kansasfarmer's blog

You can only hit a gate from so many different angles.........

kansasfarmer — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:22:00 GMT

....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.

Trying times.

kansasfarmer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:07:00 GMT

While the headlines claim that the financial crisis is about over, signs on the ground indicate otherwise. With unemployment running 10% in the USA, the highest I believe in 25 years, and what is now being termed as "underemployment" supposedly about that, for many Americans things have only gotten worse over the last 12 months, not better.

While our national leaders in Washington DC are free to tweak numbers and print money as they see fit, as well as borrow into infinity, in the state of Kansas we are pretty much a cash operation. State and local governments have to balance the books, deficit spending is not allowed. The state coffers are gasping for air, just tonight the radio reported the state was going to have even less money than they thought a month ago, and a month ago they revised the numbers downward from the month previous. Our elected governor Kathleen Sebelius saw fit to "fly the coop" to DC to serve as President Obama's HHS secretary, leaving her underling Mark Parkinson with a mess. Our new, unelected governor now has the unpleasant task of trying to balance a budget in the face of what seems impossible odds. Given the fact he is a Democrat, in a Republican state, with a general election in November, the odds of his requested sales tax increase seem about the same as mine were of being voted "Britain's Sexiest Farmer".

So what happens, when government officials can't just make more money appear? The budget gets cut. The reality of the situation hits fast and hard. Nowhere is it being felt with more anxiety and in some cases anger than local school districts. Education was important to our immigrant forefathers, many had been denied a good education in their various "old countries" and one of the main priorities was making sure in this new nation everyone had access to a good primary education. In Kansas, the land was laid out in townships(6 mile by 6 mile squares) and the 36th section was designated a "school section" that section would be used to raise at least part of the funds for public schools, along with property taxes. Property taxes are still a chief source of funding for schools, but sales taxes are also used.

The one room schools that were scattered throughout the state were one by one shut down through the 1940s, '50s and '60s and larger "unified" school districts formed. The old one room schools had 3 man school boards, set up the same as our township boards, most unified school districts had 7 man elected boards. Serving on one of these today(for no pay) is without a doubt the most thankless job in the state.

So far, our local school, with an enrollment of perhaps 200 students, has fared relatively well with just a $27000 budget cut, perhaps in part because the Superintendent and board of education raised our property taxes dramatically, something they cannot do without being subject to a protest vote, they managed to squeeze by without that happening this year. Most of our neighbors are not so lucky, one has already moved to a 4 day school week, another is considering it, but 2 districts to our immediate north are closing schools. So many of our smaller school districts are the result of unifying schools in several towns into one administrative district(explaining the USD in front of our district numbers) with attendance centers in each town. With our rural population ever shrinking(my own 1100 square mile county had a population of 16000 in 1940, today it is around 7000) both the sales tax base and the number of students is shrinking. The state subsidizes education by equalizing the money on a per student basis.smaller numbers of kids equal less money.

In small town Kansas life revolves around church and school. When a town loses its school, usually it nearly dies. You can drive all over our state and find near ghost towns, with nearly abandoned main streets and in many cases a very fine looking abandoned school building...losing your school is a death knell, and everyone knows it. It is with a good deal of sadness that I watch the story that is unraveling in the community to the north of mine, where one of the proposals is to close the high school and bus the students about 20 miles to the east. An estimated 300 people attended a school board meeting, and about that number attended a town meeting in a town of around 550. 10 years ago when I was on our school board and the state put out what I call a "hit list" our school was on it, and we were to be combined with this northern community...strange now we seem to be OK, and they are in trouble, faced with cutting $400000 from their budget THIS year, with all sources saying next year is going to be worse.

In many communities around Kansas today, the future rests with the decisions of 7 ordinary people, who ran for office I am sure never dreaming what lay just over the horizon for them. There are no good answers. I have heard accounts of the animosity and hatred that lasted lifetimes from the school consolidation of the 40s and 50s. Some people in our neighborhood sent their children 20 miles north to school, rather than 4 or 5 miles into town, just because they were so angry. This sentiment is echoed today, with parents saying they will send their children anywhere but the combined school.

A little over a year ago we saw what we thought was a financial crisis coming to a head. It seemed far away on Wall Street and in Washington DC. Our federal government first under a Republican leader, then under a Democrat rushed to bail out the very people who caused the problem, who gladly took billions in taxpayer money to make up for their own mismanagement...now those same people are once again giving themselves massive bonuses. Meanwhile, down the ladder considerably, the turmoil that was created by our "ruling class" has hit ordinary folks hard. There apparently is no quick fix or bailout from our Washington elite with its Harvard MBAs for us, just more of the condescending attitude that small town schools must be combined into bigger schools to be efficient, as if they know anything at all about efficiency on Wall Street or in DC. Small town rural America and our small town schools are finding out once again they are completely expendable in our society. While the party seems to have resumed on the east coast, ordinary folks who ran for school board to do the right thing for their kids and communities are faced with some gut wrenching choices, that will forever change the way their friends and neighbors treat them. A good many of these board members are farmers. What will be interesting to see, and only seen by us "commoners" is the way we deal with these shortfalls on a local level, where in the end our books must be balanced, and compare what is done here by those of us not considered to be the best and brightest of the nation(farmers and other mostly blue collar folks), to what our infinitely brighter DC representatives do, with their power to print money. If the folks in DC had to live across the street or down the road from those they represent, and saw them in church and in the grocery store, and at school ballgames and when they went out to eat, every single day and week like our school board members do, our nation would be a vastly different place, and our leaders would be much more humble. I bet our national budget would even be balanced.

Droving, Part 2

kansasfarmer — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:30:00 GMT

My last blog I got carried away, and drifted a little from what I intended to write about. Remembering events from 26 years ago served as a catalyst to dredge up many other memories.

My intention was to tell a little about cattle drives from my granddads day, and I will do it now, before drifting back forward in time. As I have posted before, my ancestors came here mostly in the 1870s, and most by railroad. The toughest of the pioneer days were over. From the time they got here, up until the 1940s, the train was the most common method of getting livestock to market, and unbelievably the markets were a long way away, my great grandfather shipped cattle to Chicago, offhand I would guess that to be 500 miles from here, and then later to Kansas City(100 miles away), as did my grandfather. I can just remember the Kansas City stockyards as a very young boy, being carried by my father. The train stopped about 4 miles straight north of our farm at a place called Root station, where there was a stockyards. Grandfather told me they use to drive the cattle on horseback to that station, and have my great grandmother follow in a car. When the cattle were loaded, they tied the reins to the saddle horn and let the horses go, and they would come home on their own while the riders came home in the car. He also told me of a time his father bought several head of cattle that had come from various farms, and all been driven on foot to the stockyards and then on foot down to our farm. That night someone left the gate open, and the cattle all went back to their respective farms. However the droving that has always impressed me as being the most out of touch with my life today was hog droving.

In the days before the hammer mill, the corn(maize) was fed to the cattle on the cob. A tremendous amount went through the cattle whole, and the custom was to buy feeder pigs and run with the cattle, to make use of the wasted corn. Usually these pigs were also fed skim milk. Granddad said his father usually had about 200 pigs with the cattle. In the fall of the year, when the pigs were fat, they would drive them to the rail yard in town to load on the train. This seems unbelievable to me, driving pigs along the river 2 and a half miles, as I have rarely been able to drive a pig over 50 feet with any success. A rather successful local farmers wife tells how in the 1970s after hearing for years about the local pig drives of the 1920s, she and her husband decided they would drive their market hogs to town, and had a disaster on their hands. Apparently, somewhere in the period between 1930 and 1970, pigs lost their "driveability".

Flashing back to where I left off in my last blog, the cold nasty winter of 1983. I didn't fully comprehend at the time what was going on. The 1970s had been fairly good to farming in the USA and in our area. Fairly decent weather, good prices and good yields ended abruptly in 1980 with the worst drouth I have ever seen, and according to grandpa and the other old men the worst since 1936(one farmer said 1936 was so dry he was conceived in 1936, but wasn't born until 1939).. Coupled with that was interest that eventually ended up at 20%, and diving commodity prices. While the weather did recover in 1981, prices remained miserable, and by 1983 the stress was showing. The reason my grandfather chose to send cattle to the commercial feedyard in 1983, and again in 1984, were predictions of higher prices for fed cattle 3 months in the future,and those better prices never did materialize. One of our two local banks changed hands during that time, and the new owners had no agricultural background and began leaning hard on many of the farming customers. Many of our neighbors were in much worse financial shape than we could have ever imagined, including our friends who helped us move the cattle on that cold December day. In the spring of 1984, the son of the father/ son duo walked into my grandparents house and announced, "I have some news that is going to affect you, we are selling out". I had never seen my grandfather so shaken by any news in his life. This sale would be the first of many of our neighbors from 1984 to 1988, and our world was turned upside down more than once. We saw land prices plummet, leading my father to comment that Butch had quit "in the nick of time".

Dad auctioned quite a few sales in those days, and along with an older auctioneer he cried the auction for our neighbors. Grandpa bought the hay baler, and dad bought the horse named Gene, mentioned in the previous blog, although at the time Grandpa did not know that. I was with grandpa as he was leaving, and the older auctioneer asked "what did you think of the sale Bill?". Grandpa replied "the horse and the hay baler were the highest priced things here" bringing a big laugh from the auctioneer.

Gene's only real strength was he was fast. He was dumb as a post, and prone to throwing fits, but he could run like nothing we had ever seen, prompting my brother and I to fight over who was going to ride him. I started running cattle on my own in an 80 acre pasture my great great grandfather bought in 1895. The fence had been built by him in the 1920s, and the wire was brittle, about once a summer I had a head or two escape. Trying to retrieve one of these escapees one Sunday afternoon, a bee buzzed Gene just right, prompting him to go into a bucking fit, tossing me off. My brother was riding Levi, as I was tired of trying to control Gene I agreed to trade horses. My brother is 4 years younger, and had watched too many cowboy movies, he believed true cowboying was done at a dead run. My steer was in with a bunch of 130 steers, in a 520 acre pasture. My brother took off full stroke after them, they scattered like dust in the wind, wrecking the entire operation, which meant one thing, we had to call Junior.

"Junior" is the only first name I ever knew for the only true cowboy I have ever known. He looked like a cowboy, tall, slender and weather worn, walked like a cowboy slightly bow legged from days on horseback, spurs jingling, he was a cowboy. His name, "Junior" was spoken reverently far and wide in the cattle raising community, as in "we will have to get Junior" whenever there was a big cattle wreck that had to be sorted out. This sure enough qualified as a wreck, so, I said, "I will have to get Junior".

I really can't remember how we communicated before cell phones, it certainly wasn't as instant as today, but arrangements were made, and later that same day Junior arrived on scene. I have commented most people have horses half as good as they think they are, that did not apply in this case. Junior's horses were the real deal, they were smart, fast, well trained, and worth a good pile of money, probably they were the most valuable things Junior owned. I reckon Junior must have been about 60 when this happened, but his weather worn face and squinted eyes made him look ancient to me. I told him how our earlier approach had worked. He nodded, and said he would rope this steer. We located the group of cattle, Junior rode toward them, they watched for a minute, and then took off, my brother immediately wanted to give chase, but I told him to wait for orders from Junior. Junior simply turned his horse and walked slowly back to us. He sat in his saddle and looked squarely at us, and said "the first thing you two need to learn is you can get alot more done at a walk than at a gallop. There is a pretty good chance since I didn't chase those cattle, curiousity will get the better of them, and they will come back to see what we are doing". I had my doubts, but sure enough, in about 5 minutes the entire group came at a dead run, then stopped suddenly, surrounding us.

Very quietly Junior asked if I saw my steer, I scanned the bunch for my brand. It was hard to see as they were facing us, and Junior said simply to walk the horses slowly toward the cattle. If the cattle started away, we turned away and stopped. It went on like this for about 10 minutes, until we spotted the steer. Junior made a big loop, then started his horse at a slow walk toward the group the steer was in. When the cattle realized what was happening they suddenly broke into a run, Junior spurred his horse and like an explosion the horse lunged for the steer as the loop shot from Juniors hand, and in a flash the steer was roped, the dally tied, and the horse was set. Nothing like a rodeo or a movie, where the cowboy chases the steer for several hundred yards. I think I was barely 18 at the time, but I realized I was in the presence of a master.

Junior is in his 80s now, I don't think he even owns a horse, and while still working on farms and ranches horses are giving way to portable corrals and 4 wheelers(quads in your language). I suppose at some point the animal rights groups will get both roping cattle and using horses to rope them banned, along with spurs. I will always be glad I at least caught a glimpse of the old ways, and I will always admire men like my grandfather and Junior, who made a living in a much simpler, yet much more demanding time.

Droving

kansasfarmer — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:03:00 GMT

Owd Freds very excellent blog about droving(I always love his blogs, I can "see" the past in British farming) inspired me to write one of my own about what I know of droving. Probably everyone knows about the old time cattle drives of the USA, many of the railheads were in Kansas, our state has quite a history of being a "happening place" from the pre-Civil war days of "bleeding Kansas" to the 1880s era of Dodge City and cattle drives. You will have to read the history books for those accounts, what I know firsthand comes from the 1980s to present, and from stories of my grandfathers from the 1920s-1940s.

A given on most cattle farms until recently was the cowhorse. Usually quarter horses, these ranged from well-trained horses that were nearly as smart as a person and with a bond between horse and rider that was unbreakable, to what Granddad described as "convicts" horses that were barely worth owning. Our family tradition from what I can gather tended much more toward the latter than the former, I cannot remember too many horses I could be proud of, and in the stories my dad tells about his dads and granddads various horses, the words "stupid", "slow", and "crazy" pop up with too much regularity for me to claim my family has a history of owning fine saddle horses.

But at least my family was honest in its assessment of our "horsepower". It is much sadder to witness someone who believes their horse is top dollar, when in fact it is not. As a young fellow of about 12 I was amazed when my father gave me a nice bay gelding I named "Thunder". He was actually a pretty good horse, although he got fat as a toad in the summer, so fat I could barely ride him, and he had a terrible problem with gas. Unless you galloped most of the time you would ride in a haze of foul smelling methane gas on windless days, luckily those are rare in Kansas. Riding along on Thunder at the end of a string of about 150 of the neighbors cattle one day I was listening to someone who considered himself to be a true cowboy telling my grandfather how much his horse was worth, how he had been offered $4000 and turned it down(this in the days when $1000 would buy a heckuva horse). Grandpa listened intently, looked at the dumpy little mare with the tall gangly elephant eared cowboy astride her and said rather bluntly "I believe that is where two fools met". Grandpa was a very hard man to impress.

Thunder gave me my early personal exposure to "cowboying". Being raised in the heart of cattle country in a family with a very long tradition of running a sizeable cattle herd(granddad, his father and two brothers ran between 1500 and 2000 head a year through the '30s and '40s before the brothers went their own way in life) one would believe we would be skilled cowboys, we were not. First of all, none of us could rope, a prerequisite to being a cowboy. Apparently my great grandfather could rope, and in a tradition our family has assumed since he was going to live forever nobody else needed to learn how. Grandfather told of his father once roping a massive Holstein cow on the run, she was so big when she hit the end of the rope as the horse set its feet, the back saddle strap broke, launching my great grandfather skyward, landing 40 some feet ahead of the cow, knocking him unconscious. This was in the 1940s, as far as I know, only twice since has any member of my family actually roped something from the back of a horse..once in the mid 1970s dad managed to rope a big heifer and she promptly broke the rope when the horse set, and I once roped a calf, but he was standing still.

For most of the time I can remember, granddad had a horse named "Levi". I rode Levi only rarely, and always came away with the notion it would be easier to chase the cattle on foot. Generally, you had to spur Levi constantly to get him to move, but after about an hour or two of working cattle, Levi would get tired, bored or both and toss Grandpa off and go home. Many a day you could see my grandpa hoofing it on foot down the road, with spurs on, and come to the gate of the horse pasture and find Levi saddled, waiting patiently at the gate to get in. Most farmers would have sent Levi to the glue factory, but he actually stayed on the farm until he died at 33. Dad preferred horses with a little more fire. I can honestly say dad never owned a slow horse, it was a real thrill to take a gallop on the two I remember, Pepper and Gene, but it was a little hard to get them stopped. Pepper was the smartest horse we ever had, Gene the most expensive with the most volatile temper. Any little thing would set Gene off, he threw me twice, once I landed on one knee, spent over a year hobbling around after that, and the other time landed head first, it is a miracle I wasn't paralyzed.

Before dad bought Gene, he belonged to some neighbors who eventually sold out. These neighbors were great friends of ours and our two families hayed, silaged, and moved cattle together. Exactly 26 years ago in December of 1983 during a brutal cold snap, Grandpa decided to take about 200 head of steers to a feedlot, of course it couldn't wait until warmer weather. We set out one morning in temperatures of about 4F to gather these cattle from 4 different pastures and drive them about 3 miles to a set of pens, where the trucks would pick them up. Grandpa operated on the theory if you could get almost all the cattle, that was good enough but our neighbor "Butch" was a little harder to please, he felt a successful gathering ended up clearing all the cattle out of a pasture. In the farthest west pasture 2 out of 70 were determined to give us the slip. My uncle and Butch set off after one, Butch's hired man(on Gene) and I (on Thunder) took after the other. The snow had blown all the gullies and draws level, you could barely tell where they were. Gene, hard headed as ever, raced across the snowy landscape. Raymond saw a dip ahead and pulled back hard on the reins bellowing "whoa" as loud as he could, Gene charged forward, in typical Gene fashion, hitting the draw and going into the deep snow head first, Raymond was launched as if from a catapult and tumbled 30 or 40 feet ahead of Gene. As Gene clammered to get out of the deep drift an enraged Raymond got back on his feet, charged into the drift, rared back and punched Gene in the nose, exclaiming as he did "Dammit when I say whoa, I mean whoa". He remounted and screamed to me not to just sit there watching, to get after the steer, as if I could ever catch it now. The two of us tore down through some trees, where we found Butch and my uncle had roped the steer they were after, and thrown it and tied it down (Butch and Raymond actually could rope), Butch remounted and the three of us galloped up out of the draw after the remaining steer, to find grandpa standing on the hood of his pickup waving his arms back and forth and yelling "we've got enough, let those two go to hell".....

to be continued.

Christmas on the combine?

kansasfarmer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:29:00 GMT

Well, I can't claim to be in the best mood as Christmas approaches. I have always been pretty open on FWi about some of my misadventures, but I have to admit I have been holding out on all of you. I had a nasty combine accident the day after Thanksgiving.

I was giving my 4 year old niece a ride on the combine, cutting some of her grandfathers soybeans. We were turning around at the end, waving at my sister-in-law so she could get a good picture. I hit one of the seemingly 10 million little washes throughout our fields from all the heavy rains of 2009, and heard a sound like a rifle shot in the cab. The header went smack onto the ground. Alarmed, I ejected myself fairly rapidly from said combine, and was at first confused, thinking I had broken an axle, because the machine was sitting on the drive wheels. Upon closer inspection from myself, my father, my brother, and my 2 nieces(whilst their mother continued to snap photos) it was revealed that the combine had broken in half, right where it connects to the front axle housing.

I have been quite careful with my language around the next generation, but swear words erupted from me as though my mouth were the opening of a hot soda can. Mixed in with the swear words were dollar estimates of what this was going to cost me, most of those directed at my father. At some point in this tirade, I noted my sister-in-law was still taking pictures. I snarled to my brother "tell Melinda to quit taking pictures, she is starting to **** me off".

The next morning, we had a big family breakfast, where I was chastised by Melinda...."those pictures didn't make that one bit more expensive, they didn't change anything, you didn't have to be a jerk about it"...to which I replied "it's a good thing you live in Nebraska".

I had called a couple of local "machinery surgeons" to size up the situation, one an excellent mechanic, the other an excellent welder. We were blessed with one of the nicest days of the fall, it was about 65F. Upon arrival the welder crawled under the machine and commented "I've seen worse". For nearly 7 hours we ran chains and boomers back and forth, had porta powers and jacks everywhere. No matter what we did we couldn't line things up, then, as if by magic, suddenly everything went back together, and after about an hour of welding, we were solid again. It was dark, but I fired up the machine and everything seemed to be in working order...seemed to be.

40 acres of soybeans later, I could see alot of beans on the ground. I had sheared off two augers in the auger bed, and bent alot of the sheet metal that held the bearings. Parts were ordered, then it got really cold and caring for livestock took over. With some luck, the combine might be back to working order by the end of this week.

80 acres to go now. Many of my neighbors are finished, and the stress is getting to me. I combined on Thanksgiving, the question now is, will I combine on Christmas, or will I possibly be done. Stay tuned.

The practical man is superior.

kansasfarmer — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:00:00 GMT

I must first say this is not an attempt by me to be disrespectful toward Motley, but his blog "Is the practical man superior" demanded a response I felt. In it, Motley asserts that to many on this forum and in the farming community, "education and thinking is of no value". I don't believe that is true. What I do believe is true is most of us who are practical have learned long ago that people with great educations and who are big thinkers, yet have no practical experience or common sense, tend to be completely useless.

Exactly 20 years ago I was a young college student(you would say university) just completing my 4 year degree. I had spent 3 and a half years listening to some very educated professors work to instill in me the very latest in teaching techniques, discipline theories, etc. I was sent out to student teach for a semester,and at the very first teachers meeting when asked my opinion on something I cannot remember, was immediately told by the principal, "you are in the real world now, forget all the crap those high and mighty professors have taught you, it won't work here" upon hearing my answer. Some years later, my position in life had changed some, I was now a farmer and a member of the school board(in the USA public schools in all communities are run by elected school boards) and I had come to realize that the principals words were very true, the folks in academia lived in sort of a haze of their own superiority, much of what they were teaching potential teachers was exactly as he had described it, crap. Time after time we would hire a teacher with fantastic grades and who gave the right answers to all the interview questions, then once on the job found they had no common sense, they were not practical. This culminated with our hiring of a Superintendant with a PhD. He certainly was educated and intelligent, with a remarkable air of class about him. Quite likeable. The seven of us patted each other on the backs for getting such a find to come to our small farming town. It didn't take long at all to discover while he had a very long list of academic accomplishments, his lack of skill in the real world was going to be his downfall. He called the Sheriff when a school bus encountered cattle out on the road, perhaps the educated thing to do, but in a farming community where 4 of the 7 board members were farmers, not terribly practical, at least for someone who hoped to remain employed by the taxpayers of that school district(the appropriate thing would have been to notify the farmer personally). He dogged the bus drivers(part time employees) about their attire, one worked in the oil field as his real job, and consequently on the evening route showed up rather greasy. Bus drivers are hard to find, and the pay is not enough to live off of, yet no one could get it through our educated idiots head that if the driver had to choose between the oil field and the bus driving job, he would pick the oil field, and we would be without a driver. Several times, he directly disobeyed the BOE because we did not follow his advice, knowing we were the folks who would have the say over his retention or dismissal. Finally, after a year and a half, when he knew he was on thin ice with us, he demanded a $10000 pay raise....guess what happened?? He soon found himself elsewhere.

It isn't just farmers who know that you must be practical when dealing with life. For some reason, many people who get an education and excel feel the "common folk" have nothing to add to any conversation intellectually. Add a little power to that, such as a government title, and without common sense things get stupid fast. Kansas is around 86000 square miles, at least 80000 of that is protected by volunteer fire departments, many of the trucks are actually leased for $1 from the government, and overseen by the Kansas forestry division. Several years ago a new director was bestowed on the KFS, and he was very high minded in his thinking. He sent out a decree that no longer would anyone be allowed to ride on the outside of the trucks on platforms when fighting range fires. All platforms were to be removed, or the trucks would be seized on January 1st. "Do not try to be sneaky" the letter went on to say. Like many, I responded with an angry email about the difficulties of dragging hose on foot several miles in a grassfire. His response to me was he didn't doubt for a minute it was "easier to ride, but it is safer and better for you to walk" to which I replied "fat chance of getting many people to leave their jobs to walk up and down hills in the smoke, as far as being safer, far more will die of heart attacks then will ever be put in danger riding on the front". Of course, he was overruled, but in a last swipe at us commoners sent out a letter dropping the demand, but asserting that "he was still right". .

Motley asserts that agriculture is in trouble because not enough young people enter, and little investment in R and D. This to me is an abrupt shift in the theme of his blog, and I am not sure where practical thinking is tied into that thought. I will agree that is a problem worldwide, but disagree that farmers being slow to change is the root of all of agricultures problems. The problem with farming worldwide is we have so little control over our own destiny. Regulations are drafted and crafted with no regard to how they will work in the real world, usually by people with no working knowledge of farming. By far though the biggest hurdle farming faces is we are told what we will get for our products, and what we will pay for our inputs, and if those prices do not allow us to make a profit, we are told it is our fault and we must change. That puts many or all of us in an impossible situation, and farming becomes a war of attrition. The problem with that is, if prices get so bad farmers actually stop producing in droves, it will lead to food shortages, and the public doesn't want that either.

Farmers do a good job on the whole, they usually adopt new practices as quickly as is practical for their operations. Profitability is the key, and we have no control over the open markets. More young people would be drawn to agriculture if there was more economic reward to be had, and the amount of money to start wasn't so daunting. Finally, the practical man is superior in every way to the fellow who has a degree a mile long, and no real world experience beyond creating his own theories. Our world would not be in the shape it is today of more common sense folks with dirt under their fingernails and a strong sense of ethics had been running things, and the elite had spent their time playing golf and reading essays.

The trial of Cutlets Carr

kansasfarmer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:47:00 GMT

It takes my copy of Farmers Weekly about the same time to cross the Atlantic as it did my great great great grandparents, 10-14 days, so this evening I have been digesting the November 13th copy. Stephen Carr and I evidently think along the same wavelength, because much of what he wrote and is considering has been on my mind for several weeks, ever since a book called "Eating Animals" has entered into my awareness.

I have not read this book, but have followed with a mixture of interest and horror various reviews of it on the Huffington Post. The comments that inevitably follow the reviews are depressing to say the least, because it becomes so clear how little the public knows about farming of any kind. The assertion that animals are "pumped full of hormones and antibiotics" is completely false, but never the less accepted as fact by the readership of the Huff Post. The "don't eat animals" movement has moved far beyond the idea it is wrong to eat animals. Now, it isn't just wrong to eat animals because they are living beings, now it is wrong because animal agriculture supposedly is killing the planet, something I rather doubt. Growing corn(maize) evidently is as well. In fact, nearly everything farmers do is bad for the planet......the armchair quarterbacks of farming sound this alarm daily. One would halfway expect the crowd at a cattle auction to resemble a group of barbarians or mutant zombies, intent on eating the brains of the elite.

The way I see it, cattle, sheep and pigs have been around for centuries. Much of the land in the world is not fit to be tilled. As far as I know, all of my ancestors for quite some time have eaten meat and used milk products, if it shortened their lives it wasn't by much, 3 of my grandparents lived to be 93, one lived to be 80. None of my great grandparents died before the age of 72, several lived into their 80s and 2 into their 90s. For all the harm we as farmers do, and for all the poison we spread to grow food, lifespans are increasing.

Somewhere along the way, alot of common sense has disappeared in the population of the developed world. Suddenly, a cow eating grass and belching happily, as cows have done since cows were invented, is a menace to the planet. Forget the subdivisions, space shuttle(it gasses off alot of pollution). Forget the grain used to make beer and pet food. Forget the land used for golf courses and football fields, shopping malls and airport runways. Forget the fact farmers worldwide are struggling with prices at or below the cost of production to feed 6 billion+ people. Lets all follow the lead of a few actors, authors and a handful of scientists who I expect are very smart but have never farmed and let's damn livestock farming as the biggest menace to mankind since old Adolph Hitler first drew a crowd. While we are at it, let's drag crop farming around by the nose for good measure, those darned farmers, poisoning all of us with herbicides and insecticides and chemical fertilizers just to make....a PROFIT of all things, who do those farmers think they are, thinking growing food is important enough to garner a living wage.

So, on one hand, organic farming is the darling of the save the earth crowd. Perhaps they know something I don't, but from my farming experience I know all crops need N, P, and K. If you aren't going to use chemical fertilizer, manure seems to be one of the best sources of it I know, and it takes alot of it to replace commercial N, P, and K. But what does the save the earth crowd want to do?? Put livestock farming in the same category as selling cocaine to children. I wonder if Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson considered that when he declared one day last week "thank a farmer day"???

Cutlets Carr pointed out in his trial that 60% of British ag land is in grass, and much of that is unsuitable for anything but grass. You can apply that same logic to much of the world, the 1800 acres of grass my cattle run on could never be plowed, it could never grow anything but grass. The truth of it is, raising livestock has been part of humankind for centuries. Meat has been part of our diet for centuries. It has only been in the last few years that meat has become the supreme threat to the planet. I think this is just fad, albeit a dangerous one especially when coupled with the "can't you all just farm organically" mindset. Take away animal agriculture and you render millions of acres that have been producing protein for people more or less useless. Take away their manure and your remove what is arguably the best organic fertilizer there is. You can't feed over 6 billion people on pipedreams and theories, but you probably can cause enough damage to agriculture with irresponsible policies brought about by misinformation spewed by people who have never milked a cow or plowed a furrow to bring on a man made famine. Maybe just every once in a while actors, politicians and musicians ought to ask the real experts on food production their opinion....hey, what a novel idea, lets ask a FARMER about growing food.

A challenging fall harvest.

kansasfarmer — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:22:00 GMT

My initial predictions on the eve of our dry full moon of a weather pattern change were perhaps a bit premature. It is true we did get one week of dry weather, enough for harvest to get going full tilt, but as soon as we got to day 8, we slipped back into our wet pattern. The frustration amongst the farmers in my area is very evident. Cell phones buzz back and forth all day long with neighbors asking, "when do you think you will try cutting?" or, "are you going to try today?". In my immediate location, none of us have drying capability beyond fans, so moisture is a huge problem for us. With short days and cool temps, mother nature is not proving to be a very effective dryer.

The full week we did get was weather we usually get 30-45 days of in September and October, but so far have had for a total of 10 or 11 days this fall. Again talking about my immediate area, no one I know of has storage enough for all our crop,so our elevator is the focal point of activity this time of year. With the forecast of rain for last Sunday, the combines rolled as late as possible last Saturday night, which actually was not very late, about 8pm. I would have liked to have had the capability to take a picture Saturday night as the trucks rolled in to dump their final loads under a clear bright starlit sky on an unusually warm November night, where you could still be in shirtsleeves and be comfortable.

On Sunday morning the rain had not materialized, while greasing the combine I noticed thick black smoke coming from the vicinity of one of my closest neighbors homes across the section. I got in the pickup to investigate as I did not have my pager and as soon as I was underway Mrs. KF called me on her way home from church to tell me the fire trucks were headed toward our house. Knowing then the black smoke I was seeing was not just some brush pile or trash fire, I sped toward the road, meeting the first fire truck at the intersection. Our neighbors detached garage was on fire. He happens to live just on the other side of the line that divides fire districts, and while our station is 3 miles from his home and the other is 8, they were dispatched first, but arrived 5 minutes after our trucks did. There wasn't much left to save, we did keep it from spreading, and after about 2 hours I was able to eat lunch and combine for a few hours. Monday dawned cloudy, and the soybeans were tough, but I crawled through while listening to my combine groan, cutting very slow about 1.7 to 2 mph. Monday night we got a slow half inch, and have sat still since because we have had no sunshine. There is an outside chance of cutting late tomorrow and Saturday, then rain and maybe snow forecast for the weekend.

Looks more and more like harvest for me will go till Christmas, when you combine for 10-12 hours a week, you don't get much done.

The bottle calf

kansasfarmer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:16:00 GMT

I noticed after posting the last blog a couple comments regarding the blog before about the bottle calf. It turned out he was a twin. I kept him at home until the next morning, then hauled him back to the pasture. None of the cows had paid him any mind whatsoever the previous evening as he bawled his head off, but that morning he set back to raising cane as soon as we got into the pasture, and the cow came straight to the trailer and let him suck. I tagged him with a different color tag so I could pick him out quickly, and all is now fine. I am at 53 on my fall calves now, with 44 left to go.

Insomnia

kansasfarmer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:40:00 GMT

Everyone excels at a few things in life, when it comes to eating and sleeping I am usually in top form. Only occasionally do I suffer from insomnia. I am suffering from it right now. Generally speaking, I have two forms of true insomnia, worrying and going to bed too early, this bout can be attributed to the latter. I was absolutely whipped last night and went to bed at 9pm. Generally when that happens I wake up at 2am, true to form I was wide eyed precisely at 2 this morning. I am a 7 hour man minimum, if I don't get 7 hours of sleep I am not worth anything, knowing that I tried for an hour to go back to sleep. Not a chance. Never mind the fact after lunch I can fall asleep at the drop of the hat, in bed in the dark no matter what I did, not a hint of drowsiness. So, knowing full well I will suffer later today, I got up and turned on the TV, and logged onto the net. All the things one can learn in the middle of the night. RFD TV has your Country Channel programming on in the wee hours of the morning here, I learned about the Ryedale show 2008, and Open Farm Sunday. At the moment, a very pleasant woman is peeling a pear on CC TV. On the internet at this early hour I learn Farmers Weekly will be late courtesy of a postal strike(given our current atmosphere of cost cutting and the criticism of our post office if things are at all the same over the Atlantic I would think striking not to be a very prudent move on the part of the employees of Royal Mail) and that the arctic ice will be totally gone in 20 years time, more cause for alarm over global warming as our crops stand barely ripening in the field while our temps are 20F below normal highs. Now, the pleasant woman on the TV is mixing rolled oats with the pears, and making a "flapjack" topping, I presume she is making a UK version of a cobbler of sorts, given the fact I am not giving her my undivided attention I would not be able to recreate this dish for Mrs. KF, if not for the fact I am recording it.

I have also been able to catch the early weather forecast, cloudy today, fog right now, clearing for Friday and Saturday but rain again Saturday night. It seems unlikely the combine will move much this weekend, that might lead to the worrying type of insomnia, I honestly am surprised that hasn't set in already. We have now moved onto Horse and Country TV from the UK, lots of folks talking about horses, without a doubt that will put me back to sleep.

Some days you just want to throw up your hands and walk away.

kansasfarmer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:10:00 GMT

Ever have one of those really disgusting days? I know anyone who farms has. Mine was yesterday. Driving down the road to check a fence(I had noted a large fresh cowpie in the road the evening before) I was greeted with a number of my replacement heifers standing in my soybean field. These were from a piece of land with good fence, luckily they readily followed the pickup back through the gate on the other side of the road. I assumed one of my watergaps had washed out in the previous rain and started for it, the cattle turned back toward the road and in just a short time a few were back in the road, upon closer inspection I learned the reason for this was a big bale of hay was sitting on my fence. My neighbor has been hauling bales across the river on a 2 ton truck,the steep incline shifts his load and he loses about 2 a day. One had landed square on the fence, flattening it. As luck would have it, my bale bed would not work because one of the hydraulic lines ruptured, prompting a near fire under the hood. I could not leave with the heifers standing ready for another escape, lucky we live in the cell phone era, so I called the neighbor to request aid removing his bale from my fence. He promptly responded with his brother, who I had not really visited with in years(they are a few years older than I am and we have known each other always.). While catching up, I couldn't help but notice how old they both looked, causing me to remember how old I am getting...that didn't help my mood. (They weren't having that great of a day either, the reason the brother was there was to investigate an accident the previous day involving their father and 3 power poles, took the electric company the better part of the day to sort things out).

During the escape, I had noted one cow that belonged across the river, and she had left the mob and crossed back over. No doubt, she was the layer of the cowpie in the road from the day previous. I forded the river and started along the fence back west, to discover the high water had dropped a tree on it, just big enough I could not remove it without cutting it up. I had thought about bringing the chainsaw, but for some reason did not, so I returned home to get the saw, and cut up the tree and mended the fence. I then headed to a 3rd pasture where I am calving heifers. 2 had calved, and had hidden the calves. I am worried about coyotes and searched with no luck for the calves. I decided to leave and come back later, so I went to the repair shop where my silage cutter was supposed to be getting the air conditioner fixed, and a new battery. As it turned out, the battery was not the problem, the starter was, and I also was suffering from a bad hydraulic pump. Happy to learn what I thought was a $250 trip was turning into a $1000 trip, I went back to the 3rd pasture to discover one of the very pregnant heifers had jumped the fence from one nice green field of brome, to another nice green field of brome she wasn't suppose to be in. She came to the gate, I opened the gate, she turned around and ran the other way, I followed in the pickup. Round and round she went, until finally rather than go through the gate she jumped over the fence, well, she gave it her best effort really, came up a little short and flattened that fence, so I fixed that, and still didn't find the two new calves.

So I went to the 4th pasture, where I have 55 fall calving cows. Standing in the middle of it was one new calf bawling his head off. I called the cows up and everyone ignored him, I piddled for an hour and a half trying to figure out what was going on. During that time no one showed the slightest interest in him, he was gaunt like he had never sucked, but his nose was wet and his tongue warm, and he had lots of energy. Not knowing what else to do, I loaded him up in the front of the pickup with me, I could not tie his feet because my rope was hanging in the barn. I drove home with him trying to figure a way out of the pickup cab, and urinating all over everything, which made me feel confident he had sucked. I don't have many orphan calves, and couldn't find my calf bottle, and my milk replacer was very old, so Amy and I jumped in the VW and headed for Emporia to buy a calf bottle and milk replacer(by now it is 7pm), I figured it was a good excuse to take her out to supper(might be dinner in the city, but it is supper to us). I ordered something new, which I rarely do, and hated it. Returned home, fed the calf after the usual ritual that goes on with trying to start a calf on the bottle, and went to bed. I guess days like that make us really appreciate the good days, but when you really look at it, I am doing what I like, and nothing really terrible happened....so, it wasn't that bad of a day after all.

The new calf.

kansasfarmer — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:28:00 GMT

Fall calving is once again upon me. Time goes racing by, it seems the cows just went to grass, soon it will be time to bring them off of it. Each fall and each spring I calve between 10 and 15 heifers, over the years by selecting low birthweight Angus bulls I have pretty much bred most of the calving trouble out, and no longer bring my heifers into any kind of pen to calve. Still, I get a little nervous anytime I use a new bull, since these heifers are bred to a new bull I have paid somewhat closer attention. Sunday afternoon the first heifer calved unassisted, however she hid in a draw and it took about a half hour to find her. I was alarmed to see a big coyote about 15 feet from her and the new calf, patiently watching. I had my 7.62 rifle in the pickup, unloaded, and the coyote evaded me without me so much as getting off a shot. On Monday morning the heifer was back with the group, with no calf, and didn't seem overly interested in looking for a calf. I couldn't find the calf or any sign of it, and became concerned the coyote had returned for a nice beef supper. Tuesday I was relieved to find the calf flat to the ground hiding, when I tried to tag him he jumped up and ran like the devil was chasing him, straight toward a large blackberry thicket. Without slowing down, he leaped high in the air and plunged straight into it. Rather than back out, or turn around, the little dummy pressed forward....I was afraid he would get tangled in and die, so I went in after him, getting stuck by thorns about 1500 times it seemed. I could finally grab his rear leg and flip him around, back out we went, he much wiser than before with a very bloody nose. I was able to tag him then, and mopped the blood off my own arms where I had been pricked. Bottom line of it is, regardless of what the animal rights people think, we work very hard in animal agriculture, for some very ungrateful animals.

Cool nights slow crop developement.

kansasfarmer — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:25:00 GMT

It is the main story throughout much of the prime corn and soybean areas of the USA...cool almost cold weather slowing the development of a crop that in many cases had a slow start anyway due to late planting and cool wet weather to begin with. My own corn crop is not in any danger from frost, the only issue with it will be will all the rain cause the grain to sprout on the cob before it can be harvested, and harvest will be late, perhaps not starting before the middle of October on corn. The soybeans are loaded with blooms and pods, but seem to be at a standstill from lack of warm weather and sunshine. Sitting on the front porch yesterday evening with my wife enjoying the cool north breeze after an inch and a half rain I uttered what must have been a first for me during the first week of September...."what we need is 3 weeks of hot dry weather". If nothing changes there is every indication we will have a long and trying fall harvest, that will no doubt run nearly to Christmas for some.

I learned from both my father and my 7th grade Kansas history teacher that "the weather in Kansas goes from one extreme to the other". Perhaps that is our best hope, if we could go from a cool wet summer to a warm dry fall. That might be too much to ask, but why not hope for it.

Defeated

kansasfarmer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:52:00 GMT

We were completely and utterly defeated in our attempt to keep the emergency services funded at 2009 levels for 2010. The commisioners absolutely had their minds made up and would make no retreat in their budget cuts. Appears the waste of the road and bridge crew will continue as they were only cut 1%, whilst police, ambulance and fire were cut from 12% to 21%. Not a thing to do but throw them out next election, in the meantime I guess the public better hope we stay crime and fire free, and there is no need for rush trip to the hospital via ambulance. We (fire) discussed briefly simply not going to some fires, I doubt we will do that because of the trouble it will cause.

We want higher taxes.

kansasfarmer — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:01:00 GMT

First order of business today is to travel with 5 others to our county seat to plead for higher taxes. Yes, you read that right, I want higher taxes. In spite of reports our US economy is about to turn a corner and get out of recession, the newly printed county, city, and school district budgets say something completely different. Unlike the federal government, everything from the state of Kansas down has to run on a balanced budget. With no appetite to impose much of a tax increase on angry voters, budgets are being slashed all over the state, even with massive cuts, property tax rates are going up to make up for slumping revenues..

I hate paying property taxes ever since I built a new machine shed and was slapped with $1000 annual tax on it. I have gone through the formal protest appeal and was unsuccessful. I tend to believe our county has a good deal of waste in the road department they could cut. So, why am I upset with our county commisioners for trying to keep a lid on our mill levy?? Because like all good politicians, rather than cut where cuts need to be made, they cut where it will hurt the public the most, public safety, fire, ambulance, and police. Over the last 5 years 3 other times I have pleaded with them for higher funding for our fire department, pointing out each time that with all volunteer labor, the money spent for equipment and fuel pretty much all benefits the taxpayers directly. With nearly 600000 acres of tallgrass prairie in the county that is highly flammable for at least 6 months out of the year, you would tend to believe fire protection would be very important to our county leaders, however it is not, and never has been. Finally last year we were able to persuade them to put out a fire budget that was somewhere close to being realistic, now it has gone up in smoke, no pun intended.

Since today is the budget hearing, a time where as a rule taxpayers go to protest the taxes going up, we are going to protest that the levy must be higher to adequately fund the fire service(the total proposed for 2010 is $135000 as opposed to $173000 for 2009 to cover a county of about 1100 square miles). This position will not be popular with many of my neighbors, who wouldn't mind it if we still fought prairie fires with buckets and burlap sacks as long as they didn't have to help or pay taxes to support the effort. Having talked with all three commisioners on the phone Saturday night and heard their attitude about the matter, I can't say I am optimistic for a good result, but I feel we must try. It is rather insulting as far as I am concerned, to be on call 24 hours a day 365 days a year for volunteer service, and then have to take an entire morning to go beg for adequate funding for fuel, equipment and repairs. With 10 other department heads intent on chewing them out as well, by the time we speak the situation could well turn into a shouting match, I told the Sheriff I hoped he would not be forced to take me away to jail in handcuffs for disorderly conduct, he said not likely as his budget was cut $125000 and he also is furious. This is democracy in action though, thank goodness we live in a country where we do get a say, even if we often aren't happy with the results.

This is August???

kansasfarmer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:41:00 GMT

I feel like I have slipped into some alternate universe, or my farm has been magically moved to some other latitude or longitude, or altitude. It is the last week of August, rain is falling steadily. The forecast gives no temperatures above 80F for the next week. Our countryside that is normally dry and dusty this time of year is green and lush, our crops, planted as much as 6 weeks late, are excellent. In fact,other than the early rains the pushed planting back, this growing season can be described with one word, "perfect". Standing in a field of double crop soybeans earlier this evening I could hardly believe my eyes as I examined the newly forming pods. Many a year I have had first crop soybeans that did not look as good. Equally as hard to believe is the price of soybeans is excellent. I keep holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Most Augusts we suffer all afternoon and into the early evenings, it is not uncommon to see high 90s and low 100s clear past the first week of September. Hot dry southwest winds dry us to a crisp. It is with irony that I realize perhaps the one thing we lack to produce the crop of a lifetime has been heat units. It will be a race now for the soybean and grain sorghum crops to reach maturity before a frost. It appears we simply will not have any hot weather from here on out. Judging from the rain that is falling outside my window, I think I can safely say we now have enough moisture to finish us out, barring a massive shift in weather pattern that would lead us to a hot dry spell right at the end of summer.

I have seen sure things fall by the wayside before. I know we can still have a hail, I know we can have a killing frost as early as the end of September that would throw a wrench in the entire year. I know we can fight mud, even see the low lying areas flood. But this is kind of like dreaming about winning the lottery. While I know all the issues that can interfere, in my dreams I now see an October and November that are bright and sunny, with day after day of good combining weather. I have had more than enough busts over my years of farming, maybe 2009 is going to go down in the books as a record maker in a good way. All I know is I will breathe a huge sigh of relief, much bigger than usual, when the last soybeans tumble off of the truck in what will probably be mid to late November. Hopefully this Thanksgiving we will have much more than usual to be thankful for.

Changing weather.

kansasfarmer — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Sitting in the house today with the rain falling outside hard enough to take the satellite signal off the TV, I begin to wonder if perhaps there is something to all this climate change stuff we hear, and many don't believe. For the third summer in a row we have had ample rain, not just enough to get by, but enough for two or three normal summers. We have also had mild temperatures, with just the occasional bumping of the 100F mark, most days have been in the 80s or low 90s. This last winter was marked by wild temperature swings, as I commented on several times, where we might hit almost 70F at one point during a given week and by the end of that week see lows in the single digits Fahrenheit. In fact, one of the most surreal sights I have ever seen was ponds covered with ice thick enough it had to be chopped for the cattle to drink while the afternoon temperature soared into the 60s.

For the few hours it was not raining today I was outside repairing electric fence and checking cattle. Driving up a narrow lane to a pasture with the cool breeze coming through the window I was struggling to recall the hot dry Augusts we usually count on. The grass is lush and green, and my prediction last winter that we would not see grass this big again for 10 years has pretty much been proven wrong, once frost hits our hills and meadows will once again be covered with dry fuel a foot or two high ready to burn like gasoline given the first hot dry day.

I have posted over and over again how our weather has always been abrupt and extreme. I have heard all my life about the '26 flood, the '51 flood, the dirty 30s, the dry 50s, I recall the terrible drouth in '80 and the milder but still bad drouths of '83, '84, '91, 2000, and '06. Could it be sometimes we have a string of good years in a row and people just forget? Time will tell I guess what is really going on here. But from where I sit, if what I am seeing on my farm is a result of climate change, I guess I am pretty happy we are having it.

Amazing rain.

kansasfarmer — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:30:00 GMT

In the UK in August, you probably don't want rain. In Kansas on the 16th of August, when we could well be burned brown with cracks big enough to drop a hammer down, and temps over 100F, a day like today is amazing. Temps in the low 70s right now, an inch of rain in the gauge with rain forecast through Wednesday, what we call a million dollar rain might be a billion dollar rain with the price of soybeans as they are. The pastures and meadows are as lush and green as they would be the first of June. Even with my haying suffering, it is hard to be anything other than happy with the rain falling outside the window.

Wasn't so happy last night. It started to thunder while I was outside, Mrs. KF came out to tell me we had been paged to storm spot, storm headed straight at us with 60mph winds and hail an inch and a half in diameter. My storm spotting consisted of me driving to my farthest west field of soybeans and sitting in the pickup next to it, like a shepherd tending his flock. The air was dead still and heavy, the sky was black and green. The first hailstone hit the pickup and you could feel my heart sink....luckily, I only got a few stones, and the storm weakened to nearly nothing, I was afraid we wouldn't even get a rain to amount to anything, but that all changed this morning. Not much for me to complain about this morning.

DEFRA, FSA, ACRE, etc.

kansasfarmer — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:44:00 GMT

You have DEFRA, we have the FSA, that stands for Farm Service Agency, under the umbrella of the USDA, standing for the United States Department of Agriculture. Just as your government saw the need to change from the Min of Ag, we had to change from the ASCS, that is the Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service, to the FSA. Same office, same staff, same complicated procedures, just a nifty new name and a promise of more efficiency. Each year like sheep US farmers dutifully trek to their respective county FSA offices to report their crops and sign up for "the program". "The program" refers to whatever farm program we are under at the time. I farm in two counties, hence I get the added pleasure of visiting 2 offices. With the August 14th deadline to sign up for "the program" looming I managed to hit one county office Monday, and one this afternoon, and am proud to report all acres are duly accounted for for the 2009 crop year, and all landlord signatures have been gathered, I am in "the program" and all my acres are certified, meaning the FSA knows what was planted when on every arable acre I own or rent.

This year unlike years past, we had the option of signing into our old Direct payment system, or opting for the new ACRE system. ACRE stands for Average Crop Revenue Election, while the old program DCP stands for Direct and Counter-cyclical program. ( I seem to recall a certain FW writer complaining that ACRE was some sort of market distorting tool for US farmers, someone tell me if I am mistaken in this.) Upon arriving at my first office on Monday I was promptly handed a 14 page explanation of the differences between the two programs, in a last ditch effort by the FSA to explain their confusing programs to a rather simple farmboy such as myself. My mind was already made up, based on a very scientific approach. After several months of reading various sources of propaganda about both options and understanding little of what I read, I asked but one question...."how many farmers in the county have signed up for ACRE". The answer, none. Fair enough, what is good enough for everyone else is good enough for me, I will take the DCP. I posed the same question today, and got the answer of, "maybe one" again I signed into the DCP.

From time to time I read something in Farmers Weekly or some other source about how heavily subsidised we are in the USA, that is, what do you say, a bunch of tosh?? Straight from my 14 page explanation I can tell you a little about how we are subsidised. For instance, the 2009 target price for wheat is $3.92 cents per bushel, that is $146.34 per ton in your measuring system. The direct payment, ie the payment I get every year is .52 cents per bushel, or $19.41 per ton. It is figured by using a yield for each particular farm, generated by some voodoo system the FSA uses, based loosely on actual county historical yields. For the sake of ease, lets say my yield is 37 bpa, roughly a ton, and that actually is in the ball park for most of the farms. My guaranteed payment is then $19.24 per acre per year, on my wheat base acres. Each farm has a different crop base, again based on historical data for that farm. A 100 acre farm may have a 20 acre wheat base, a 15 acre grain sorghum base, a 10 acre corn base, maybe a 20 acre soybean base with perhaps a 1 or 2 acre barley and/or oat base from the old days when more of those grains were grown. Out of 100 arable acres, you may only have 60 or 70 acres drawing a direct payment, because the historical planted crops included some non-program crops. These payment are only for crop land, there is no payment for pasture, unless you have converted cropland to pasture and kept the reporting requirements up to date.

The next part of the equation is the Loan rate, for wheat $2.75 per bushel, about $101 per ton. This is the amount of money the government will actually loan you against your crop. In the old days(1980s) this was the way the US government got stuck with huge stock piles of grain, from farmers taking out loans and defaulting because the grain price was below the loan rate. In an effort to keep this from happening again, our government came up with a Loan Deficiency Payment, or LDP, this occurs when the cash price of grain fall below the loan rate, it is roughly the difference between loan rate and cash price. You can take the LDP at any time and retain ownership of the grain, but you cannot take a LDP after you have lost ownership. Along with this under the DCP is the possibility of a countercyclical payment, in the case of wheat the maximum is 65 cents a bushel, or $24.05 per ton. Rarely has the CC payment kicked in, the average price has to be low enough during the entire marketing year for a CC payment to be issued.

ACRE is intended to be a better option during low price years. This year does not appear to be one of those. Between a reluctance to take the 20% lower direct payment to enroll in ACRE along with high grain prices and a difficulty understanding the ACRE program it appears few American farmers will choose that option this year, but they still have the option to enroll in ACRE next crop year. For my part, I continue to get more and more confused, either as a result of old age, or more complicated government thinking, or maybe a little of both.

Cell phones.

kansasfarmer — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:52:00 GMT

I think cell phones have changed rural life more than any other invention of my lifetime. As a boy growing up, not only were there no cell phones, we didn't even have private lines, we had party lines, 8 houses to a line, that later shrank to 4 until I was about 15 or 16 when technology allowed each household a private line. There was quite a bit of temptation to eavesdrop on others during the party line days, and more than once news got out that the parties involved did not want out, often only half of it was true. From time to time the phone company sent round letters about privacy and the like, they didn't do any good. One of the oddities I remember about the party line was trying to ring someone on your line. You had to dial the number, then hang up, of course it rang in your house too. You just guessed how long it might take the party you were calling to answer, then you picked up, maybe they were there, maybe they weren't. The other thing that would happen is someone would leave their phone off the hook. When that happened, after a fashion the phone company had an automatic zinging sound that got louder and louder, if you happened within 5 feet of the phone you might hear it. After about 30 minutes of that, the entire line went dead, until the phone was hung up and reset.

Today, everybody has a phone. Kids have phones, grannies, every school bus driver, policeman, everybody. In a small town today, news travels like lightning. Lots of times it isn't any more accurate than it was in the old days of the 8 party lines. I live in a river valley about a mile wide, with two low water bridges between our town and about 2/3 of the land I operate. After a big rain, such as we had today, the river goes over the bridges, blocking our access to the outside world unless we take a very out of the way trip, driving about 6 miles west and south then back east and then north, to go a half mile east. With the high water we get limbs and entire trees blocking the bridges, until the county comes to remove them, sometimes several days later. The four families living in our valley often resort to clearing the bridges themselves, as I am the youngest that frequently now falls to me. I was pushing several medium sized trees off of the bridge this evening when my cell rang, my neighbor on the other side of the river rather excitedly told me he needed my help right away as his truck and sprayer were about to turn over...at least, that is what I thought he said. I told him I was on the tractor and it would take a bit to get there, he said to hurry. Fearing the worst and knowing the 3 mile trip by tractor would take a while(many of our tractors max out about 20) I began frantically punching numbers into the cell phone trying to rally other neighbors to the scene, only to find out I was still going to beat everyone else there.

As I neared his farm, the reality of the situation became more clear. He had what we call a blaster hooked to his tractor, that is a sprayer with one big nozzle and a blower that you use to spray, it blasts the spray out in one direction about 50 feet, it mounts on the 3 point. It appeared he had not pinned one link on the 3 point, and when he turned the corner out of his driveway, the sprayer came unhitched partially, and the 75 gallon tank full of spray was about to go over backwards, the road was blocked, and he was struggling to move the 700 and some odd pound load back forward and down to rehitch the linkage by hand with his wife. I used my tractor and loader and we managed to get things back together without dumping the spray. Then, I had to get busy and call back the several guys who thought John was in his pickup and it was about to turn over to tell them, I was wrong.

In spite of that, cell phones save more people every day I think than anything else around. Fires get reported faster, as do heart attacks and accidents. With the cell phone and internet, rural folks in the middle of nowhere are just as connected as city folks, and I think that is progress.

My day in court.

kansasfarmer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:00:00 GMT

After almost 2 years, my experience of being sued is over. I won, sort of. The issue for anyone who doesn't know involved a division fence between my home farm and the farm north of it. The "townies" who bought the farm to the north 30 years ago when my grandfather owned this farm set about immediately to build new fence around the rest of their farm, but always neglected the division fence, leaving grandpa and later on me to do 100% of the upkeep. For almost 15 years we had fought and bickered with the result being the same,they said they weren't doing any of the upkeep, and if I wanted a new fence I had to build it myself.

Kansas fence law is very clear in this case, both of us were responsible to maintain the division fence in equal shares. Their farm was pasture, they ran cattle on it for about 20 of the 30 years they owned it. However, they built a two wire fence about 150 yards to the north of the property line, avoiding the trees and obstacles nearer the actual division fence. A two wire fence is not a legal fence in Kansas, it wouldn't have mattered if it was, the fact still remains, adjoining landowners are both responsible to maintain a division fence. Of course, just because the law says it is so, that doesn't mean it is easy to get someone to act within the law, without spending a small fortune. To further complicate matters, because almost all property in Kansas is laid out on a grid based on 640 acre one mile squares and their fractional square and rectangular divisions into 160 and 80 acre tracts, about 500 feet of the property line ran through the river. The solution to this by previous owners many years ago was to put the east half of the division fence on the north side of the river bank, up high out of the flood plain, which is on the south side(my side). Another facet of this lawsuit was they wanted me to build a new division fence down the middle of a running river, something I consider to be impossible, their version was it was merely inconvenient to me, other than that they said there was no good reason the fence couldn't be built down the middle of the river. I guess I should back up and say that in the fall of 2006 I decided rather than continue to fight over the fence and have cattle out all of the time, I should just build the fence myself, and pay for it. I did just that using the standard practices we use here all of the time, I had a bulldozer clear the fenceline.

6 months later I got a demand letter asking for almost $40000 in damages, based on the trees lost and the cost of cleaning up the brush piles. My reply was the fence could not have been built without clearing the trees, and the brush piles could be burned easily enough. I thought that was the end of it, but shortly after my return from the UK in August of 2007 I was served with notice a suit had been filed, I spent 2 days the first week of December of 2008 in court, just last week I got the judgement.

The judge found in my favor. With regard to the east half of the fence the judge said "putting a tight five wire fence down through the channel of a running river is a practical impossibility in terms of keeping it from constantly washing out and coming apart", exactly what I had said. His ruling was the division fence is to be kept on the north side of the river, just as it should be. With regard to the value of the trees, their expert placed it at $9455 mine placed the value at $100. The judge agreed with my expert, the tree value was $100,but went on to say that was immaterial because the trees had to be removed anyway in order to build the fence. With regard to the brush piles the judge ruled they could be disposed of "by simply touching a match to the piles", nearly the exact words I used myself. The judge summed up the entire situation "the plaintiffs' failure to assist in fence maintainence was the genesis of the problem. Plaintiffs will not be awarded damages".

That is all fine and good, he awarded me half the costs of replacing the fence, and believe me winning a lawsuit against you for $40000 is better than losing one, but I am still left with court costs, thank goodness my lawyer/landlord/ good friend will have a good degree of mercy on me. What is too bad is how easy it is to be sued for doing your job by someone not doing theirs. They may not win, but they can sure cause alot of trouble.

Remarkably, yesterday I received an email from a lawyer in Wichita wanting a copy of my judgement ASAP. Seems she is defending a fire department against a $55000 suit brought because they were assisting on a controlled burn that got out of hand and burned up some cedar trees(most of us work every year to get rid of cedar trees). Seems the world is full of dummies willing to sue you. That trial starts today and is in front of a jury, it is slated to run all week. No wonder our nation is in so much financial trouble.

A fine way to go.

kansasfarmer — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:12:00 GMT

My life isn't always about farming, a glance at my gallery will tell you that. For about 16 years I have been an active member of what you would call the fire brigade. Aside from fires we work a wreck every once in a while, storm spot, and even once searched for a missing child. The latest addition to our equipment is a defib unit(can't spell the entire thing) to restart hearts. Since our ambulance is also volunteer, at times they cannot raise a crew, so the fire service is paged out to heart attack victims.

We can go for weeks without a call, today at about 5pm I went to a housefire, then as I watched the end of our 10:30 news tonight the page went out for a heart attack call. In small towns like ours you know nearly everyone, just some better than others, and this person I knew well, rather I knew his wife very well as she had been head cook at school both when I was in school, and on the school board, and had always been very kind to me. I raced down the gravel road to the blacktop fearing the worst. When I drove my pickup onto the green grass of their yard and saw our crew standing next to the porch, I knew one of two things had happened, either we were too late, or all was fine. My query of "how'd we do??" was met by a very subdued "we were too late". The 82 year old gentleman sat in a chair on his front porch, he did this each evening and watched the sun go down. His grief stricken wife next to him.

America gets a bad rap in the world, that we are greedy, self indulgent, uncaring. That is so far from the reality I grew up in and live now. Our small town is not perfect, but like the thousands of small towns across America, we pull together. Several folks from across the road had come running when they heard the wifes cries for help, and one of the men stood on the porch with his arms around her. The firemen assembled there had all gone to school when the wife had been a cook, and all of us thought the world of her. One by one we trudged up the steps and gave her a big hug and expressed our condolences. Knowing from firsthand experience how thankful you are at a time like this for support, I was still unsure of what to say, my first thought popped out.."I know it is a shock, but you have to admit, this is a fine way to go". His wife agreed, and through her tears smiled and said, "this is just the way he wanted it to be".

We stayed on this cool summer night until the mortician came. Carefully we helped remove him, then stayed for a while offering any help we could, until some family arrived. Whether or not this is appropriate to blog about I do not know, but it is on my mind right now as I have just arrived home, and I thought it worth sharing. When you think about America, perhaps after seeing something on the BBC about the excesses over here, pause and try to visualize a moonlit night in a rural Kansas town, with an elderly man on his front porch having left on his final journey, and a dozen townspeople comforting his shocked wife. That is the America so many of us live in.

Relief.

kansasfarmer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:07:00 GMT

I have a great feeling of relief tonight. Yesterday we finished seeding soybeans. Some were after wheat, some were for the first time, some were for the second time, but every acre we are going to plant is in the ground. Never in my life, not even last year which was plenty bad, has planting been this much of a headache. We are lucky though because I do not have to go very far north or east(about a mile north and 4 east) to get to a great swath of land that was hailed out, and had to be planted over, other than the wheat which was ruined. Some of our stands are less than ideal, I spent several hours yesterday evening with the drill patching in spots that had drowned out or washed out. We have several days of rain forecast, it would be nice to pick up an inch because the corn is already showing alot of stress.

Our temperatures and humidity last week were nearly unbearable. I spent the 4 days on the combine praying that the air conditioner didn't quit. One evening I drilled beans until 10:30 pm after I finished a field of wheat, when I got off the tractor the temp was 90F with a humidity of about 60 % and not a whiff of breeze, that is really miserable weather. Our days flirted with 100, but what made it so oppressive was the unbelievably high humidity. A cold front came through last Saturday and washed some of that out, gave us a half inch of rain, and cooled temps into the high 80s. Sunday felt so much better you just couldn't believe it.

The main task now is haying, I will not be turning a tap though for the next few days as we are celebrating my fathers July 1, 70th birthday Saturday evening in conjunction with the 4th, and then with a meal for many of his friends and cousins on Sunday. I will spend tomorrow trying to make the lawn and farmyard presentable, and Saturday night I will be the chef grilling ribeye steaks for our entire family. We hope to horrify vegetarians with our excessive meat consumption, and global warming zealots with the amount of smoke from both the grill and our fire works.

July 4th to me always is the halfway mark of summer time. Mrs. KF goes back to work in 30 days, from here on out rather than cussing rain we will more than likely be asking, "when will it rain??". Our hottest weather is ahead of us, and in 60 days time we may well turn from lush green to a dusky brownish green. July and August will now determine this crop, along with September, because everything is so late it will be especially vulnerable to frost. We need nearly a perfect 75 days to raise any crop at all, and history has proven there are very few perfect July and Augusts in Kansas.

I can't get a UK visa.

kansasfarmer — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Out of curiousity I took the online assessment a minute ago to see if I would qualify for a UK work visa. Mrs. KF and I both have university degrees, no criminal records, speak remarkably good English for foreigners, and are able to bring in excess of 3000 pounds of money with us, 3000 being the highest amount listed. At any rate, at the close of the online assessment I was greeted with, "Sorry Brian, you do not qualify". I am not knocking your nation, but I have to wonder what would make us good candidates to come to the UK, in the eyes of your government, for permanent residency.

It would be interesting if a couple of you over there gave our process a shot, just to see if you qualify.

100F should hasten harvest.

kansasfarmer — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Looks like a corner was turned this weekend. I got my gentle rain Saturday in 3 half inch increments, total of 1.5 inches. A neighbor got the 3 inches this time, however much of my area only got a half to three quarters. Much of the area ended up under tornado warnings Saturday, but most of the damage was at least 75 miles from my farm. The week ahead is to be very hot, highs brushing 100 if not getting there, with the heat index(a formula using humidity and temp to tell you why you feel so miserable) running 105 or better. For those of you not fortunate enough to have ever experienced 100F with a humidity around 40%, I can assure you there is nothing comfortable about it, and you have to hope for a nice wind to give you any degree of comfort. What couples with this is it usually won't drop below 70 or 75 at night, and the humidity runs up to 50%.

But, the hot weather should dry out our wheat, harvest has been dragging, I would hope to be in full swing by the end of the week, time will tell.