Grain bin view

Tonight while transferring pictures from my phone to computer I found some that I had taken in early July during wheat harvest for a blog post.

I was sitting on top of a grain bin that we were filling with wheat during harvest looking around. It had been quite awhile since I had sat up there and took in the view. I appologize for the poor pictures, phone cameras just don't work like top end telephoto cameras.


This is the bin that we were filling with wheat, we raise Hard Red Winter Wheat the kind used for bread baking.



The truck sitting at the auger that is used to convey the grain to the bin.


This is looking to the southeast, the trees on the hill is where my great great grandparents put down roots after stints in different parts of the county. There is a mix of crop land and native range land in this stretch of a mile and half between the bin and old farmstead.


Looking to the east. If you look past the field of brome hay to the wheat field with Marestail is growing in fairly evenly spaced rows. This field had been in soybeans planted in 30 inch row spacing.


Looking to the south. More of the brome hay field that great granddad established when he bought this parcel in the 50's, I think that is what I was told. Where it looks brown past the hay field is seeded to grain sorghum. The green to the right of it is soybeans. Trees line a creek that winds through a pasture that is still in native prairie grass.

 
This is looking directly to the northeast. The tin shed was a hog barn that is now just storage. The open sided shed was originally used to store small square bales of hay, now the livestock trailer, a wheat truck, and a couple of headers for the combines reside there. The field behind had been hog pens off and on most of my childhood, at one time much of the area where we were unloading the truck was also a hog pens.

2012 year in review

I can't believe half of January has already passed. I had been wanting to do some kind of a 2012 wrap up and couldn't think of anything until after I uploaded photos to my flickr account. I have a decent amount of photos uploaded from over the past few years, many of the photos have descriptions of what is taking place. It dawned on me I could pick and choose various photos from through out the year, I wasn't as camera happy as in the past partially because much of it will not vary a great deal from year to year.

We have a small herd of spring calving cows. I was surprised at how many we had the first month, 80%. Then calving slowed to a crawl. I think the heat during the summer before combined with them raising their first calf and were still growing may have had some influence on it. This happens to be the only white faced calf born this year.

I spent a good portion of my spring seeding corn, sunflowers, soybeans and grain sorghum. I didn't have a picture of planting this year so I used this one from my archives.

Wheat harvest came unusually early this year, but this yields were respectable considering the weather turned hot and dry during grain fill. We started harvest the end of May, where normally we may start June 17th. As what normally happens I spent the first few days finishing sorghum planting. We had started planting early this year and I finished planting this year earlier and finished earlier than normal.

The bare strip is from having half the planter turned off while planting sorghum the previous year. Soybeans struggled to sprout and grow here until after a good rain. I was surprised while checking planting depth during planting that we actually had some soil moisture in the planting zone where there was even a minimal amount of residue covering the soil.

This how I spent most of wheat harvest and the rest of the summer irrigating corn and soybeans. We had replaced an irrigation system last spring and this is the first irrigation pass with it.

On June 16th we had a group of farmers from Bulgaria visit the farm. It was an interesting visit, once they became comfortable with us the ones that could speak English visited with us. They were interested in how we raise Sunflowers, but farmers will be farmers no matter where they are from the conversation turned to farming practices in general and all the crops we raise. This is the only photo I took was this one of them looking over my dad's older Corvette. The International Grains Program at Kansas State University coordinated the tour.

We did our normal double crop planting of soybeans and sunflowers this summer after wheat harvest. We planted more double crop soybeans this past summer than previously and less sunflowers.

We acquired a few fall calving cows last spring. They had started calving a couple of weeks earlier than expected. These cows came from Harms Plainview Ranch so they should genetically exceed most commercial cows.

This fall during wheat seeding we had a group of wheat flour millers from Japan visit. They were interested in hard white wheat and how we raise it. My dad is explaining to them how the drill puts seed and fertilizer in the soil in this picture. This was also coordinated with International Grains Program at Kansas State University and
Farmer Direct Foods was also involved. My mom is a heckuva a home baker and made a loaf of bread with both red, the more common breadwheat, and white twisted together which gave them a comparison of the two types of bread.

Milo, also known as grain sorghum, harvest was fair to good, I experimented with more hybrids this year because of an old reliable being unavailable. Planting date and the years how many years the field hand been in a no till cropping system. This happens to be a variety that has yellow grain and is known for high yield potential. I chose this variety because it was optimum planting time and I thought we would have timely August rain. We didn't get the amount of rain in August that I was expecting, but the heavy wheat stubble and quality soil held the water and allowed us to have a good crop on this field. The grain heads weren't anything besides ordinary, but it came into the combine really good.

A field of double crop soybeans during harvest. They ranged anywhere from fair to bad, in some fields the real advantage for having them was establishing some bacteria in the soil that helps the plant extract nitrogen from air.

My oldest son with a curious calf. I picked up my son after school to help me 
cube the cows, cubes are a high protein feed used to supplement cattle. While 
the cows were crowding around the piles of cubes, the calves were loitering 
around the pickup. This guy walked up to my son and started nibbling on his 
coat and checking him out. The calf had done this for a few minutes before I 
took the picture. This set of cows seem to be very calm and gentle which is 
great for having him out with me learning about cattle. Since he is all about 
animals and livestock, I want him to learn all he can about working with 
them properly.

Our irrigated corn was good despite the hot weather last summer. We did have a hybrid that suffered from sun scald thankfully I didn't have alot of that one. Last year I had tried quite a few new hybrids and only planted the ones that performed the best and didn't experiment with anything new this year. The irrigated soybeans were good to great, a couple of fields had damage from a corn herbicide.

News from the Good Old Days

I came across this in last week's, July 21, 2011, Minneapolis Messenger's. The Wells News column has a segment titled News from the good old days. They reprint local news stories from the 1930's. With the drought conditions in the southern plains that are reaching into many areas of Kansas in addition to the heat wave we're currently enduring this article about the local wheat harvest in 1937 perked my interest.

Originally published July 1, 1937 on the front page of the Minneapolis Messenger. "Elevators Are Making Record Runs - Wheat is pouring into the market as fast as it can be handled. While Ottawa County was expecting a good crop, no one was expecting as big as a crop as in evidence already. In the eastern part of the state the yield proved a big disappointment. Black rust seems to be the cause of smaller yields. Wheat was bringing $1.03 a bushel and Wednesday morning it was bringing $1.10 a bushel. (1935 and 36 were very dry years and very little wheat was raised. Some brave farmers planted in the fall not knowing if they would get a crop.)" Currently wheat is selling for $7.45 a bushel, it wasn't very many years ago that $4.00 a bushel was considered a very good price.

I'm interested in how the depression and dust bowl effected my local area. My granddad grew up in this era and has passed on a few stories to me about it.While he is still around I need to record more of his stories of farm life in the 30's and 40's.

Report from the farm

Things have been mighty hectic down on the farm since the last time I took time to write. All the spring seeded crops are in, wheat harvest went pretty smooth, and I was able to plant 300 acres of sunflowers in wheat stubble. We did have a hail storm move through at the beginning of wheat harvest, it stripped the leaves off of the corn and knocked wheat out of the heads. Our non irrigated corn which is planted earlier still shows signs of stripped leaves, but the irrigated corn that was still going through a growth spurt and has nice healthy leaves.


This was taken the day after the hail storm. This field had the least damage done to it, but it was still sickening to look at it that morning.

Our wheat yields were average to slightly better. Quality was high, both test weight and protein content was high this year. The standardized weight for wheat is 60 pounds a bushel for number 1 wheat, nearly every load of our wheat had a test weight of 6o or better with many loads 61.5 or better. The protein content of our wheat ranged from 10.5% to 12% with most of it in the 11% range. This is a very good protein content for our region, in the lower rainfall areas of western Kansas.


I took this right before wheat harvest. The darker stripes are a different variety of wheat. I had just a little bit left in the seeder and it mixed with the other seed.


This is the same field at harvest, facing a different direction in this photo. Dad is cutting the terraces, terraces are ridges put made in fields to redirect water to reduce soil erosion. The headers, the part on the front that cuts off the crop, doesn't flex so we have to harvest with the terraces.

I've added various pictures and descriptions to my Flickr account. My photos that I use from my blog are there along with many that I haven't used. The photos range from basic information to more technical issues.

Spring '11 update

We've been through some extreme weather the past month. There were records set for high temperatures and then records were set for low high temperatures a few days later. When we started planting corn in early April we had idea soil moisture, but after a few hot and windy days the top soil dried out for proper seed germination on our irrigated land and required an irrigation application, except for one field that had raised wheat and then had a sunflower crop on it last year. Wheat stubble served as a blanket to protect the soil from the wind and hot temperatures that helped dry out the other fields. The dry conditions extended into soybean planting up to last week, knowing there was a strong chance of rain for multiple days in the forecast and field conditions were favorable I planted late into the night on both Monday and Tuesday night. From Wednesday through Friday we had up to 4 inches of rain. On this past Monday I was able to resume planting soybeans and Tuesday I had enough time to load the planter with seed before it rained again. We have about 300 acres of soybeans left to seed, which should take about 3.5 days including moving the tractor and planter half way across the county.

One of the rainy day projects was selecting a bull for the cow herd. My youngest son and I traveled to Wolf Creek Angus Ranch to look over their selection of bulls. We got there just as a storm was starting to bear down so we sat in their office looking over the performance data on thier remaining bulls and visited. After the storm ended we walked through the bulls and made the selection. Shortly after leaving the ranch I noticed water running off of fields and filling ditches, I was surprised because they only had 1/4 inch of rain at the ranch. About half way home we drove into a driving rain where we could barely see the road so we pulled into a tractor dealership at a little town, little man only gets excited over John Deere equipment and this wasn't a Deere dealership.

These rains and cooler temperatures will help our wheat fill. Our later seeded wheat will benefit the most, which appears to be a week or so later in maturity even though it may have been seeded several weeks later.

Today I discovered these videos from King Arthur Flour. We are grower owners of a cooperative flour mill that sells hard white wheat flour to King Arthur Flour. We're proud to work with a group of people such as King Arthur Flour that are as passionate about the flour they sell as we are about the wheat we raise.

Update from Flyover Country

Things are starting to get busy down on the farm. We're about to kick off spring planting that rolls right up to the start of wheat harvest followed by what seems like an intense irrigation season, I really appreciate rain then. After a month or so of doing other things the cycle will repeat with fall harvest and wheat seeding that will generally doesn't end until Thanksgiving.

I'm also involved with Progressive Farmer/DTN's View from the Cab column this growing season which should be interesting. Thursday I had a photographer follow me around for part of the day. It was a drizzly slow day at the farm so there wasn't much farming taking place, he plans to return in a couple of weeks and we should be planting irrigated corn then and running pretty hard.

All of our wheat has been fertilized and the fields that needed a herbicide to control weeds have been treated. In the past few weeks our wheat has had a tremendous growth and looks good. The wheat still has a long ways to go, so I won't get to optimistic yet and weather dictates if we have an average or great crop this year.

We've started spraying fields that will go to spring planted crops: corn, soybeans, sunflowers and grain sorghum. We intend to start planting corn on fields without irrigation next week. We plant these fields first and use shorter maturity varieties trying to time the plant's water needs to our normal weather patterns. We've had non irrigated corn yield as low as 20 and as high as 140 bushels an acre. We plant and fertilize for a 100 bushel an acre yield so 140 is maximizing all the inputs, seed and plant nutrients.

This year we will be planting with a tractor equipped with gps guided auto steer. I used it last fall for seeding wheat and was very impressed with how it works , but with spring planting maintaining distance between rows of plants is far more critical for optimum plant growth and development and ease of harvest than it is for wheat.

This past week we reentered the cattle industry with the purchase of 26 heifer cow calf pairs. A heifer is a female bovine that hasn't had a calf, but in this case we use the term heifer to represent her age and the fact she needs some special attention in terms of nutrition. They aren't what I consider fancy cows, but I consider them slightly above average. These girls are very calm and walked away from me then stopped and looked at me when I walked through them the other night. Temperment was a strong selling point for us, a cow that takes her calf and runs to the other end of the pasture will be dangerous to both us and other cattle when they need to be handled and their calves usually have a slower gains weight gains and under utilize natural resources. We intend to own the calves until they reach slaughter weight. I

It'll be great to share with everyone how the cattle business works and all the options cattlemen have available and why we make the choices that we do. The livestock sector is a real passion of mine, but we had to step away to refocus on our cropping system and determine how to incorporate cattle on the farm without sacrificing either them or crops.

Wheat update

Our wheat started breaking dormancy the last couple of weeks. Things are looking good right now, but it still has a long time to go before we harvest in late June.


This field is wheat seeded directly into last year's wheat stubble. Second year of wheat is the best yielding wheat in our rotation.



This field was planted in soybean stubble. The bigger pieces of crop residue is from the previous grain sorghum crop. Our stand tends to be a little thin after soybeans, some of it is from the heavy trash, there is some thoughts floating around glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, this will need more investigation.


This field was seeded into sunflower stubble. We seem to get real good stands and yields will rival wheat planted into wheat stubble following sunflowers. This field happens to be Hard White Winter Wheat, it's more of a specialty wheat that we only plant a few acres of. The more common wheat for my area is Hard Red Winter Wheat. The only real noticeable difference in growing white wheat is slightly less disease resistance and slightly more head sprout in a very wet summer. I prefer the taste of white wheat, it seems to be a little sweeter taste.

We started fertilizing our wheat. We use a liquid fertilizer solution that is 28% nitrogen. We are trying to fertilize it as late as we can, but before the plant needs it and becomes deficient. By late fertilizing we are attempting to add as much protein to grain as possible, our area isn't known for producing high protein wheat and is mixed with wheat from western Kansas. If we let our wheat become deficient then we lose yield potential because the plant will only make the amount of grain that it can support even if nutrients are provided later when it needs them.

My wife and I drove home from Florida after attending the Commodity Classic going through Texas north of Dallas, the middle of Oklahoma and Kansas the wheat looked pretty decent at highway speed or faster. The western part of Kansas is going to have a poor crop due to not having enough top soil moisture last fall at seeding time. The poorer wheat will be destroyed, some never emerged last fall and I've heard reports that many fields weren't even seeded due to lack of rain.

New Markets??

As I look forward to the long hours and near madness of seeding wheat starting this week, I also think about how to market it. With much debate and interest in local/regional food the question I find myself asking is, "How can I take advantage of marketing it to bakeries and restaurants in Kansas City and Wichita as flour?"

Normally we sell all of it, except for a small portion that's kept for seed, as a commodity to either our local grain elevator, which in turns markets it to a multinational grain company, or we haul it directly to the multinational ourselves. Multinational companies offer many advantages such as a variety of forward contracts that allow us to capture potentially favorable prices and peace of mind of getting paid timely .

On the other hand a small flour mill offers the opportunity to market the grain as a finished product to bakeries, restaurants, and the public that want closer contact to the farmers that produced it. A small flour mill is another opportunity to add a few needed jobs in rural America, it won't provide enough jobs to stop the out migration though. The potential downside is a small mill could be slow paying and lack the economies of scale for longevity even when charging a premium price.

Shepard's Grain is an excellent example of a group of farmers in the Pacific Northwest working with an ADM flour mill to develop flour products to their specifications and then marketing the flour to bakeries, delis and other commercial wheat flour users. Using a cost plus pricing system creates a very transparent pricing scheme and rely on farmer owners to help with promotion allowing end users to meet the farmer owners. Mid-scale food value chains case study: Shepherd’s Grain gives a detailed look at how Shepard's Grain works.