Harvest Shots

Finally some long awaited harvest shots.

The Combine- What we use to cut down the wheat and take the wheat berries from the heads.

Upclose of the combine header

Unloading the wheat into the grain cart, which will take the wheat to the trucks that we take the grain to the elevator.

Eve helping Tyler drive the tractor which pulls the grain cart.

Eve in the field

Family Picture minus Daphne in the tractor cab.  Unfortunately Daphne is too young to be in the dust of the field.

God has really blessed us this year with a safe and bountiful harvest.  And I think we are finally recovering from all the hard work and long days of harvest.

Harvest Time

Harvest Time is Here in Kansas.  Lots of Posts about it to come!

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. 

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.