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Kansas Farm Journals by Deanna October first has arrived with beautiful weather and a gradual bursting of the colors of fall showing more with the dawning of each day. Early morning is a time for phone calls while folks know we’re in the house. We leave after breakfast to move equipment to the fields where work is planned for today. It’s cool enough this Monday morning for a jacket. It seems everything needs to be done at once. Soybeans are ready to harvest and some pods are popping the beans onto the ground. We’ve already cut the fields where milo (also called grain sorghum) was blown down. The stalks were weakened by the dry weather and high temperatures. The milo that’s standing good is dry, too. It’s also the right time to sow wheat for next summer’s harvest. Corn probably is ready to harvest, too, but will wait till the soybeans and milo are harvested. Mylan will unload the trucks that are full. A truck and grain buggy are loaded with the soybeans that were harvested on Saturday evening and there’s also a load of milo to be taken to town. Each load will be dumped into a pit at the grain elevator, then go to the bins for storage. After the first load of beans is unloaded, Mylan will take the empty truck back to the field and auger the beans from the grain buggy to the truck. A grain buggy is a big wagon we use to hold grain in the field. It’s hooked to a tractor to pull it.The tractor also provides power for the auger to move the grain onto the truck. When Dean goes back outside, it is to fill the grain drill with wheat and fertilizer. He’ll spend several hours this morning sowing wheat in a field right across the road from the farm place. The grain drill is divided into a compartment that holds the wheat seed and another for the fertilizer. We use dry fertilizer that is blended to provide the right food for the wheat as it sprouts and begins to grow. Another tractor is attached to a field cultivator. The driver is a retired neighbor of Mylan’s. Willard will prepare the seed bed in the field just ahead of the drill. A pleasant surprise arrives, heralded by the jingle
of dog tags. Mylan’s sister, Misty, stops by for a visit with her
black toy poodle, Hope. Misty
is a farm girl at heart, but a CPA (Certified Public Accountant)
by profession. She came back
for her nephew’s baptism. Dean
takes time to come in from the field for a hug from one of our favorite
people. Visiting time includes helping with preparation
of the We get a quick stop from the man who’s building new pasture fences for Mylan’s landlady. He suggests we just as well use shorter “T” posts. They are finding that ground is so hard and dry about 1 to 1 ½’ down, they are bending the steel posts as they drive them down. They’ve devised a pipe support to strengthen the posts. After the I have several jobs today. I applied for LDP’s on soybeans and then sold some. When the price is very low, there are payments to make up the difference between the cash price and the government established loan price. The price when I check today is $1.59 less than it was in l974 . . . kind of hard to make a living with prices for our grain lower than they were 22 years ago. In comparison, the price for gas in those years was about 30-40 cents a gallon! Other jobs today involved bookwork, paying bills and recording the scale tickets for each load of grain that is taken to town. The record keeping for grain is needed to help in tracking the number of bushels that are harvested from each field. Bean cutting is going pretty good . . . till the cutter bar picks up a stray piece of iron. Lost time to fix the sickle section and guard, then Dean is back into the combine. This evening’s meal is one that I plan to pack and take to the men, but then Willard calls on the radio that he’s finished with a field. I wait for him to bring the tractor and field cultivator home. He eats the field meal in the house. He needs to get back home to his place to feed and care for the horses he raises. Driving to the fields each day allows one to enjoy the reddening of sumac and the variety of colors of the trees getting dressed for fall. It’s gotten late enough that I can see a nearly full moon. Tomorrow night there’ll be a “harvest moon.” Good lights on the pickup truck allow me to see a deer cross the road just ahead of me! Sure glad I saw the deer in time to slow down. Nearly half of the accidents in our area are the result of deer coming suddenly across the road in front of the cars . . . sometimes just vehicle damage results. Other times there are injuries and even deaths caused. About this same place on the road yesterday morning Dean saw 14 wild turkeys when he was checking cattle before church. They didn’t seem to be bothered by him . . . he had to slow way down. Time enough to be sure of the count! They were still there when he came back toward home a little later. The gravel on the road provides the grit needed to help them digest their food. The seeds of the grain in the field and the grasses of the roadside provide good eating for them. Mylan finished unloading soybeans and brought the empty trucks back to the field. After Mylan eats, he unloads the grain buggy into a truck and drives it back to the place. Dean’s meal is followed by more equipment moving. He drove the 4-wheeler to the next field. That way he can drive it back to get a truck if he gets to start combining on the next patch. Another couple deer cross the drive just in front of us. On the way back to the combine, we checked grandson Alex’s pumpkin patch. We’re watching pumpkins for just enough color to pick them. The deer or raccoons seem to find them JUST before we do. Back home for me and time to finish up this
diary. The coolness of the
evening and growing dampness is making the bean stalks too tough
to cut off well. Dean is in
the house by about 10. It’s
time for us to wish you all a good evening from this north-central
Kansas farm, at a busy time of our year. |