President's Project: To Make the Best Better!

 

I think I've dotted all my Is and crossed all my Ts now. On March 11, I installed my friend, Millie, as the next president of the Kansas Master Farm Homemakers Guild. And with that installation, I finished five years serving as an officer in the organization. (Randy finished up five years as an officer with Kansas Master Farmers.) Last week, I completed paperwork and wrote letters and thank you notes to end my term.

On the women's side, tradition has it that the outgoing president gets to choose a President's Project. Members - and others - are invited to contribute to a project of her choosing. 

I contacted Kansas 4-H Foundation Director Jake Worcester prior to the meeting for some ideas. I told him that 4-H foods and nutrition, as well as photography, were among my passions. After talking with Kansas 4-H state leaders, he suggested a project to help honor foods and nutrition exhibitors at the Kansas State Fair.

Foods and nutrition 4-H members have their food exhibits judged early on at the fair. There's only room for a few of those exhibits. And even those exhibits don't look too tasty by the end of the 10-day fair. 

The digital display board will be something similar to this.

My President's Project will help provide a digital display board in Centennial Hall on the Kansas State Fairgrounds where photos of the 4-Hers and their foods can be displayed during the duration of the state fair. It's a pilot project. If this display board works well, Kansas 4-H may add similar displays to honor other projects at the fair. 

Several of my fellow Kansas Master Farm Homemakers contributed to the digital display board. I know there are others of my friends whose roots in the 4-H program go just as deep as mine. If you'd like to contribute to the KMFHG President's Project, you may send a check made out to the Kansas 4-H Foundation with your contribution to:

 

Kansas 4-H Foundation

1680 Charles Pl., Suite 100

Manhattan, KS 66502

Please make a note that it should go toward the KMFHG President's Project.

The project was the perfect choice for me. 

I was a foods and nutrition member back in the 1960s & '70s in Pratt County.

 From the very first year of Jill's 4-H career, foods and nutrition was a favorite project.

Jill's first food demonstration on making a Raggedy Ann Salad

Foods demonstrations and exhibits were central to Jill's 4-H experience.  Jill and her friend, Holly, made dozens of pretzels one year. They made dozens of dinner rolls another. And they earned the right to take both those demonstrations to regional club day and the state fair.

Jill's friend, Holly, & Jill making pretzels for a demonstration

 

By the time she was veteran 4-Her, Jill was teaching others, and serving as a foods superintendent at the county fair.

She was the state award winner in the 4-H Foods and Nutrition Project her senior year.  

Last year, Kinley had her first experience as a foods and nutrition exhibitor at the Shawnee County Fair. She also gave her first foods talk for county club day, though it was a different experience having to do it on Zoom.

But this winter, she got to give her first in-person foods demonstration, making Energy Bites. She got a blue ribbon.

Brooke just began her 4-H journey last fall. But her very first Show and Tell at county club day was on foods and nutrition and My Plate.

The girls are the fourth generation in our family to be involved in the Kansas 4-H program. My parents were members back in the 1940s in Pratt County. Both were members of the Lincoln Bluebirds 4-H Club in Pratt County, the club that my siblings and I later joined. (During my time in the club, we consolidated with another club and became the Lincoln Climbers.)

Bob & Janis Moore - Pratt County Fair service award recipients

 in 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

All four of their children and all seven of their grandchildren were part of the 4-H program, two in Pratt County in the same club their grandparents attended, two in Stafford County and three in Clay County. Now that continues for five of their 10 great-grandchildren in Clay and Shawnee Counties.

Randy's parents were leaders in the Stafford County 4-H program, too, though we're not sure they were 4-H members themselves. For a dozen years, Randy & I were community leaders of the Corn Valley 4-H Club, the same club Randy was a part of back when he took his first cow to the fair. I'm still the 4-H foods superintendent at the Stafford County Fair.

In 2006, we celebrated 100 years of Kansas 4-H. The youth program has been part of the national landscape since 1902.

The 4-H website says:

The 4-H idea is simple: help young people and their families gain the skills they need to be proactive forces in their communities and develop ideas for a more innovative economy. That idea was the catalyst to begin the 4-H movement, and those values continue today.

The 4-H program continues to MAKE THE BEST BETTER!

I'm thankful that it's been all that and more for my family ... and will continue to be.

Kinley & Eric before their shift at the pancake feed. As Uncle Brent says, 4-H t-shirts haven't evolved a lot from the '90s.

***

A little more history: The Kansas Master Farmer award was started in 1927, by then-Kansas Farmer publisher Sen. Arthur Capper. A year later, The Farmer’s Wife magazine, which is no longer in print, started the Master Farm Homemaker Guild, with help from Kansas State University. More than 400 farm couples have been recognized and have become members of the Kansas Master Farmer Association and the Kansas Master Farm Homemakers Guild. The goal was to publicly honor excellence in farming, homemaking, farm living and rural citizenship. In 1953, Kansas State University Cooperative Extension Service took on the duty of the selection process and coordination of the annual honor banquet. Today, K-State Research and Extension and Kansas Farmer magazine co-sponsor the program, with financial support from Kansas Farm Bureau, Frontier Farm Credit and American AgCredit.

Pretty on the Inside?

 

I think wheat fields are beautiful at pretty much every stage - from bright green sprout to those iconic "amber waves of grain" waving in the Kansas wind. 

However, to me, corn is not a "looker" at harvest time. But we always hope it will be pretty on the inside. (I wrote about ugly corn syndrome in June. Evidently it didn't get a complex because it did OK in the end.) 

Last Friday, we completed our annual quest to discover the "inner beauty" of the crop.

We are relative newcomers to corn and have only had it in our crop rotation since 2013. (Randy has been producing alfalfa for 50 years and wheat for almost that long.) Our 99 bushels/acre 2021 corn crop was almost identical to the verdict last year:

2021 - 99 bu/acre

2020 - 98 bu/acre

2019 - 66.6 bu/acre

2018 - 82 bu/acre 

2017 - 43.6 bu/acre

2016 - 71 bu/acre

2015 - 43.88 bu/acre

2014 - 108 bu/acre

2013 - 57 bu/acre (This was the first year we added corn into the crop rotation).

We began corn harvest on Thursday, September 2. There was an abrupt pause the next day, when it was foggy and humid. Friday night (September 3), we got 3 inches of rain at our house, which stopped corn harvest in its tracks. While the corn was dry earlier, we couldn't get over the ground with the combine again until Wednesday, September 8. We stayed home from the K-State football home opener September 11 to cut corn. We had to be at the state fair on Tuesday, September 14, for Kansas Master Farmer and Farm Homemaker Day. As presidents of our respective branches of the organization, both of us had parts in the meeting and program. Then it rained that evening. 

However, it was pretty from the grandstand as we watched the storm roll in.

We made it through about 45 minutes of the Logan Mize concert before nearby lightning strikes shut down the music for awhile. (We drove home instead of waiting for Sawyer Brown. Looking at radar, we weren't sure the concert would continue, but it did.)

It took until Friday (September 17) for the ground to dry out out enough again for cutting. And we cut the last load of corn for 2021 that afternoon.

This spring, we planted 294 acres to dryland corn. (See the blog post about planting here. The corn was a lot higher than knee high on the 4th of July. And for photos on how it was looking later in July, click here.)

Our acres don't amount to much in the overall statistics of production for Kansas. 

According to the Kansas Corn Commission, a third of our corn stays in Kansas to feed livestock; a third is made into ethanol and dried distillers grain at Kansas ethanol plants; and a third of our corn leaves Kansas to be used in other states or exported overseas, along with corn products. 

Only five states produced more corn than Kansas in 2020. However, since our primary crop here on the County Line is wheat, we don't contribute much to the state's total. For us, corn is one of the crops used in our rotational program to keep soil quality good and weeds down. For my brother and parents in a neighboring county, corn is a primary crop.

Whether it's wheat, corn or milo, Randy still likes being in the combine seat. And I like to go along for the ride.

I think the dry corn cobs look a little like missiles as they get propelled into the header. The corn ears are pulled off the corn stalk and are dragged into the combine with rollers. Inside the combine, the corn kernels are separated from the husks and cobs.

 

The cobs and debris are dispersed out the back of the combine. And the corn kernels go into the semi for a trip to the co-op elevator.

Many farmers have a grain cart pulled by a tractor to transfer the corn from the combine to the grain cart to the truck. 

But we unload from the combine directly into the truck.

 

Here's a little video, but the combine cab window is kind of dusty. It's probably not particularly "pretty on the inside."

It's always good to have the sun set on another harvest season.

 

Unrelated to corn, we discovered that Randy's wheat entry in the Kansas State Fair wheat show had done well. He got second in one of the classes on his Bob Dole wheat variety. And the cycle continues: He began planting our 2022 crop on September 21, the final day of summer (at least, according to the calendar).

Fair to Middling: The Kansas State Fair

Fair to middling is an American phrase, used as early as the 1820s. The term fair to middling originally referred to gradations of quality in cotton, sheep and other farm goods. Such goods may be designated into categories such as fine, good, fair, middling and poor. By the 1860s the phrase fair to middling evolved into common speech to mean something average or slightly above average.

Information from www.grammarist.com

I didn't get a purple ribbon during our trip to the Kansas State Fair this week ... unless you count the photo props we used. 

I didn't get a blue ribbon either ... except for the mosaic of the blue ribbon in the Oz Gallery.

But I did get a white ribbon - 3rd place - in one category in the Amateur Division of the Kansas State Fair photography contest. I suppose you could call that "fair to middling."

However, with only three places awarded per category, it was like a grand prize to me.  I entered this photo I took during a snowstorm in the "Seasonal Trees" category. As I was choosing, I debated: Is it a photo of a tree or is it a photo of a cow-calf pair?

Based on my past success in the fair photography contest - or, really, the lack thereof - I wasn't optimistic. So I was surprised (and thrilled!) when Randy and I were perusing the long aisles of mounted photos, and I found the third-place ribbon on one of my six entries. (It was the only one that placed.)

To enter the Kansas State Fair, there's a $1 processing fee. (That covers all the entries.) But the $5 I get for the third-place finish won't pay for the mounting materials or the gas I consumed to drive my entries 40 miles or so to Hutchinson.

Thankfully, Randy supports my "habit." He's just thankful for digital photography and the fact that I'm no longer paying for film and processing for every photo I shoot.

Photo by Jarrod Shafer, Wichita, KS

I think the blue-ribbon winner in the seasonal tree category also got a Best of Show runner-up designation and an extra $18. That makes even placing sweeter, doesn't it?

 

Our Tuesday visit to the fair wasn't really to see how my photos fared. That was just a bonus. We were there with our Kansas Master Farmer/Homemaker group. Both Randy and I are serving as vice-presidents this year of our respective organizations, so attendance was nonnegotiable, even with some things left undone at home.

Even though part of the day was spent in meetings, we had some time to wander around the fairgrounds for awhile, too.

I didn't take a whole lot of photos, but I couldn't leave the camera in my pocket the whole time, could I?

The Butterfly Experience was again one of my favorite spots. (I should have written down the name of this plant. The Monarch butterflies were choosing it over any of the other plant varieties. If one of my gardener friends knows what it is, please let me know.)

The Butterfly Experience is an inflatable exhibit south of the 4-H building. It's free (though we gave a donation.) It has butterflies still in cocoons and others enjoying the flowers inside.

Randy was much more adept at attracting butterflies to his sugar-soaked "feeder." Before entering the Butterfly Experience tent, each visitor is given a paint sponge dipped in diluted Gatorade. Holding the sponge in front of a butterfly allows it to step on and taste the juice with their feet. OK, truth be told, I was probably too busy clicking away with the camera to give the feeding thing much of a shot.

Randy had explored the real livestock barns that morning while I was in meetings. On a Tuesday, there wasn't a lot of activity there.

This kind of "livestock" was plenty active.

We attended the free Mason Ramsey concert that evening. And I couldn't resist a stroll through the carnival to snap a couple of photos before coming home.

It was back to reality yesterday. We again found dry corn to cut. We'll see if I continue the trend today and make another parts run. I went to Pratt for parts last Saturday. Parts stores were closed on Sunday, so I skipped that day. I visited the guys at the parts counter at the Hutchinson Case branch Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I'd be OK without seeing them today. They're nice and all, but our pocketbook could use a reprieve.

More on corn harvest next week. And, yes, photographs, too.

"Livestock" Exhibits ... So To Speak

The "livestock" exhibits were my favorites at the Kansas State Fair.

OK, they were "live." But these creatures don't exactly fit in the traditional definition of "livestock."

live·stock

ˈlīvˌstäk      noun: livestock

1. farm animals regarded as an asset.

   
   

   "markets for the trading of livestock"

Well, maybe butterflies could be considered an asset on the farm. They are certainly a treasure to the senses, especially a beautiful Monarch, which ended up looking like stained glass as it spread its wings in the sunlight.

For the record, Randy did go to the livestock barns while I was in a Kansas Master Farm Homemaker Guild executive meeting. It was a "changing of the guard" day in the beef pavilion that day. One breed had been judged, and others were likely on their way to the Hutchinson fairgrounds. But there wasn't a lot of action in the traditional livestock barns on Tuesday.

But Randy liked this "livestock," too. He was much more successful in attracting butterflies to his sugar-soaked "feeder." Before entering the Butterfly Experience tent, each visitor is given a paint sponge dipped in diluted Gatorade. Holding the sponge in front of a butterfly allows it to step on and taste the juice with their feet. OK, truth be told, I was probably too busy clicking away with the camera to give the feeding thing much of a shot.

This pretty pink plant seemed as popular to butterflies as the fair's Pronto Pup stand to a team of hungry football players.

The Butterfly Experience is new to the Kansas State Fair. It's an inflatable tent, which promoters say has three different kinds of butterflies. Randy and I only saw Monarchs. But we weren't complaining.

(If you're going to the fair, the Butterfly Experience is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. It's near Lake Talbott, south of the 4-H Building. The exhibit is free, but donations are accepted to purchase milkweeds that assist in the Monarch’s migration.)

Butterflies weren't the only things flying at the fair that day. American flags were flying since it was Patriot's Day - the 17th anniversary of 9-11. It was also Kansas Master Farmer - Master Farm Homemaker Day at the Kansas State Fair.

During our noon meeting, three of our Kansas Master Farmers were honored by the Quilts of Valor program, whose mission is to cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing quilts.

Robert Edwards, Olsburg, served in the U.S. Army from 1953-55 during the Korean Conflict. His quilt was made by Master Homemaker Barbara Rezac.

Henry Ericson, Fort Scott, gave his service to the U.S. Army from 1953-55, also during the Korean Conflict. His quilt was made by his wife, Doris.

Richard Reinhardt, Erie, was an instructor pilot, training other pilots who also served the U.S. Armed Forces. His quilt was made by Master Homemaker Jeri Albright. He's pictured here with his wife, Linda, and family members.

Paula Blasi, Bob Edwards, Barbara Rezac, Anita Davis

Master Farm Homemaker, Anita Davis (far right), has made sure Master Farmer veterans have been recognized for their military service by awarding handmade Quilts of Valor. These were the latest three to be honored in this way.  (Several other Master Farmer families contributed funds for making the quilts.)

Our group was treated to the grandstand show, Roots and Boots, featuring Sammy Kershaw, Collin Raye and Aaron Tippin.  Tippin broke out his red, white and blue guitar for his hit, "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly." It earned him a Patriot's Day standing ovation.

Even though we didn't ride any rides, I couldn't resist taking a photo from the grandstand before we left after the concert.

One other highlight of the day was seeing the 2nd place ribbon on one of my photo entries in the Kansas Wheat contest.  None of my other photos placed in the regular divisions, but I was thrilled to be a ribbon winner!

All in all, a great day at the Kansas State Fair, even if my feet were tired. Back when I was a reporter at The Hutchinson News, I'd spend all day, every day of the 10-day run at the fairgrounds. I was obviously much younger then!