Farm Friday - Crop Inspecting

Harvest time here is quickly approaching, but every year right before harvest, Tyler gets to work inspecting fields for the Kansas Crop Improvement Association.  He started doing it in 2002 after a friend in town no long had the time to do it.  This year Tyler will insect over 4,000 acres of certified wheat that will be used for seed, as well as some fields of native grasses.  But before I get ahead of myself, I will talk a little about the wheat seed.

There are hundreds of different varieties of wheat grown.  Different areas of the world plant different varieties since some have qualities that help to produce better yields for their area.  Plus new varieties are constantly being created by crossing certain varieties.  Companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are working to develop these new varieties and the process takes over 10 years.  The seed that comes directly from the companies is called foundation.  After it is planted and harvested, it is called registered seed and after that is planted and harvested, it is called certified.  The acres Tyler inspects is certified, so the farmer planted registered seed and is harvesting it as certified seed.  Tyler's job is to inspect the field for two main problems.  The first is varietal purity which means he is checking that the wheat is maintaining its specific qualities and has not been planted with another variety.  Secondly he is checking to make sure there are no noxious weeds, like bindweed, being grown in the field, since not all the weed seed may come out when the seed is cleaned after harvest.  Tyler walks through the whole field, end to end, and in different directions to get a thorough look at the field.  The biggest field he has inspected this year has been 320 acres, which is a square 1/2 mile.

Here is a good picture of what the wheat looked like at the beginning of the week.  The wheat has to loose its green and turn to gold before it is ready to be harvested.  The super hot weather we have been having is helping to turn the wheat and Tyler is talking about trying to cut a sample tomorrow to see if it is dry enough to cut.  Harvest is coming soon.

Farm Friday - Long Hours

Growing up I remember in the stories about farmers. They always seem to wake-up with the rooster crowing at the crack of dawn and get to work on the many activities of the day and would work all day until sundown.  But I guess I always thought that was an exaggeration. My dad worked a regular 40hr a week job and would sometimes have to put in extra hours, but not often.  He would come home at 5:30 to eat dinner with us and enjoy the rest of the night with us.  So that was the schedule I had hoped my husband would have too, but that is definitely not the schedule Tyler keeps. 

    A normal day for Tyler starts at, well around dawn.  This time of year it is around six o'clock, but in the winter time it gets pushed back some.  I wanted to try and get a picture of him leaving this morning, but with having to feed the baby at five, I was still sleeping at 6:30 when he left.  He diligently comes in every morning and gives me a kiss goodbye before he leaves, even though some days I don't even wake-up to notice.  I have yet to become the great farm wife who gets up early enough to make breakfast, so most mornings he eats cereal or his favorite, poptarts.  He stays at the farm and does his work throughout the day until he is finished.  Right now they are so busy, that he does not come home until after seven, closer to eight, nine o'clock.  It makes for a very long day for both of us and the girls and I eat dinner without him on most nights, but we let Eve stay up just late enough to see him before she is off to bed.  And when he comes home there is some work that still needs to be done.  He has to maintain records of their activities and the financial activities of the farm, which take up more time almost everyday.  With such a busy daily schedule, you would hope the weekend would be a time to rest and recooperate, but not the case with farming.  The cattle still need to be tended to and there is still more work to get done Tyler works every Saturday too just like any other day of the week.  During harvest and planting times he even works on some Sundays too, although we try hard to make that the Lord's day and a day of rest and most Sundays he deserves a long nap.

    So, as you can see, a farmer, and I believe most farmers, work extremely long, hard hours.  It can be trying on us all because he is sacrificing his time for the farm, but in a way so are we to have him gone from us all the time.  It was quite a transition for me when we got married to not have him come home from work when I was getting done and to be a newlywed in a new town with many lonely nights.  But I have learned to accept the hours because I know it is necessary for him to get to do the thing he loves, which is to have our farm and be able to support our family with it.  It's the sacrifice many farmers and their families take on to not only enjoy the farm but its lifestyle.

Farm Friday - Planting Milo

It's planting time here in Kansas for fall crops.  Some people plant corn, some soybeans, and some, like us, plant milo.  Milo is the common name for grain sorghum.  Its used for feed for cattle and pigs, although I have heard stories down at the elevator of families eating it like popcorn many years ago.  Tyler has spent the last few days planing our acres.  I have to admit that in order to right this blog, I had to learn about how we plant our milo.  It is one of those things that I always kinda knew how it was done but not exactly how and I enjoy that I am learning new farm things too in this blog.

     The planter implement is attached to the back of our tractor.   There are eight boxes to hold the seed for the eight rows it plants at each time.  We plant 30,000 seeds/acre which is two and a half pounds/acres.  That's an amazing 12,600 seeds/pound.  There are two disks in the front that cut a slot in the ground that the seed will drop into.  Our seed is planted using no tillage which means the seed is planted directing in the previous crops stubble.  Plates spin and drop the seed at a determined rate.  Then two closing wheels follow and close up the slot so that the seed is planted around an inch deep.  We plant at a speed of about twelve acres/hour but it takes longer, as the planter boxes have to be reloaded with the seed.

   While the planter is planting the seed, it is also applying liquid fertilizer.  The liquid fertilizer is applied two inches to the one side of the seed.  We use a mixture of nitrogen and phosphorus which feed the seeds and helps them grow.  This makes our milo not organic because all fertilizers, like miracle grow are not considered organic.

    So now we have to wait around 105 days until it is time to harvest our milo.

Farm Friday - Wide Open Spaces

When I met my husband Tyler I had never been to Kansas, never even to really anything close.  I would listen to the Dixie Chicks song "Wide Open Spaces" and dream about what Kansas would be like when I finally got to see it and I was definitely way off.  Farms in the area of PA where I am from are a few hundred acres and out here they are more than a few thousand acres. Out here you can see for miles and miles, without trees, or hills, or houses to impede your views.  I just did not really know how vast this area really is.  I tried to do my best to capture the vastness in pictures, but it is so hard to really understand that you can stand in one spot and look around and see miles in any direction.  The picture above is what you can see when you turn down the road to the farm.  Just drive for approximately seven miles and you will be there.

This is a picture looking back towards town.  You can see the highway on the right and in the middle you can see the grain elevator.  The grain elevator is actually seven miles away in this picture and you have no trouble seeing it.

I snapped this picture a little further down the road.  On the left hand side you can see a grain elevator on the horizon.  That elevator is about six miles west and seven miles north from where I took this picture.  The grain elevator you can see on the right (slightly behind the tree) is approx. three miles east and seven miles north.  The distance between the two elevators is over nine miles and yet from here I can see them both and fit them both in one normal size picture (just a little cropped).  Tyler even says that sometimes on a very clear day, you can even see the grain elevator that's almost twenty miles north.

It continues to amaze me how far I can see as I drive through Kansas and how you can leave one town and not get to another for over miles and miles.  The vastness of the prairie is something you almost need to see to believe. 

Farm Friday - Doctoring Cattle

As parents, we are responsible for the health and well-being of our two children.  On our farm, we are responsible for the lives of over 500 animals who also rely on us for some of the same needs.  Food, water, safety, and their health are needs that we meet for our animals everyday they are under our care.  We take these responsibilities very seriously.  Today's Farm Friday is focused on how we take care of our sick animals.  We do use anti-biotics on our animals when it is necessary.  We feel it is better to treat our animals than to let them suffer from a treatable condition and the meat from the animal is still safe to eat.  We eat it too. 

So the first step is to identify the sick animal.  Some of the symptoms we look for are excessive slobbering and/or snot, limping, bloating, excessive panting, or if the cattle are lethargic.  If any of the cattle show these symptoms, they are separated from the rest of the herd and brought into the corals for closer examination.  There are some symptoms, like a lump in their jaw, that we know right away we can not treat and will require a trip to the veterinarian.  If they do not have any of these symptoms than we continue with our evaluation by taking a rectal temp (sorry no picture of that, haha).  A regular temp. is between 100 - 102.5 degrees and if it is higher than that, than an infection is present.  Some of the common ailments our cattle have are conjunctivitis (Pink Eye), Bovine Respiratory Disease, or Bovine Virus Diarrhea.  These conditions are treatable with anti-biotics that we use as directed by our veterinarian.  We only ever give the amount as prescribed by our vet to insure the animal is getting proper care.

Once we determine that medication is needed, the animals are brought through cattle panels into a squeeze shoot.  This helps to keep the animal contained so we can do the procedures on it and neither us nor the animal is harmed.  The animal gets the anti-biotics through a shot.  Some also receive a vitamin injection (like when we take vitamins) to help them receive extra nutrition to help fight off the infection.  None of our cattle ever receive steroids.  Most only need medication for a few days and are able to get healthy and regain the herd. 
Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments section and we will try to get you an answer.  Have a great Friday.

Farm Friday - 3i Farm Show

Yesterday, we all headed out to the 3i Farm Show.  It is the biggest free show  in the state of Kansas and it can be very overwhelming your first time there.  There are buildings full of exhibitors showcasing new farm technologies and other products.  But the big part of the show takes place outside spread over 10 acres.  There you can see all the newest tractors and combines, all the newest trucks and cars, lots of cattle guards, gates, etc, and lots of farm stuff in between.  I admit that I don't know what half the stuff is that we walk by, but at least I have learned a lot from my first one 5 years ago. 

One of the highlights for Eve is getting to go in all and sit on all the farm equipment, especially the John Deere stuff (we are green people).  Here is a picture of Eve and Tyler in the cab of a combine that Tyler wishes we could afford to own.  And above she is getting an early start on learning how to operate a lawn mower.

She even got me in the action by hoping on the back of an atv with her.

One of the vendors even had cattle on hand to help demonstrate their products.

And Daphne had gotten shots earlier in the morning and this is how she spent our whole time there.

It was a breezy fun afternoon, walking around, seeing all the new stuff and spending time together.

Farm Friday - Grain Elevator

Grain Elevators like this one are an iconic part of the Kansas landscape.  They are in every small town and sometimes now are the only thing left operating after a town's residents have all moved away.  Until I moved to Kansas I didn't really know anything about grain elevators.  I didn't know that the middle school I went to was a block away from one (Moyer and Son in Souderton) or that I walked past one everyday in college on my way to class(until Tyler visited and told us what it was).  The Rockingham County Elevator is actually the reason for all the train traffic through JMU and why I was sometimes late to class.  But I did get a crash course in grain elevators when we moved back to Tyler's home town and his family helped me get a job at our local elevator (and I still work part-time there).  The first day I walked in there I couldn't identify have of the grain the elevator took in or had any idea how it worked.  Now its almost been 7 years since I started there and I have learned so much and can't wait to share.

Wooden Elevators like the one in the picture began being built in the 1900s (this one was built in the 1920s and is not longer operational).   They could hold about 20,000 bushels of grain and were not intended for long term storage.  The elevator's main job was to elevate the grain high enough to fill railroad cars.  Concrete elevators began being built to hold larger amounts of grain and have the ability to store the grain throughout the year.  The concrete elevator shown at the top was first built in 1947 and had four additions built on in 1950, 1953, 1957, and 1982.  It is 140 feet to the top and 102 feet to the top of the bins and holds approx. 848,000 bushels.  The elevator takes in wheat, corn, soybeans, and milo (grain sorghum).

So now lets talk about how the elevator operates.  The first step in taking in grain is weighing of trucks.  At this elevator the truck drives onto the scale where it is weighed and probed to get a sample.  The sample is used to determine the quality of the grain as well as how wet the grain is.  Then the grain is dumped out of the trucks into the pits and reweighed to determine the amount of grain the truck had held.   In the picture you can see the scale (it has to be long enough for a semi-truck) and the two dumps.  The windowed part is where the workers weigh the truck and do testing on the samples.

Next, the grain has to be moved up the elevator.  This is done by cups that travel up the elevator leg and at this elevator there is about 700 cups doing the job.  Once at the top, the grain is separated into each bin.  To get the grain down the long corridor, the grain is placed on a conveyor belt and travels down to the tripper.  The tripper is moved by hand to the opening of the bin and deposits the grain down into the bin.  The grain is stored there until it is ready to be loaded out onto trucks or railroad cars.  It is loaded out by another conveyor belt underneath the bin that moves the grain to the loading area.  The pictures show the belt and the one at the bottom is a better view of the tripper.  You can also see the different bin openings on the ground on the hallway.

So there is some of the basics of how a grain elevator works.  Please check back tomorrow for some funny pictures of my adventure taking Eve with me to the top of the elevator to get these pictures.

Farming Friday - Our Farm

So Today is the first addition of Farm Friday, a time exclusively focused on farm facts and issues.  What would be the best topic for our first Friday?  Our farm.  We would like to share with you the facts about our farm, so you can see what we do on our farm and our role in agriculture.  Since I am definitly not the expert on the nitty-gritty of our operation, I asked Tyler to write this post so it can be as exact as possible.  I asked him to try to put it in words we can all understand because agriculture, like any other specialty, can have words and phrases that only those in that field understand.  So take it away Tyler.

We along with Tyler’s parents, and Tyler’s grandparents operate a 6000 acre (a mile by mile square is 640 acres, so over 9 square miles) diversified farm (we raise more than one product on our farm) in Western Kansas about 15 miles from the nearest town. We grow winter wheat, milo, and forage sorghum and raise feeder cattle. We raise wheat using conventional tillage. Conventional tillage is using a tractor and tillage tool to turn the soil like a hoe or rototiller. We also use no-till (the soil is not tilled) to grow wheat and milo. In no-till, herbicides are used to control weeds instead of tillage.

Most winter wheat is milled into flour used to bake the bread that is in our kitchens. Winter wheat is planted in the fall using a drill, goes dormant during the winter (like lawns in colder climates), and is harvested in the early summer using a combine. Kansas is the number one wheat producing state in the United States. There is also spring wheat (planted in the spring and harvested in the fall) that is grown in northern areas of North America. Spring wheat is milled into flour that is used mainly in baked goods.  A picture of the wheat at harvest time is at the top of the blog, and here is a picture of the wheat as it is right now.

Milo is planted in the spring using a planter and harvested in the fall using a combine. It is grown predominately in from Western Texas up into the Nebraska panhandle. It is used predominately for feeding cattle in the areas where it is grown. It is also used in the production of fuel ethanol. Kansas is the lead milo producing state in the United States.

We raise feeder cattle on the 1800 acres of pasture in our operation. Pasture is land in native grass production. Native grass is the grass that was growing on the land before humans started tilling the land. Feeder cattle is the stage after a calf is weaned and removed from its mother before it goes to a feedlot then on to slaughter then on to our tables. Cattle are typically weaned when they are approximately a year old. We purchase our feeder cattle in the fall after wheat planting and feed the cattle grain during the winter while the pasture is dormant. The cattle then harvest the grass during the spring and summer while it is growing and then are sold and enter a feedlot where they are prepared for slaughter on a grain diet. This occurs in July through September. Kansas is also the leader in the United States in beef production.  Here are just a few of our hundreds of heifers (female cattle) doing what cattle do best, grazing (the way cattle eat the grass).

We use the forage sorghum as a feed for the cattle during the winter. The forage sorghum is similar to milo as it is planted in the spring; however, it is harvested in late summer. It is planted using a drill, but is harvested with a swather which cuts the forage sorghum and lays it on the ground in a windrow to dry. The windrow is then picked up with a baler after it has dried. We use a round baler which rolls the forage sorghum up into a sphere 5 feet tall by 6 feet wide. These bales are then stored until they are fed to the cattle during the winter.

So that's a short summary of our farm and there will be many more posts on the daily ins and outs.  While we were out taking some pictures, Eve and I got to watch Tyler doctor a heifer so I'm sure that will be a post to come soon.  If there is anything that is not clear, please leave a comment (please don't let that be the only reason to leave a comment) and we will try to explain it in greater detail in a later post.  And please become a follower (in the right column) so you can keep up with us.

First Post

Welcome to my new blog.  I am so excited to finally get it off the ground.  It has definitly been something I have been wanting to do and planning to do in my head for almost a year now and well things always seem to get in the way of making it exactly the way I want it.  Well, it will probably never be exactly how I want it and with two growing girls, its best to just kick it off now and make it be a work in progress.


There are a few reasons why I am starting this blog.  One of the main reasons is to show what life is like as a farmers wife here in rural Kansas.  When I met Tyler and starting dating, I was a suburban Philadelphia girl going to college in VA.  One of the first things we talked about was his life in Western Kansas.  How could we not when it was his passion and dream to go back and farm with his family one day.  He put it out there that if this relationship was going somewhere, it was going to be in KS because thats where he was planning to be the rest of his life after college.  At 20, I thought I was up to following my heart whereever it went and living in rural America as a farmer's wife would be a fun adventure. And no, I had really no experience with farms, agriculture or anything like that.  I had never even really heard country music.  So after we were married we moved to a small town (about 1500 people) and we started our new life and I had culture shock right away.  There were things to get used to and times where I sat wondering what people were talking about and times I felt out of place.  But Tyler helped me get a job at the local grain elevator and my education on agriculture and rural life really took off.  I have come to learn so many new things and have grown to enjoy my life here, although I miss many East coast and PA things, especially my family, all the time.  And now I hope in this blog to share some of the things I have learned.  There are lots of things in rural America and agriculture that I wish I had known and am glad to have that knowledge now and I hope that I can help some people learn some of these things too.  So stay tuned for Farming Friday when I will talk about issues and other topics related to our farm and other agriculture issues.  This Friday will be about our wheat and cattle operation and I am excited that me and Tyler are working on that.  And with all the big issues happening, I'm sure there will be more than just Friday posting.


I also hope to share some of the joys and struggles of living in rural America, from the lack of shopping opprotunities to the local county fairs.  There are good times happening out here.


Plus, as a part-time working, mostly stay at home mom, how could I have a blog without talking about my kids and the issues I am working through as a mom.  And as a mom, how could I not dote on my two little blessings, they enrich my life everyday.  They inspire me, make me laugh, sometimes cry, bring my great joy and challenge me.  And as a homemaker, I will share some of the success and failures as I try to take care of them and Tyler.


And above all, even in the little things, we as a Christian family, hope that our blog shows God's hand in the life of 4 imperfect people.  He has provided us with acres of blessings and we are still discovering new ones every day.


Thank you so much for checking my blog out.  Please become a follower, add it to your blog roll, and/or make a comment.  I am looking forward to wherever this blog is going.