiasm and pride.  Our small community has enjoyed a perfect football season this fall, culminating in our team playing for the 8 man state title this afternoon.  Over the last few years we have come  close, but never quite made it.  Our town collectively held its breath as we won one game after another, hoping it wasn't all a fluke.  After winning substate last week, even guys like me who don't care much for football spent quite a bit of time and conversation trying to evaluate our chances in the big game.  

Hoosiers is also accurate in the way it portrays the entire community rallying around a team in a good year.  Store windows had signs cheering the boys on, much of the town made the two hour trip to watch the game, and thanks to regional radio the rest of us listened this afternoon as boys we have known since they popped out of the womb played on brilliant and warm fall day.  We got our monies worth, a real nail biter.  Right up to the final moments the outcome was uncertain.  My normal "who cares" attitude about sports pretty much vanished.  I was hauling cattle and listening on the radio in the pickup when I noticed my neighbor had two cows out, both of us were irritated about the interruption.  I got to do the running, as I was running back to my pickup he yelled out....."we are ahead by 8!!".  It wasn't until there was about 40 seconds left it became certain we would win.  I called one of my best friends who had a son playing and suggested he and about a half dozen other fathers strip naked and run around the field, the culmination being a group hug of the coach, "it'll make the paper" I assured him.  He declined the notion of a naked run, but admitted he had tears streaming down his face.

It will make the paper anyway.  A quick glance at the Emporia gazette website a few hours later reassured me of that, as it boldly proclaimed our small towns victory.  Just like the end of "Hoosiers", our small town will remember this day for a very, very long time.

The old saying is, "if you don't like the weather in Kansas, wait a day, it will change".  My dad always says our weather goes from one extreme to another, I was shocked in 7th grade when our Kansas history teacher taught us that actually is the description of our weather.

The flooding rains of summer that gave us the big ditches and chunks of driftwood to watch for during fall harvest are just a distant memory now.  The weather is nearly perfect as far as living and doing chores goes, but the increasingly wide stretches between rains and the decreasing amount of precipitation those rains yield is beginning to show.  

NOAA has issued a red flag warning for extreme fire danger for most of the state tomorrow, and a fire weather watch for the rest of it.  Frost and dry weather has turned our tall lush green grass of summer to tall, dry brown grass, a situation we will live with until spring, or until fire blackens the prairie.  The final piece of the puzzle is coming into play now, humidity below 20%.  When humidity runs in the 40%-50% range the grass is surprisingly hard to catch afire.  Generally, even with a fairly stiff breeze, a road will stop most fires if the humidity is above 40%.  Everything changes below 20%.  At times, a strong stream of water from a fire hose will knock fire ahead of itself with low humidity, and a road is barely noticed by the fire in a strong wind.  Care must be taken to avoid driving a vehicle into tall grass at times other than the early morning for fear of starting a fire, in fact a 700 acre fire started Wednesday in Stafford county when an agronomist on an ATV set corn stubble ablaze while taking soil samples.  Electric fences sometimes start fires, I've even seen a couple started by tractors pulling a load uphill on a road, and blowing out a clinker into the grass.  Of course, every once in a while you get someone who gets a kick out of "throwing matches", the worst I can remember was about 15 years ago when someone started fires over a 30 mile stretch of road.  

This time last year we couldn't get out into the pastures because of deep mud, I am still bouncing over ruts I left, now, we dare not drive into them during the afternoons for fear of fire.  What a difference a year makes.

"Going ballistic" is a term we use in the states for getting very, very angry.  I have no idea if you say the same thing in the UK.  In an hour and a half, 8:30 am our time, I will be going ballistic on our builders.

Every once in a while I learn something I believe is not true.  I use to believe people with back trouble exaggerated how much it hurt, then I had a couple of bouts with a bad back, and realized hey, that really is painful.  I also heard never to hire your friends, and that working on your house is stressful.  I built two machine sheds, hired friends to build one, everything went fine there, how big of a deal could it be to do a little work on the house?

In the summer of 2009 Mrs. KF and I drew up a plan to remodel our home inside and out, to the tune of $60000, might not be much money in the UK, it is a ton for me, especially to spend on the house.  I have(might be better now to say "had") a very good friend who built his own house and did a beautiful job, he works with a guy who built his own house and did a really nice job, they built one of my machine sheds, I figured hey, hire your buddy, he will never let you down.

The first thing to be done was rewire the house.  Old wiring burns down many homes, no point in doing a bunch of work, only to have the house burn down.  Perhaps I should have sensed trouble brewing when the first day they worked, November 18, 2009, they punched a hole through my bedroom wall.  Nothing was said, I made the assumption(one of many) that they would fix it.  

Time went on, 90% of the work they did was good, 10% was crap.  At times the work was sporadic, because I learned all good builders start 2 or 3 projects at once, and work on one for a while then leave.  We gritted our teeth and told each other(the wife and I) just to be patient.  Mrs KF even made a point every day of complementing their work, and told me I should do the same.  In June they "finished"  the inside.  I still had the hole in my bedroom wall, along with a half dozen very visible defects.  Every morning, first thing I saw was a grapefruit sized hole in our wall as I gazed down past my toes.  Mrs. KF and I assured ourselves fixing that was on the list, just be patient.  

Then, one very hot June night, I got out of bed to get a drink.  Our new, high efficiency air conditioner was going full blast and the house was very comfortable.  As I walked through the dining room in the dark, I heard what sounded like someone thumping on the dining room table.  I stood there, half scared a ghost was present, and turned on the light to see water pooling on the table, coming from the ceiling.  

What you may or may not know in the UK is an air conditioner produces a lot of water in humid weather.  There is a drain.  They had installed my drain at an angle that did not allow the water to flow away from the unit until it was nearly full....with the very humid night, it could not drain water away as fast as it was being produced, and was running out onto the ceiling, and soaking through into the room below.

The next day being Sunday, they were not going to work,but got a call from me promptly at 7am.  I had very nearly called at 1am when I discovered the leak.  When my friend arrived I gave a very animated and profanity laced run down of all the things we were unhappy about, ending with, "and I suppose you expect me to look at this goddammed hole in my bedroom wall for the rest of my life?!?!?!?".  

Things moved pretty fast inside the house after that, within a couple of days most things were fixed so we could live with them.  I was told they needed a check for siding and windows, the windows had to be specially made, so they would not be back until the 5th of July.  Without argument, I wrote the check.  

However, nobody showed up on July 5th.  My friend had to sell his house and work on another one so he and his family had a place to live, they got another job with a deadline.  Mrs. KF and I waited patiently through July, August, September and the first week of October before I got a little blunt made a phone call, they showed up the second week of October, without my friend who now claims I was told all along he was not going to work on the outside of the house.  

I was combining and getting home in the dark.  I didn't pay close enough attention to what was going on.  They had three sides done before I really inspected what they were doing, it was very half assed.  We had a couple of polite conversations, didn't make much difference.  Last week they put a door in the kitchen(from the outside) requiring them to take down the rack that holds the pots and pans..they left it on the floor and Mrs. KF tripped and fell over it while bringing in the groceries.  

The new head builder got divorced in the middle of all this and now has a new girlfriend.  Even though he is 40, he is apparently required by law to talk to her on the cell phone at least once an hour all day long.  They have been putting on siding in between visiting, telling jokes, talking on the phone, and cooking bratwursts in a large smoker they brought and put in the front yard.  He has custody of the kids,and brings one with him every day, who has been beating the hell out of the siding with a stick and chipping paint off of it.  With less and less hair on my head all the time, and an increasingly round face and figure, apparently I bear a striking resemblance to Buddha and inspire not even a tiny bit of fear in anyone anymore.  The real kicker though was I had questions about the warranty they could not answer, and told me I needed to go to the company website.  While on the company website, I learned they have not been putting the siding on correctly, and it will not have a warranty because of that.  When I brought this up, they just sort of shrugged and said I probably won't need the warranty anyway, so in the blink of an eye I go from a 50 year warranty, to none.  

Yesterday, my dozer man showed up to clear some trees to build fence.  He walked around the house looking at the trim and started laughing.  That was the final straw.  Mrs. KF and I had a two hour long conversation going over the bids and bills, and all our frustrations.  I tried calling all 4 builders and finally got one.........I gave him a fairly severe 30 minute long chewing out, told him not one more dime changes hands until we are 100% satisfied, and they better figure a way to get a warranty on the siding, or I guessed it could all get sorted out in court, because I was not going to pay them any more money, period.  So, at 8:30 we have scheduled a group ass chewing, where I am going to go completely ballistic all over again.  

Moral of the story, hire your friends to work on your house, when you are done you will have less money and fewer friends. 

I wrapped up fall harvest yesterday at 10am.  To jog readers memories, I finished fall 2009 harvest in March 2010.  We have had day after day of perfect harvest weather, with highs in the 80s.  Soybean moisture has fallen into the 8.5% area, with corn in the 11% range.  I cut soybeans last Saturday night that tested 8.8% at 9pm. 

Yields have been average on soybeans(running about one of your tons per acre, or in the low 30s bushel wise), and below average for corn(maize) at about 70 to 80 bushels per acre, with a few guys down in the 30s(my poorest was 50).  Very good prices however have turned this into a pretty good year, money wise.  Local prices yesterday were $11.55 on soybeans and $5.10 on corn, the highest harvest prices by far I have ever seen.

Our flooding summer rains left our fields with ditches and driftwood to dodge, more than one combine has suffered a little damage.  I got a piece of driftwood stuck in my feederhouse, but luckily it didn't tear things up.  Fall has turned dry, with growing concern for the 2011 wheat crop.  I have not planted any wheat,and will not unless we get a rain this weekend.

All things considered, I think 2010 will go down as a pretty good year for most of us in eastern Kansas.

In Kansas we have noxious weed laws, probably a dozen weeds have been declared "noxious", meaning that if you don't control them the county may do it for you,and charge the costs to your taxes.  The newest noxious weed and without a doubt the most expensive and difficult to control here in the Flinthills is sericea lespedeza.  This weed was introduced in this country for wildlife habitat.  It was only after the government had spread it far and wide that it was discovered you couldn't kill the stuff, and cattle hate it, and must be starved to eat it, although goats love it and sheep will eat it, problem is there are precious few of those in Kansas. Fire, our chief tool to keep our pastures clean and weed free only makes it grow bigger.

I have been battling this weed about 15 years and making very little progress.  Tomorrow I take the battle to a new level, aerial attack.  I am going to bite the bullet and have 160 acres sprayed from the air.  The sad part of this is that I already know next year I will still have it.  Hopefully this method of spraying(the terrain is too rough to spray with a ground rig) will at least help me get an edge so we can do some mopping up next year on foot, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I have to call in air strikes next year and the year after.

The bad thing about sericea is the cost of controlling it is sometimes more per acre than the grassland will make.  It pits neighbor against neighbor because hard feelings ensue if one person feels their neighbor isn't doing enough to control it.   Each of our counties has a noxious weed department, and most counties now subsidize the chemicals used to fight this battle, and that has helped bring costs more in line with what farmers can afford, leading to my decision to blanket spray.  

A word of advice....don't ever plant sericea no matter how good your government tells you it is.

Wrote a blog with this title two days ago, for some reason it never got posted, at least not that I can see,so I will try again.  After 3 weeks of the hottest weather we have had in 10 years with highs in the high 90s to mid 100s, we have gotten some relief. 

Friday night a red line of storms on radar appeared as though it would miss us, but we just caught the southern tip.  My farm narrowly missed what was either a small tornado or an extremely narrow downburst.  Mrs. KF and I were watching the 10pm weather, the last thing we heard from the weatherman was "the threat for severe weather is over for this evening" when our electricity went out.  My parents(who just live 3/4 of a mile to the west) still had their power, as did my neighbors directly to the east, so I assumed lightening had hit the breaker at the end of the lane and went to bed after calling in the outage(to a very aggravating automated system).  Sometime in the middle of the night a power truck drove into the yard, but left without restoring our lights.  When we still had no electricity at 6am I called the neighbor to the north who is on the same line we are.  It was then I learned that just 250 yards to the north of my house on the other side of the river there had been lots of wind damage, and about 15 poles were down.  After going up and seeing some of the damage, I was relieved that it had not hit the farmstead, but also a little concerned how a storm this strong could occur without notice from the National Weather Service before or after.

From that strong storm we got .6 of an inch of rain, then Saturday night another .25.  Yesterday we had a slow, gentle rain the entire day that added up to an additional 1.5 inches.  This moisture will go a long way toward making a fall crop, although we are not out of the woods yet as far as hot dry weather goes.

3 years ago today Mrs. KF and I were motoring along from Ashford, Kent to Bridgwater Somerset, took a side trip to Windsor Castle and the town of Farnborough to see a distant cousin, got a peek at Stonehenge from the A303 I believe, then got lost and another distant cousin picked us up at a grocery store in Bridgwater. 

My 4th or 5th cousin Julie-Ann gave us a great tour of Somerset, and among other things on our next to last day we went to a car boot fair, as I describe it to folks here at home, a garage sale on steroids.  From what I can remember, that day was the hottest of the summer so far in the UK, I believe about 85F.  Mrs. KF and I were amused to say the least at all the people standing around panting, and the young men stripping off their shirts because it was so hot.  I am not making fun of anyone, it is just that 85F to us does not seem so hot, just like 105F doesn't seem that hot to veterans returning from Iraq.

From what I gather, our temp today was around 105F.  I don't look when it is extra hot or extra cold because knowing for certain only makes it worse.   You do get somewhat use to the heat(or the cold in the winter) but you still don't enjoy it.  Just like the extreme cold tests the limits, the extreme heat does too.  Radiators have to be constantly blown out, hay baler fires are much more easy to start, tires blow out if they are weak at all.  Your age begins to show too. 

Our TV constantly reminds us of the signs of heat stroke as does the radio, and "keeping hydrated" is the name of the game.  I have a gallon John Deere water jug I keep filled with ice water(I also noticed you Brits have a real aversion to ice), that means you first fill it with ice, then let the water fill in the air spaces.  On a good hot day I will drink two of those.  When you come inside you drink more ice water, or ice tea, or stuff like Gatorade.  Sometimes, you just say to hell with it and don't work during the middle of the afternoon, because even if you do have a good air conditioner on your tractor, everything runs so much warmer it bugs you, and your AC doesn't work that great anyway.

Right now I can take this all in stride.  Ample rains all summer have blessed us with plenty of subsoil moisture.  But every day like today hurts us.  Our soybeans are blooming and setting pods, this kind of weather will make them abort.  By this time next week I won't be very talkative at all, and in another week my mood will be bleak.  

There is a little chance of rain Wednesday night and Thursday.  An inch is all it would take to make me smile.

Our 2010 election process is well underway with the primary in Kansas August 3rd.  Kansas is a predictably Republican state, and usually our politics are fairly polite, perhaps much like those in the UK, or at least how we would imagine they would be.  This year is an exception. 

I suppose the problem is obvious.  One of our two US Senators, Sam Brownback, is leaving his Senate seat open to run for governor.  Two of our US Representatives, Todd Tiahrt and Jerry Moran(both GOP) are running for his seat.  Both have been fairly popular in their own districts, and in reality there is probably not much difference between them.  So, naturally both have resorted to convincing us the other is evil.  Their running for the US Senate is leaving their respective House positions open, with 6 Republican contenders for Moran's seat, and I believe 5 for Tiahrt's.  There are three front runners for Moran's 1st district spot, and each of them is spending a fortune lambasting the others.  But the real fortune is being spent in the 4th district that takes in Wichita, where "Wink" Hartman has been running ads it seems since dirt was new, in reality I believe I saw the first one the end of April.  His chief challenger Mike Pompeo also seems to have plenty of cash to spend, and they have been hurling insults and character abuse against each other for at least the last month, calling each other liars, not insinuating but saying it outright.

We live in the 1st and not the 4th and it has been fairly easy for me to decide who I will vote for in our own House race, but Mrs. KF and I have remarked more than once if we lived in the 4th we might not vote at all.  Apparently we share that feeling with many in the 4th, because a dark horse emerged last week in the persona of Jean Schodorf, after running about 3 ads, she skyrocketed up the polls right past old Wink, who rumor has it has spent over $1 million of his own money in this race. 

I think the overall effect of this race is to make everyone disgusted with politics(more than we already were).  How can any of us know what is true, and who the biggest crook is, with a daily dose of propaganda coming full force, in emails, pop up ads on the computer, TV, radio, and the good old US mail in the form of flyers.  I talked to another farmer several days ago who was advance voting because he and his wife were going on vacation.  He told me they sat at the kitchen table discussing what to do, and finally decided between Moran and Tiahrt one would vote for Moran and the other for Tiahrt, so they could do no harm.  How sad is that?  

What will be especially amusing is watching the Republican party try to close ranks behind those who are victors in the primaries Tuesday.  After all this name calling and mudslinging, suddenly like magic everything will be all better,and we will be called on to present a unified front in November, to send good Republicans to DC to battle Obama.  At one time I thought Kansans were above all that, I guess we aren't.  What our nation needs is a viable third party.  More and more of us say it, whether or not it ever happens is unknown.

 Things have been busy around my place the last several weeks.  Mother KF had surgery on her foot, prompting my sister-in-law to come down from Nebraska with my two nieces in tow to look after their granny.  Before my brother became a father, he wisely invested in two German Shorthair bird dogs, who are veterinarians dreams.  They came too, everyone in the family but my brother came.

My oldest niece will soon be 5, but often acts 15(or 30) and is quite the drama queen.  At this point in her life she has all the earmarks of growing up to be a rather difficult woman prone to extreme emotional swings, something the males in her extended family are determined to prevent.  The latest round of trouble began with her grandfather and her uncle(me) each giving her a dollar because she hadn't driven us crazy for about a half hour.  The following day Mrs. KF, sister-in-law and nieces absolutely HAD to go shopping to buy shoes.  My niece Olivia was interested in spending her $2, but could not find anything in the store she wanted, prompting her to throw a fit(as relayed to me by my wife) that was quite embarrassing.  I was embarrassed even though I wasn't there.  Later on, when we were all gathered for our evening meal,  one of the dogs managed to get into a tangle with a skunk, for Brits who have never smelled a skunk, the spray is extremely nasty, and hard to get rid of.  Generally speaking a bath in tomato juice is the only solution, on a 90 degree Kansas evening no one was very interested in obtaining the vast quantity of tomato juice necessary to bathe the dog until it was realized the trip back to Nebraska with the foul smelling dog in the car would be very difficult, and would probably result in said car and family all smelling like skunks for several weeks....but by the time that was considered, the grocery store was closed.  It was then suggested that perhaps the dog would have to stay at grandma's for a while, which immediately resulted in my niece bursting into tears with a blood curdling scream of "this is the worst thing EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".  If anyone should have been crying it was her grandpa, who was now faced with the prospect of caring for a wife who can't walk for 3 weeks and a dog with the IQ of a cucumber.  I haven't been back to my parents and actually don't know how this part of the story ends, but I am betting if they went back with the dog, they all stink to high heaven right now.  I think my brother will be in the lunatic asylum by the time he gets that girl raised.

All this took place during a week that was promised to be very hot, and very dry.  With the weatherman confidently proclaiming Sunday night that we would have a week of rain free days near 100F, Monday morning saw the countryside buzzing with farmers mowing hay, myself included.  Alfalfa has all the nutrients in the leaves, so it is important to retain them.  This gets very hard to accomplish in high temps, generally I have to bale with a dew on.  The plan was to mow Monday,then rake two windrows together Tuesday morning, and bale starting Tuesday evening until it was too wet, and finish Wednesday morning.  

Tuesday morning there was now rain in the forecast, but it was to stay north of I-70, about 70 miles north of my farm.  By mid afternoon I could see the tops of the towering thunderheads 70 miles to my north, and they seemed quite ominous, but the weatherman at 5pm was still very confident the storms would track straight east, and there was no possibility of them getting this far south.  By 6 pm I could hear thunder and see lightening, the weatherman was still determined we would get no rain.  The hay was dry and the leaves shattered at my touch, but at 6:30 I went running for the tractor and baler.  We have a tiny dog named Fred who gets very agitated prior to severe storms, and he was going bonkers as I left the yard in full throttle.  I had only baled for about a half hour when the neighbors called to say he was at their house, leading me to believe this might be a really bad storm, but the weatherman on the radio still said no rain.  By 7:30 the guys on the radio were now predicting rain, but assuring me that the storms were weakening and would not be severe, 10 minutes later the tornado siren sound came over the radio with a radar indicated tornado 30 miles northeast of my farm moving southeast.  By now lightning was coming down in 3,4 and 5 fingered forks.  I was just about to surrender and leave the field(I have never been too clear about how safe you are on a cab tractor) when the warning tones came over the radio again, this time for a tornado 20 miles northwest of my farm, moving southeast at 15 mph.  

I raced for cover on the tractor.  I called Mrs. KF at my parents, remarkably they had managed to get Mother KF into the basement.   The fire pagers went off to call us to storm spot and a fellow picked me up and we headed toward the storm, trying to get to the southwest side of it, in some of the worst lightning I have ever seen.  At one point it appeared the sun was trying to break through the clouds after a big strike,but once we could see clearly, we realized something was now on fire.  It had hit a tank battery and exploded one of the oil tanks, spreading oil all over the ground and now the entire thing was ablaze.  With lightning popping all around it was not safe to try to fight it, so we simply called back to the station and told them to sit tight until the storm was over.  As we sat looking east, thinking we were behind the storm, the Undersheriff called to tell me the tornadic storm(it had not actually been confirmed a tornado was on the ground, radar indicated there could be one) was at our backs coming toward us.  We immediately moved 3 miles further south, and finally in the flashes of electricity could see the wall cloud, but never a tornado.  Never the less, we sounded the tornado sirens in the town.

What I learned Tuesday night was I trust Fred's forecast much more than the TV weather forecast.  I did nearly get all the hay baled though, good thing too since about a third of the previous cutting got 11 inches of rain on it.  We ended up with no tornado, and a really nice one inch rain. It turned out to be a perfect July day.

All I can say is "wow, what a tough three days".  It all started late Wednesday evening, after a daylong cold rain, my telephone rang about 7pm.  A close friend of mine asked, "have you heard the news?".  I answered I hadn't a clue what he was talking about.  Turns out, our long time fire chief had shot and killed himself.  I have never had anyone I knew well commit suicide.  A half dozen of us have served together almost 20 years, we weren't prepared for the shock.  

On Thursday morning as all of us began to regain our bearings, we realized we needed some involvement in the funeral, and called his son to arrange that.  I went out to the cemetery to see if the ground was firm enough to hold up our fire trucks, and on my return trip through town happened upon a car wreck, an elderly couple(the woman use to be one of my teachers in school) had run into the side of a cattle trailer.   I helped get the man out of the car and into the ambulance, I think he will eventually be fine. 

This morning right off the bat I got another phone call that a friend of mines father had just suffered a heart attack.  They wanted to life flight him but the cloud deck was too low, I still haven't heard the outcome of that.  Then at noon, I was hit with the news that some neighbors I am fairly close to are getting a divorce, "splitting the sheets" as we call it.  Undoubtedly they will have to sell the farm to settle the divorce..who knows what kind of neighbors I will end up with next.

I'm fine, I just wish everyone I know was too.

 Kansas is in tornado alley, this time of the year especially we pay extra close attention to the weather forecast.  The names of the towns wrecked by huge tornado's roll off our tongues easily...Udall, Haysville, Andover, El Dorado, Hesston, Emporia, Topeka, the most famous of all Greensburg, and most recently Chapman. 

Year by year the forecasting gets better and better.  I watch a storm chaser site for their more site specific forecasts, and for almost a week they have been talking about May 10 being a day for a possible tornado outbreak in central Kansas, at times the forecast moves east a bit. The NWS convective outlook this morning shows a target area for Monday taking in eastern Kansas, and part of Oklahoma, Missouri, and even a little bit of Iowa and Nebraska.  

We won't really know anything for sure until Monday is over, but it will be interesting to me if they can forecast this so far ahead and be correct in any way shape or form, because if they can it will prove to me just how far their forecasting ability has come.

It is a little maddening to read the comments on the chaser site though, they are "praying" everything will come together for a major outbreak, and "hoping" they aren't misreading things.  I guess everyone hopes for different things in life, I am praying to be spared.

When I planted my first soybean crop in 1987, it was with our "corn planter" the name we often use to refer to what you Brits call a precision planter because for years all they were used for was planting corn(maize).  They were in 30 inch rows, about 8-10 seeds per foot of row.  In those days bean seed came in a 50 or even a 60 pound(one bushel) bag and cost at most $15 per bushel.  In the early 90s a neighbor tried a novel new approach to planting soybeans(we often simply call them "beans"), he seeded them with his 7.5 inch wheat drill.  As time went on it became more and more accepted to plant with a drill, most guys used about 10-15 pounds more seed per acre to compensate for poorer emergence brought about by more haphazard seed depths and spacing.  By 2000, my guess is that 50% to as many as 80% of the soybeans planted in my immediate area(say a 20 mile radius of my farm) were drilled.

During the "world food crisis" of a couple years ago, the price of GM soybean seed skyrocketed, and as prices eased for the raw soybean, the price of seed kept going up.  New for this year I will no longer be able to buy my seed by the pound, they will come in 140000 count sacks.  For years our corn has come in 80000 kernel units, now it is soybean seed.  With seed costs now approaching $50 per acre for soybeans, rivaling corn, drills are being relegated to drilling just wheat again, and soybeans are being planted more precisely with "corn planters" some with 15 inch splitters.  With at most two weeks to make up my mind, for the first time in 15 years there will more than likely be no more than 25 acres of soybeans planted with a drill, if any at all.  While I would like to purchase a 12/23 split row planter, I will probably just return to the much more economical 30 inch row, and sacrifice a bushel or so of production an acre. I guess this is sort of a "back to the future" moment.

 Winter has finally gone for good I believe, and the spring of 2010 is shaping up to be much different than the springs of '07, '08 and '09.  After nearly 18 very wet months, suddenly about April 1st everything changed.  Day after day of wind dried things out, and corn planting was able to start with a bang.  For the first time in my life I saw both corn planters and loads of freshly combined corn rolling to town on the same day, one farmer was combining soybeans right across the road from where his hired man was planting corn.  My own harvest ended the early part of March, and 75% of my 2010 corn(maize) is planted and coming up, unbelievably I stopped planting to wait for a rain, which we got Thursday.  In 2009 I did not begin planting until the 23rd of May. 

The last 2 weeks I have traveled 500 miles combine shopping, and can report that I have never seen so few fields of wheat.  I have no problem believing that the 2010 wheat harvest for eastern Kansas will be the smallest in terms of acres in years.

We have ample subsoil moisture, as long as we do not get too many 100+ days and get average or even slightly below average rainfall, we have the potential to raise an excellent crop, knock on wood. 

Perhaps I have blogged about this in the past, I am scared of snakes.  That is a little unfortunate, since we have so many in Kansas.  The most numerous are bull snakes, black snakes, copperheads, and rattle snakes.  The rattler and copperhead are poisonous, the bull snakes and black snakes are not, but bull snakes wake up mad and do their best to convince you they are deadly, and they are big, sometimes 6 feet long.

It was just two weeks ago on a sunny Sunday afternoon I was putting mineral out for the cows.  I use old lick tubs for mineral feeders, and every once in a while the cows flip them over.  I was happy, whistling a tune and paying little attention to the world around me.  I pulled the pickup next to an overturned tub, hopped out and kicked it over and all hell broke loose, there were two huge bull snakes underneath it.  Bull snakes make sort of a roar when they are mad, and shake their tails I suppose in an effort to make you believe they are rattlers. 

If the two bull snakes wanted to scare me, they had succeeded.  I ran as fast as I could away from the roaring striking snakes, shaking like a baby.  However, they perhaps overplayed their hand.  Rather than slinking away and letting me put out my mineral, they kept striking and roaring as I climbed into the passenger side of the pickup...where I had a rifle.  My father and grandfather lectured me for years on how beneficial bull snakes and black snakes are, how many rodents they eat, etc, and all of that is true.  What is also true is I hate snakes, and while I have learned to tolerate them for the most part, I have my limits and these two snakes had reached them.  I ended their roaring rather abruptly.  

I was going to write a blog just about that experience, and never got around to it, when last weekend I had another snake experience.  My brothers two daughters, 4 and nearly 2 years old, had been deposited with their grandparents for a few days.  I was going down the road dragging a load of silage for the cows past my parents house when I spied a snake that looked like a rattler crossing the road, with my mother pushing what you call a pram with one niece in it and the other walking along beside, all had on these sorry little plastic shoes called "crocs" here, that have no protection against snake bite what so ever.

With what I consider remarkable skill I whipped the tractor and feedwagon full circle in the road, and staring down on the snake from above as it struck at my front tire ascertained it was indeed a rattlesnake, not good to have in my parents lawn with two little girls about.  I was trying to run over it, it was not about to be run over, and I managed to whip the tractor and wagon around two more times.

One might think this display would set off some alarm in my mothers head, she kept plodding toward the snake, apparently as my brother later said believing I was either on some type of drugs or having a seizure of some sort.  Realizing I was not going to get the snake with the tractor, I jumped from the cab shouting at my mother to get a gun from the house(Grandma could lop a snakes head off with a hoe, I am not nearly as brave as Granny was, especially with an honest to goodness venomous snake).  I wanted to keep an eye on the snake, and I knew from the rabid skunk incident of several years ago mother would NOT do a good job of watching where the snake went.  

The rabid skunk incident, since you ask, was perhaps true and perhaps not.  Mother phoned one morning in a panic that there was a rabid skunk chasing the dog.  Skunks are notorious for carrying rabies, and the fact it was chasing the dog was a sign it was probably rabid.  I rushed to the scene to find nothing...asking mother where the skunk had gone she replied she didn't know...she was cleaning house...she thought it went north east.  I never saw the skunk.  With that in mind I was roaring at my mother, who still apparently did not see the coiled rattling snake in front of the tractor to get a gun, and she was telling me to go inside and get it myself.  Still not wanting to take my eyes off the snake, I ran into their garage in search of a hoe, perhaps I could muster as much courage as my elderly grandmother once had and lop off the head, all I could find was a sort of a rake, not the best thing for killing a snake.  Meanwhile, the current grandma of our family was blundering toward a very irate rattle snake with two little girls in tow, mumbling about how disrespectful I was to her and what a bad example I was setting for her two granddaughters when I roared GET INSIDE!!.  Mother turned to argue, as she is always apt to do, when I unleashed a string of expletives followed with CAN"T YOU SEE THE DAMNED RATTLESNAKE?!?!?!

There is possibly just one person in the world more scared of snakes than I am,and that is my mother.  With amazing speed and grace she raced with the "pram"(we call them strollers) up the walk with my other niece scampering beside her.  She snatched the baby up and into the house she went.  This entire scenario has taken much longer to type than it took in real life, from start to finish we had probably been in this "situation" for about 2 minutes.  

I was hot on the heels of my mother, and went to the closet where my father keeps his guns.  Dad never had much in the way of firearms when I was growing up, a 30.30 rifle I have never shot,  a .22 pistol that I can't hit anything with, and a 20 gauge shotgun.  Over the last 5 or so years my brother has bought him several fancy guns, I have never shot.  Not wanting to try something new, I was at my whits end trying to find the old shotgun, finally finding the little .410 I used as a young boy, but no shells.  My nieces watched wide eyed as their crazy uncle dumped boxes of shells all over the floor and flung stuff out of the closet in an effort to find something to kill the snake with, short of using the fancy new Browning shotgun as a club.  Finally, I found the old shotgun and two shells, ran outside and shot the snake.  We are up to 4 minutes of crisis now. 

I cleaned up all the ammunition on the floor, put away the guns, showed my older niece the snake and the rattles, shook them for her to hear, and warned her not to touch a snake that looked like that, and not to stand there and scream, but to run away.

When my sister-in-law returned to fetch her daughters a few days later, we were all eating lunch and the subject was brought up.  I was a little sheepish at the fit I had thrown, and looked at Olivia and said "your uncle got a little upset didn't he?".  She put down her spoon and said to her mother, "he yelled dammit get me a gun right now!! to grandma".  Guess she is at the right age to pick that language up.

 I have commented before that I believe the cell phone has changed rural life as much as any other invention in my lifetime.  Our community really is our school district, our school district is about 20 miles from one end to the other.  Years ago news of a death or accident might take a couple of days to circulate through the community,today it is nearly instant.

All winter I have griped and moaned about snow and rain and ice and mud.  Dead stock, frozen pipes.  I was convinced I was living a tragedy.  My new complaint has become the strong daily winds, and when my cell phone rang Tuesday morning  and caller ID showed it was my friend Mark calling, I was sure it was to moan about his inability to spray in the strong wind.

I answered with a grin, ready to dig him over his jumpiness.  "Did you hear about Debbie?" was his greeting, not even a "what are you doing?" the normal beginning of my phone conversations.  "No" was my reply....."Well, she's dead".  "WHAT?".  I couldn't see how this was possible, 51 years old, a nurse, did what she was supposed to do.  Mark relayed the story that had been unfolding the last two hours, how she was feeding cattle with her husband and felt ill, he took her to the hospital where she had died.  As anyone who reads my posts and blogs may imagine, it is a rare occurrence for me to be speechless, but I was rendered speechless by the news.  I could only muster a quiet, "I can't believe it".  When I recovered, I passed the news to another of my best friends, his response to me was exactly the same as mine to Mark, disbelief.  

My wife Amy has lived in big cities, she lived in Washington DC for a while, whereas I have never lived anywhere but where I do today.  We have often discussed how in smaller communities the irony is you end up with many more friends and knowing many more people than you do living in a densely populated city.  We consider some people who live 8-10 miles away to be our neighbors.  A tragedy in the community provides visible proof of this.  The billboard in the center of our town proclaimed the viewing would be 7-8:30 pm Thursday night, in the tiny unincorporated town 9 miles from my farm with a population of 40 and a church that seats 400.  Over the last 10 years as I have gotten older and experienced some relatively minor periods of grief in my family, I have realized the importance of showing people you care about that you do care about them, even if it is at times uncomfortable.  Looking someone in the eye who has suddenly lost a loved one is very uncomfortable for me.  

I mentioned to Amy that there was no point in getting there until 8, I didn't want to stand in a long line.  Yesterday was the first day for many without a strong wind, area farmers had torched off thousands of acres of grassland, and we drove the winding road through smoke to the church, where even at 8pm the line stretched down the dusty gravel street.  A very rural crowd stood in the cool evening air with smoky haze filling our lungs and nostrils, outside the church the talk was of rain, the price of cattle, when do you think you will be back in the field...inside the mood changed.  Western hats came off as did seed corn caps, revealing many of us don't have much hair.  As has become the custom, two tables held photos of the family in happier days.  The clock ticked as the line moved slowly, my idea that 8pm would result in us not standing in line for long was soon proven very wrong, about 9pm I was finally able to shake hands and offer condolences to the tired and worn looking parents.  The siblings were next, then the husband, an old friend I have gradually seen less and less of over the years, due to a rather insignificant disagreement as it appears now.  Never knowing what to say, I choked out that I was truly sorry.  The children were the worst, the youngest in his late teens, a very strong young man unable to hold back his grief in public, which is doubly traumatic for a strong young man.  

Then, it was over.  The hats went back on, even the toughest old cowboys wiped tears from their eyes.  Walking back to the car with a couple longtime friends looking at the stars through the haze, we all remarked how it takes losses like this to make us remember that what is really important in life is not how early you get your corn planted.

You never know what will happen in one week.  Last Sunday night I was a bachelor again, Mrs. KF went to see her sister, she returned on Tuesday with a respiratory infection and pinkeye in both eyes.  Monday the last surviving member of my grandfathers high school class died...she happened to be the mother and grandmother of very good friends of my family.  At 2 am Thursday morning the fire pager went off, the only new building on our main street, the cafe/bar(pub to you) was on fire.  When I pulled up to the scene I had visions of losing the entire block.  This apprehension was made even worse when the city water manager pulled up in his pickup to tell me half the water plant was shut down and we would likely run out of water, 110 gallons per minute was all he could give us once we drained the tower.  You don't have to be a math whiz to know if you are running 2-750 gpm pumps that 110 gpm supply won't work.  I sent a man to get the tanker, at least we would have 3000 gallons to work with. 

Sometimes though things work better than you think they will.  The new building was tight and the fire couldn't get much air, it was clad with metal and had a hard time breaking out of the roof.  We managed to get a handle on it after about 4 hours without any damage to the other buildings on the street, and with nothing but smoke damage to 2/3 of the building.  

One thing about volunteer firemen, they don't have to show up at fires.  One guy(who I dearly love, but who is not that devoted) makes all the meetings, but only comes to fires that fall between "after supper" and "before bed".  This has always irritated me, when I got a minute(about 5am) I dialed his number, it took three tries but I finally woke him up.  His groggy "hello??" was met with my rather enthusiastic declaration over the phone.."we have the fire under control, you can go back home!!!".  "Great" was the only reply I heard.  "You are on your way, aren't you(3 hours after the page)???" I asked. "Sure" then a click as he hung up. 

At breakfast that morning I got a call asking me to be a pallbearer for the woman who had died on Monday.  Not much I could say other than "yes".  95% of the time people see me in work cloths and a hat....funerals and weddings are the few times I dress up and go "topless".  This gives everyone a chance to remark "you really are getting thin on top".  Even so, I went to get the hair around my bald spot cut.  Our barber quit years ago, so I get my hair cut with the old women at the hairdressers(paying more than ever to cut less hair).  You get to listen to all the gossip that way, the fire was topic 1, the main problem, why don't they blow the fire whistle any more???.  Apparently, several of the towns elderly women believe the whistle should be blown even if we have pagers, so the non firefighting public can turn out...I didn't bother to tell her that is why we don't blow the whistle anymore.  A side note to this is that the tornado siren and fire siren are one and the same, with a different tone(fire is three blasts, tornado one solid blast).  Nobody really ever remembers which is what.  One stormy day when we had an oil tank fire(caused by lightening) I was surprised to see everyone outside looking up at the sky.  It dawned on me later they thought the fire signal was the tornado siren, and of course we all know the tornado siren means go outside and look up, not take cover.  I should also add we have a relatively new system now that can be set off remotely.  All new systems come with some bugs in them, last summer we were testing it, and trying in vain to set it off...no matter what we did we could not get it to work.  After about 45 minutes we learned we had been setting off the siren in the town 10 miles to the south...they had finally disconnected the power to the siren because they couldn't figure out why it kept going off. 

On Friday I rushed to get chores done, because I had to be at the church at noon.  It was a bright, sunny, mild morning, with a bad snowstorm forecast for that night, hard to believe.  By the time we got to the cemetery at 3, it was still warm, but with ominous clouds gathering.  Just as the minister gave the "Amen" in the final prayer, the wind came out of the north, and the temperature dropped like a stone.  By 8pm ice pellets were falling, by 10pm snow.  Saturday morning we had 2 inches with a strong north wind.  At 4pm a neighbor called me to ask if I could pull him out of a drift on the road....I spent about an hour clearing the road in hope that Sunday morning it would still be passable.  After doing that, I drove past the home of one of my landlords, an 87 year old couple.  I had just gotten home when he called to ask if I thought they could make it to the highway.  "Is it life or death?" I asked. "no" came the reply, "we would just like to go out to eat".  I told Albert he better just stay home, as it was still snowing and blowing.

It snowed all Saturday night, and Sunday morning the road I had cleared the night before had drifted worse than it had been, almost as bad as Christmas day.  Even more disheartening was the fact my feed bunks in my weaned calf pen were completely covered with snow, not just full, but covered.  By noon, the snowplow had come through, and the sun was out.  I spent about 2 hours with the tractor digging out the bunks.  By 6pm most of the roads that weren't drifted were melted off.  

Perhaps though the biggest item of the week happened about 10:30 pm Sunday night, when the US House of Representatives passed our healthcare reform.  TV stations broke in, the President spoke.  No Republicans voted for it.  On one side you have Democrats declaring this a great day for America, on the other the GOP telling us we are headed for socialism.  It was predicted by one TV pundit tonight we will soon look like Europe, complete with a VAT. I have really mixed emotions about this.  Mrs.KF gets her insurance through her job, it costs her just $35 per month.  Mine on the other hand costs me $330 per month, it went up 33% last year.  Unlike many Republicans I hope for the best with this,  a constant worry of mine the last few years has been that my insurance would get too high for me to afford.  Time will tell the outcome, all I know is this was quite a week.

 ....this has to be the best quote of our long and miserable winter, and I have heard it from so many different people.  DEFRA would be horrified at the mess farmers have made in Kansas this winter, knee deep combine ruts filled with water and melting snow, pastures rutted and "poached" as you say in Britain.  While winters here typically have some bad stretches, this has been one for the record books as we have lacked a rather common feature of our Kansas winters, a scattering of 5-10 day periods where it warms up and is nice. 

The quote above refers to the way we typically feed cattle, with a 3/4  or 1 ton pickup truck with a "cake" feeder and bale bed.  Normally you can get out in the morning when the ground is frozen, but we have had several fairly long stretches where the ground did not freeze at night, or barely froze, so the gates were a rutted mess.  Therefore, each time you head in or out of the gate you tried to take a slightly different angle.  Eventually, you run out of angles to approach.  

Our roads are another matter.  Unlike most places I saw in Britain, our country roads are all gravel, if you are lucky, a few are dirt.  Weather like this makes the gravel "disappear".  I have had to engage the four wheel drive on my pickup just to get down the public road. Our township man has hauled 115 semi loads(about 27 tons each) of gravel onto the roads since January 21st.  As a board member I have been impressed I have not been publicly flogged, everyone seems to understand we just have to live with the situation.

Of course, there are the "getting stuck" incidents.  I have been stuck twice this winter, pretty good I would say, once in a snow drift on the road, another time feeding cows with the pickup.  I have ridden to the rescue of a stuck neighbor once, when his tractor and feedwagon were caught crossways in frozen ruts about 2 feet deep.  

How about frozen bale rings?  Do you get those in the UK?  At 2 or 3 degrees F a bale ring will stick pretty tightly to the ground, a nudge from a tractor and loader can do one of two things, dislodge it, or ruin it, a couple of mine have required a little stick welding this winter.  I might have posted this before somewhere else, but my heat lamp went out in the well house one night, lucky me I got to replace my water system.  

Of course it hasn't just been farmers who have been inconvenienced by the cold.  Our local oil producers have had a devil of a time getting to their wells, and with all sorts of freeze ups.  The freezing and thawing ground tends to make lines break more often, and their lease roads are even worse than the public roads to negotiate.  Business owners have spent quite a bit of money getting snow removed from parking lots, and all of us have higher gas and electric bills than usual, thanks to day after day of cold weather, starting back in November.

However, a glimmer of hope is on the horizon. Last week we had two nice days, and today was quite nice.  Fertilizer buggies are going full tilt now topdressing brome and what little wheat got planted, and unbelievably we are about a month away from trying to plant the 2010 corn crop.  In about 3 weeks the horizon will fill with smoke and the prairie will turn black from fire, as we try it all again for another year.  Who knows what 2010 will bring, it is hard to believe it could be more challenging than 2009 was, but you just never know.