And So Begins the End: Wheat Harvest 2022

Flag Day sunrise, June 14, 2022

And so begins the end.

We began our 2022 Wheat Harvest last evening about 6:15. It won't be a banner year when it comes to wheat yield. That happened last year. But it is a banner year for another reason: It's our final wheat harvest as active farmers. 

Harvest begins, June 13, 2022

I rode along last evening. I'm sure there will be plenty of other rides during this harvest season.

I have a record of our start dates since 2010 because that's when I started blogging:

2010:  June 18
2011:  June 10
2012:  May 26 (an anomaly and the earliest harvest, by far, we've ever had)
2013:  June 21
2014:  June 17
2015:  June 20
2016:  June 15
2017:  June 12
2018: June 12
2019: June 26
2020: June 16

2021: June 17

2022: June 13

 

As I came into the house last night, I saw on my family birthday calendar that today (June 14) is Flag Day. So I went to the wheat field to get some shots this morning.

 

The wind was already gusting mightily at 6:15 in the morning. It's going to be a windy day!

 

 

 

I had trouble keeping the flag flat even when it was lying on the wheat! (I like a rippling flag anyway.) 

I guess I bookended our night and day because I'd taken some sunset photos last night.

I've told a few friends this, but I guess you're my friends, too. But it almost feels like people expect us to apologize or offer explanations for our decision to retire. 

"You're retiring!? Farmers don't retire!" I've heard it from more than one person.

Well, we are. And I can't deny that there are bittersweet feelings about this being our final wheat harvest with "boots on the ground," so to speak. But we are at peace with the decision. Yesterday, Randy found out the truck driver that had said he'd drive won't be coming. This morning, there's a low tire on the semi trailer. (It's taking awhile to fill a truck this year because yields are lower after our dry winter and spring, so I guess there will be fewer truckloads going to the elevator anyway.)

Last evening, as we traveled east to west across the waving wheat field gobbling up yet another header-full of wheat, Randy said, "Well, I won't miss scooping out wheat from the bin to get it cleaned for seed wheat this summer." And I won't miss being up in the tractor cab, running the PTO, hoping he wasn't getting heat stroke inside that hot metal bin.

But, on this Flag Day - and every day - we are proud that we have been part of the American fabric - the American farmer. 

This morning, a Facebook memory came up from five years ago. A friend at church had given me a bookmark that had been produced years ago by the Kansas Wheat Commission. I then put my own photos along the side for an illustration. 

I still feel the same way about wheat. And I probably always will - whether I'm in the truck cab or the combine cab or just viewing the action from my dusty dirt road. 

 

Rising to the Occasion: National Festival of Breads

Ronna Farley and her Seeded Corn and Onion Bubble Loaf.

Ronna Farley had a big smile on her face when I visited her kitchen at the Festival of Breads competition last Saturday. Her first attempt at baking her Seeded Corn and Onion Bubble Loaf had come out of the pan cleanly. If you've ever made anything in a Bundt pan, you know there's no guarantee: Part could end up on the cooling rack while some is stuck in the pan.

But after carefully inching her way around each crook and crevice with an ice pick, the bubble loaf was out in one piece, looking evenly browned and with that unmistakable fragrance of freshly-baked yeast bread combined with an undertone of onion.

She had more reasons to smile that evening. Her Seeded Corn and Onion Bubble Loaf won the grand prize at the 5th biennial National Festival of Breads.

She and seven other finalists spent the time from 7 AM Saturday morning until 2:45 or so that afternoon making their recipes three different times. By 3, each had delivered her best effort to a judge's room for evaluation.

Farley traveled to Kansas from her home in Rockville, Maryland, where she works as a cashier in a grocery store. She gets inspiration for developing original recipes based on the ingredients she rings up for customers as they empty their carts onto the supermarket conveyor belt.

I especially love seeing what people from other countries are buying and the different ideas of ingredients I should try in recipes. Sometimes I'll even ask them, 'What are you doing with that?' or 'What is that?' because there are different things we sell that I don't even know what they are.

Ronna Farley as quoted in the Festival of Breads recipe book

As the 2017 National Festival of Breads champion, Farley received $2,000 cash, plus a trip to attend a baking class of her choice at the King Arthur Flour Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vermont. She will receive 120 envelopes of Red Star Yeast. 

This was Farley's second time as a top eight finalist in the Festival of Breads. Like several of the competitors, she is no stranger to cooking contests.  Patrice Hurd has been chosen as a finalist in a dozen national contests. Three times, she's been a contestant in the "grandmother" of them all - the Pillsbury Bakeoff. Once you've competed a trio of times, you're no longer eligible at Pillsbury. She's also been a finalist in the national beef cookoff, Build A Better Burger and Midwest Living events, among others.

Patrice Hurd and her Toasted Cardamom Nordic Crown.

But Patrice was glad to be back at the National Festival of Breads in Kansas. She was also a finalist in the 2015 contest. This time, her recipe was Toasted Cardamom Nordic Crown. 

"It's a fun hobby to compete in these contests," Patrice said. "You meet people who are just as crazed about doing this as I am. We get to know one another, and it's kind of like family when we get together."

There's a family feel to the National Festival of Breads competition itself, she said. 

"At the Pillsburg Bakeoff, there are 100 finalists, so you're basically a number," Patrice said Saturday as she worked on her bread recipe. "This contest (Festival of Breads) has so much heart and a real down-home feeling. I was thrilled to get back here. The organizers take care of every single detail. They do everything to make you feel welcome and make it an experience to remember." 

One of those experiences was her first-ever ride on a combine. Though it was on the schedule in 2015, a drizzly day kept the contestants from truly experiencing a Kansas wheat harvest. This year, Patrice and other contestants traveled on Friday to the Brookville farm of Joe and Geena Kejr where they took turns riding the John Deere combine. They also toured the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center in Manhattan and the Farmer Direct Foods Inc. flour mill in New Cambria. It gave them a glimpse at how wheat grown and harvested in Kansas ultimately becomes flour that can be used in their kitchens scattered across the U.S.

Michele Kusma with her Mexican Street Corn Skillet Bread.

Contestant Michele Kusma from Columbus, Ohio, loved the combine ride, too. This was the first time she was a National Festival of Breads finalist and her first visit to Kansas.

"It was just awesome," Michele bubbled. "It was interesting and beautiful to see the wheat being harvested." 

Michele, too, is a contest veteran. As she developed her recipe for Mexican Street Corn Skillet Bread, she was thinking about flavors that consumers tend to enjoy.

Though she's a contest pro now, she didn't grow up baking. Michele turned to creating recipes and baking as an outlet after her second bout with breast cancer.

"My mother didn't bake bread. My grandmother didn't bake bread. It was me and YouTube," Michele said with a laugh. "I love baking, and you might as well love what you do. None of us know how long we have on this earth, so we need to pursue the things that give us joy."

Jane Fry (on the right) and her kitchen assistant look over her Southwest Focaccia.

It definitely wasn't finalist Jane Fry's first time on a combine or in a Kansas wheat field. Jane didn't have to hop on an airplane to get to Manhattan. She was down the road in Elk Falls, Kansas.

Like many Kansas cooks, her love of baking dates back to her days in 4-H. This was her second time as one of the Top 8 in the National Festival of Breads. This time, her recipe was Southwest Focaccia.

Jane isn't just an expert in shaping bread. She and her husband, Steve, also shape stoneware, much with a wheat theme. Each piece is individually made on a potter’s wheel or by other hand methods, glazed, decorated and fired. The business has grown, but remains a small family enterprise to provide the kind of “home-grown” lifestyle. In 1987, Jane incorporated her love for quilts by developing a line of porcelain pins and earrings using traditional quilt patterns as well as original and custom designs, which are sold under the name Elk Falls Piecemakers.

Fellow contestant Kellie White grew up on a farm near Westmoreland, Kansas, though she now resides in Valley Park, Missouri. Her entry, Orange Spice Anadama Wreath with Walnuts and Dates, won the People's Choice award voting the day of the festival. Her Kansas fan club cheered loudly when those results were announced Saturday afternoon. Festival goers could vote for their favorites by depositing $1 in voting jars. Those efforts raised more than $600 for the Flint Hills Bread Basket, a local food pantry.

She credits her love of baking to her mom and also to a neighbor lady named Ethel who shared a day of baking with Kellie as a young girl and also gave their family gifts of homemade bread at Christmas.

One of Shauna Havey's Butternut Romesco Braid's was shaped and rising, while she had another dough rising.

On the other hand, contestant Shauna Havey didn't grow up baking. The Roy, Utah, finalist began experimenting in the kitchen after marrying her husband. The mother of two prefers savory recipes, so she developed Butternut Romesco Braid. 

Pam Correll shapes her Orange Marmalade Breakfast Crescents.

Pam Correll was hoping for a "sweet" victory with her Orange Marmalade Breakfast Crescents. The smells of orange zest and fresh orange juice permeated the work station for the Brockport, Pennsylvania, baker. The FACS teacher enjoys teaching her students to bake from scratch.

"It's becoming a lost art," Correll said. This was the Pennsylvania baker's second time to enter the Festival of Breads, and two of her recipes were awarded honorable mention in 2015. The 2017 contest was her first as one of the eight top finalists.

Turmeric-Rosemary and Sweet Potato Rosettes

Somehow I missed talking to Tiffany Aaron, whose recipe was Turmeric-Rosemary and Sweet Potato Rosettes. Aaron is from Quitman, Arkansas, but she grew up in Montana. In her interview included in the festival brochure, she says her father-in-law supplied all the sweet potatoes she used for her experimentation and recipe development. In 2015, she had won an honorable mention. This year, she only entered the one recipe, but it still got her included in the Top 8. The mother of five brought her middle daughter with her to Kansas to experience all the festival happenings.

The National Festival of Breads, the nation’s only amateur bread-baking competition, is sponsored by King Arthur Flour, Red Star Yeast and the Kansas Wheat Commission. Many more recipes from previous years' contests, as well as bread baking tips, are available at the National Festival of Breads website. Check it out.

***

I volunteered at the festival. Watch for my next blog post about why I took time during our own wheat harvest to travel to Manhattan and help out!
 

Focaccia

 

The weatherman says summer temperatures will return this weekend. Mother Nature did not clear that move with me. I've been celebrating the cooler fall temperatures by digging out soup recipes. I made Taco Soup this week. And last week, I shared Copycat Olive Garden Pasta e Fagioli soup with two families who'd just had new babies. Since it makes a big recipe, we enjoyed the leftovers, too.

To go along with the Italian theme, I made homemade focaccia bread to deliver with the soup. While I still turn on my oven plenty during the hot summer months, bread baking seems more suited to fall and winter temperatures.

Focaccia is a pretty forgiving bread, and it doesn't require expert bread shaping skills to get a good product. It's shaped into a rustic circle or rectangle, so it doesn't matter if the loaf isn't perfectly shaped. (Honestly, no one around here cares if the traditional loaf of bread is "county fair perfect" either. Homemade bread is homemade bread!)

Here at home, we dipped slices of the focaccia in seasoned olive oil, just like at an Italian restaurant. Homemade soup and bread? Yes, please!

While the summer temperatures are coming back for a short stay - ready or not - we know that fall and winter aren't far behind. If you're looking for tried-and-true bread recipes, the Kansas Wheat website has lots of recipes to try.

You, too, could be featured in that collection of award-winning recipes.  Entries for the 2017 National Festival of Breads are being accepted through January 16. The competition seeks the best yeast bread recipes from home bakers throughout the U.S. It’s sponsored by the Kansas Wheat Commission, along with King Arthur Flour and Red Star Yeast.

Adult amateur bakers can submit original recipes for holiday breads, rolls, time-saving and simple breads, and whole grain breads online. Youth bakers, ages 8-17, can also submit recipes for yeast breads and quick breads. All entries must be made online at  www.nationalfestivalofbreads.com and require photos of the entered bread.

Eight adult finalists will participate in the national competition on June 17 next year in Manhattan and receive a $500 cash award. The finalists will visit a Kansas farm during wheat harvest, tour a flour mill and grain elevator and learn about wheat research at the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center. The Grand Prize Winner will receive $2,000 cash and a trip to attend a baking class of their choice at the King Arthur Flour Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vermont. One youth grand prize winner will be selected and will receive a $300 scholarship. Two youth entries will receive a runner-up prize of a $100 scholarship.

The focaccia recipe I used predates the national contest. But it was a winner at the Kansas Festival of Breads in 2002. 

Whole White Wheat Italian Focaccia

A 2002 Kansas Festival of Breads winning recipe
made by Naomi Johnson, Great Bend

From the Kansas Wheat website

Ingredients

Sponge
2 cups whole wheat flour*
1 package RED STAR® Active Dry Yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning
2 cups lukewarm water (110-115°F)

Dough
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons dried grated  Parmesan Cheese
1 cup whole wheat flour*
1 ½ - 2 cups bread flour
 
Cornmeal

Toppings (optional): Olive oil, Parmesan or Romano Cheese, Kosher salt, Italian seasoning, fresh herbs

*Contestant used whole white wheat flour in recipe. 

Instructions

1. For sponge, combine in bowl, whole wheat flour, yeast, sugar, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and water. (NOTE:  I used 2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning, rather than 1 tablespoon.) Mix 2 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap; let rest 20 minutes.

2. Stir in salt, olive oil, and cheese. Add whole wheat flour; mix 2 minutes. Gradually add enough of the bread flour to form a soft dough. Knead dough 5 to 8 minutes. Place in lightly greased bowl. Cover; let rise until double.

3. Divide dough into two pieces. Gently pull or stretch each piece of dough into a circle or rectangle ¾-inch thick. Place on greased baking sheets or pizza pans that have been dusted with cornmeal. Cover, let rise 20 to 25 minutes.

4. Dimple dough with fingertips every ½ inch. Brush with oil; sprinkle on cheese and, if desired, Kosher salt. Let rest 5 minutes.

5. Bake in preheated 400°F oven 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden. During last several minutes of baking, sprinkle with Italian seasoning or fresh herbs. Best served fresh. (NOTE: I sprinkled with Zataar seasoning.)

Makes 2 focaccia (16 servings each).

Focaccia is also tasty with cavatini and a green salad.

***

Today, I'm linked to Weekend Potluck, hosted by these bloggers. Check out the tried-and-true recipes from them and other food enthusiasts!

• Served Up With Love ~ Melissa
• The Country Cook~ Brandie
• The Better Baker ~ Marsha
• Sweet Little Bluebird~ Mary
• Mommy’s Kitchen~ Tina

Cutting-Edge Technology: More Than a Bread Knife

Pollinating wheat in the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center greenhouse. You can see construction on the west side of the K-State football stadium from the windows of the greenhouse.

Though the ribbon cutting for the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center (KWIC) involved a bread knife, it's not the only "cutting-edge" activity going on there.

I understand bread knives. I don't understand doubled haploids. And that's OK. That's why we Kansas wheat farmers have people working at KWIC who do understand complicated "stuff" like doubled haploids.

Wheat has been a basis of the human diet for thousands of years. Bread in one form or another is a basic food source all over the world. It seems simple - flour, water, yeast and a few assorted other ingredients.

But wheat is actually a very complex plant. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid: It has six copies of each gene, where most living things have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people.

Mapping the wheat genome is complicated business because wheat is a complicated plant. It's one reason that work in wheat genetics has lagged behind other cereal grains. But KWIC will offer opportunities for researchers to learn more and put that knowledge to use.

Different stages of growth in grow rooms at KWIC

KWIC houses Heartland Plant Innovations, which is a farmer-owned plant science company created by the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers. HPI leases laboratory and greenhouse space in the KWIC to conduct their research on doubled haploids, which are genetically pure plant lines. Using doubled haploids cuts 4 to 6 years out of the normal 12-year development time for new wheat varieties that promise higher yields, disease resistance, drought resistance and other crop improvements.

When you visit a wheat research center, you may not expect to see corn plants growing in the greenhouse. But researchers are using corn to pollinate wheat and then are extracting the embryos. I don't understand much more than that. Let's get real: I don't understand that either.

Wheat plants are in the foreground, with corn plants at different stages of maturity growing in the background of the same greenhouse.

Soon, KWIC will be the home for a gene bank which will store genetics from the Wheat Genetics Resource Center at K-State. Since 1984, the WGRC has led a global effort in conserving and researching more than two dozen wild wheat and goatgrass species, including more than 12,000 strains. More than 30,000 samples from the collection of wild wheat relatives, genetic stocks and improved genetic resources have been distributed to scientists in 45 countries and 39 U.S. states.

Randy looks into a growth chamber which was sponsored by KFRM 550 AM radio. KFRM is the station for whom I do freelance reporting, giving a Central Kansas report Monday through Friday.

The process is complicated. That's why I was somewhat amused by one of the researchers' low-tech solutions on one table in the greenhouse. Yes, Styrofoam cups cover some of the smaller wheat plants. I didn't ask why.

Whether high tech (like doubled haploids) or low tech like Styrofoam cups, the work is important - not only for producers but also for the people of the world. By 2050, the world population will reach 9 billion. Improving today's wheat varieties will help meet the needs of a hungry and growing world.


While I don't understand doubled haploids, I do understand feeding hungry people. The KWIC also has a test kitchen, where Kansas Wheat and friends just finished testing recipes and selecting finalists for the National Festival of Breads, coming to Manhattan, June 20-22. You can come to Manhattan and watch them bake on June 22. Check out this recipe from the 2011 winner. The NFOB website has recipes from other winners and finalists.

The flour sponsor for the National Festival of Breads is King Arthur. But I had to take a photo of the "hometown" Hudson Cream Flour in the KWIC test kitchen, made by our Stafford County neighbors in Hudson.

Bread of Life: Kansas Wheat Innovation Center

An 8-foot-long "ribbon" of braided bread was the centerpiece for the dedication for the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center in Manhattan last Friday.

Basic bread is a pretty straightforward recipe: You combine flour, water, yeast and a few other ingredients.  When flour is mixed with water, the gluten swells to form a continuous network of fine strands. This network forms the structure of bread dough and makes it elastic and pliable.

Last Friday, the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center celebrated a new network and structure as it officially opened a new $10.3 million building. Just like gluten coming together in a series of fine strands, Kansas wheat farmers came together to invest in their future. The Kansas Wheat Innovation Center building has at its center the collaboration of Kansas wheat farmers - those strands of cooperation coming from each corner of the state. Through a voluntary penny-and-a-half Kansas wheat checkoff,  the Center was built to begin a new era for wheat variety research. It represents the single largest investment by wheat farmers in the nation. The Center was built on land owned by Kansas State University, but the Kansas Wheat Commission has a 50-year lease on the property.

The loaf of bread used on Friday was braided together. It was baked in one continuous piece in a large oven at the American Institute of Baking, also in Manhattan. Just like that braid strengthened the structure of the completed loaf, other collaborators have joined Kansas farmers in this endeavor to improve wheat and find new ways to feed a hungry world. On Friday, naming rights donors were recognized. The donors were many and varied: They included banks, insurance companies, a railroad, seed companies, agriculture cooperatives, media outlets, ag families and others.

In his remarks, Kansas Wheat Commissioner Ron Suppes, Dighton, held up a grain of wheat. If you were more than two rows back, you couldn't see the kernel. But, in some ways, that's the point. This little, bitty seed is pretty powerful. From a tiny little kernel, a wheat plant grows. With the right combination of soil, water, sunlight, temperature and time, the one kernel produces a plant with a lot of kernels.

When those kernels are harvested, they can help feed the world. That's a lot of power for one little seed.

And the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center represents a lot of power for the Kansas wheat industry, too.

“We are excited to share the story of how the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center will lead the way in new wheat research that gives Kansas wheat farmers the tools to produce high-yielding, high-quality wheat varieties that will continue to feed the world. The world population is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050. The KWIC will play a big role in helping U.S. wheat farmers meet the population’s growing demand for food.”

Rich Randall

chairman of the Kansas Wheat Commission and farmer near Scott City

Tomorrow, more photos and more on the work that will be done at the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center. 

The Leaning Tower of Pizza

An average annual Kansas wheat harvest of 360 million bushels would make 23.5 BILLION large pizza crusts.

Yep, that's right ... 23,500,000,000 - with all those zeros.

A stack of 23.5 billion pizza boxes would be more than 740,000 miles high. That's three times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

That's a lot of pizza. But even a pizza box stack reaching toward the ceiling of the Pride of Kansas Building at the Kansas State Fair created a conversation starter.

And that's what Kansas Wheat was hoping to do. They wanted to start a conversation with people to tell them about the importance of wheat.

Randy was one of the wheat spokespersons at the booth last Friday. He's on the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers board, one arm of Kansas Wheat. The other is the Kansas Wheat Commission.

He handed out 2010 Kansas Wheat Commission recipe books to the masses. (A side note: Our son, Brent, helped layout and design the recipe books the past two years as a summer intern at Kansas Wheat.)

If you know Randy, you would guess that his favorite part was talking to kids who came by the booth.

At one stop, they could spin a Wheel-of-Fortune-like wheel. If they answered a wheat question correctly, they got a prize. Actually, I think they got a prize either way.

One prize they could choose was a Twizzlers licorice stick. I'll bet you didn't know that flour is the second item listed in the ingredient list. (Neither did I until I visited the Kansas Wheat booth!)

This little visitor also learned what a bushel of wheat looks like and how much it weighs (approximately 60 pounds.) She also knows that one bushel of wheat provides enough flour to produce about 42, 1.5-pound loaves of bread. One bushel of Kansas wheat also produces enough flour to make 67 Pizza Hut large pizza crusts (that's how high the stack was in the Pride of Kansas Building!)

I'm not sure what prize this little girl won, but I think when she left the booth, she knew a little more about Kansas wheat.

People could also choose a postcard with a little packet of wheat attached so they could grow their own little crop in an empty yogurt container or drinking cup.

One little boy kept coming back for more and more postcards. He told Randy he needed more so he could plant his own field of wheat. He was obviously a future farmer in the making.

Besides providing a Field of Dreams for one little boy, the postcards also shared these wheat facts:

• Wheat is the most consumed grain in America. It feeds people, animals and the economy around the globe.
• Wheat is grown annually in 42 of the 50 United States on 63.5 million acres of land.
• On average, Kansas farmers produce one-fifth of all the wheat grown in the U.S. That's more than any other state and why Kansas is called "The Wheat State."
• Americans eat nearly 138 pounds of wheat flour each year in baked goods, cereals, breads, crackers, pasta and tortillas.
  

Here is a recipe from this year's Kansas Wheat recipe book. I haven't tried these muffins yet, but Cindy Falk of the Kansas Wheat staff does test all the recipes. Enjoy!

Cracked Wheat Muffins

1 cup cracked wheat
1 cup skim milk
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey or 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries (opt.)

In a medium bowl, mix cracked wheat and milk. Cover; place in the refrigerator to soak overnight. Remove from refrigerator. Let sit 15 to 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 12 muffin cups with paper baking cups or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

In small bowl, whisk together egg, oil and honey. Whisk into cracked wheat mixture.

In medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Stir cracked wheat mixture into flour mixture; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 23 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Variation: Presoak 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries in 1/2 cup water 5 minutes. Drain well. Add raisins or cranberries in with wet ingredients.

Yield: 12 muffins. Each muffin (without raisins or cranberries): About 167 calories, 4 g protein, 26 g carbohydrate, 2 g dietary fiber, 5 g total fat (1 g saturated fat), 15 mg cholesterol, 31 mcg folate, 1 mg iron, 174 mg sodium.

If you want to learn more about Kansas Wheat, check out their website.