Marathon, Not a Sprint: The Journey Toward Wheat Harvest 2022

 

The journey toward Wheat Harvest 2022 is a marathon, not a sprint. Since I've never been much of a sprinter, that's a good thing. 

We began planting our 2022 wheat crop on September 21. And we're still at it. We have had a few days hiatus, beginning last Thursday when we got 2.25 inches of much-needed rain. We got another shower last Saturday. We may be back in the field later today. The verdict is still out.

Wheat is the primary crop on our dryland farm on the Stafford/Reno County line. And this year, we're going big: Randy is planting 1,900 acres to wheat. No wonder it's taking awhile!

One of my favorite photos from wheat planting so far was taken at sunrise. The day was brand new, so there wasn't time for anything to have gone wrong or broken down yet. You gotta love a Kansas sky, and this one looked painted with "Hope" to me.

It's what keeps farmers planting the next crop and doing the next task, time and time again. Randy has been doing that for 50 years.

Here in Central Kansas, we plant winter wheat. We plant it in the fall, and then it goes dormant during the cold months of winter before coming out of its "hibernation" and growing again next spring, then maturing for a June/July harvest.

We saved some of our 2021 crop in bins on the farm to use as seed wheat. It's binned during harvest, and then we load it into the truck to take to Miller Seed Farms near Partridge for cleaning. 

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They treat it with Cruiser, a fungicide, which helps protect the small wheat plants from disease. It's also treated with Vibrance Extreme, an insecticide which helps keep bugs at bay. That's what gives it its pinkish tinge.

Randy uses a grain-fill auger to transfer the seed wheat from the truck to the drill.

Randy wonders if he could get a Flex Tape endorsement commercial. Flex Tape is one of the tools in his repair kit. So far, so good.

 

So why is wheat our primary crop? First, we don't irrigate. Wheat is more drought tolerant than corn or soybeans. While the seed genetics are getting better and helping make dryland corn and soybeans a more viable crop in this part of the state, wheat is a proven performer in less-than-ideal conditions. (Of course, we would love to have ideal conditions, but that rarely happens.)

 

 

In this part of Kansas, the textbooks say that October 1-10 is the ideal time to plant wheat. Since we can't get the whole crop in the ground during that time, we start a little sooner. Many years, we don't finish before October 10 either. 

 

As with every planting season, I think about the optimism that seems to be part of the fabric of every farmer.

 

They put a seed in the ground and then wait like a kid on Christmas morning. 

 

 

They slow down as they pass a planted field, just waiting for that first glimmer of green. And then the miracle begins again for yet another season. 

 

And through sunrises and sunsets for some nine months, we hope and pray that the crop comes to fruition.

 

This wheat crop will be our final one as working farmers. Randy plans to retire after wheat harvest next summer. So this planting time has meant some time for reflection. But even as we turn the reins over to a younger farmer, our hearts will always be tied to the land. As farmers' kids before we were farming ourselves, it's part of our DNA. And we've been working together for more than 40 years. We are blessed.

Bob Dole's Chauffeur

I was Bob Dole's chauffeur on Tuesday.

Before anyone thinks I've suddenly begun Ubering former presidential candidates in my spare time, I should probably confess that the Bob Dole I was carting around was actually 50 bags of Bob Dole seed wheat.

 

I made a couple of trips to Miller Seed Farm on Tuesday. Bob Dole was my first passenger. On the second trip, I picked up 50 bags of Zenda seed wheat.

Randy started planting wheat on September 25.

There are four zones of ideal planting in Kansas. Romulo Lollato, K-State Extension wheat specialist, has done research and concluded that sowing date plays a major role in crop yields. Planting after recommended dates can mean a whopping decrease in yields of up to 3.5 bushels an acre per day.

• Zone 1: Sept. 10-30
• Zone 2: Sept. 15 to Oct. 20
• Zone 3: Sept. 25 to Oct. 20
• Zone 4: Oct. 5-25

Since we live in Zone 3, our start date falls within the recommendation.

Randy saved two varieties of wheat during our 2019 harvest - Larry and Zenda - and that is the wheat we started drilling this fall.  We binned some of the wheat as we were harvesting this summer in our on-farm storage. Later, we took the retained wheat to Miller Seed Farm for cleaning and seed treatment.

It went back in our home bins until we were ready to plant. It is augered out of the truck into the drill boxes. The wheat we save at harvest can only be used by our farm.

This year, we are planting 1,575 acres to wheat which will be harvested in 2020 (if all goes as planned).

This is the first time we've "invited" Bob Dole to our farm. It's a new wheat variety developed by Kansas State University and released in a public-private partnership between Syngenta and Kansas wheat farmers through the Kansas Wheat Commission and Kansas Wheat Alliance. The hard red winter wheat variety, which is distributed by Agri-Pro, was first introduced in Kansas during the 2018 season.

We always plant seed wheat in fields closer to the on-farm storage bins. Before Randy puts the bagged seed wheat in the drill, he cleans out the other seed. He starts baling it out with an old coffee can and ends up using a shop vacuum to get the rest.

While Randy planted the Bob Dole wheat, I went back to Miller Seed Farm for our other seed wheat variety - Zenda. It was released in 2017 by the Kansas Wheat Alliance.

 New varieties of wheat are developed in efforts to resist disease and improve yields.

About the time Randy got done loading the Zenda into the drill, it began raining.We've gotten about 0.60" in the past couple of days, so wheat planting is shut down for the time being.

The newly-emerging wheat that was put in the ground a week ago is loving this moisture.

Planting Wheat, Harvesting the Sky

The gas tank gauge on the car was drifting toward the "E" ... or as close as I ever let it get. As a country girl who grew up 15 minutes from town, I was encouraged to fill the gas tank when the needle neared the 1/4-mark. It was a habit that served me well as a teenager. When I ended up changing my "title" from father's daughter to farmer's wife, there was no reason to mess with a tried-and-true method.

Most of the last two tanks of gas have been "spent" running from one field to the next as we planted wheat. There was no fun trip to the homecoming parade and K-State football game last weekend in Manhattan ... just more trips to exchange the car for another trip to Zenith in the pickup, pulling the fertilizer trailer and refilling the 100-gallon diesel tank on the flatbed pickup. There were trips to deliver hot meals to the field and to help move the caravan of vehicles needed for wheat planting from one field to the next. A parts run to Hutchinson came after filling up a dwindling gas tank.

While I might be just a little sad (OK, a lot sad) that I didn't get to join Kinley and Brooke at the homecoming parade and get a preview of their butterfly Halloween costumes, I certainly have had some fringe benefits.

The sky! THE SKY!

It was like God was fingerpainting on the clouds, adding just a little bit of gold leaf ... like those fancy chefs on the Food Network.

I could almost ignore the mosquitoes the size of Piper aircraft to capture yet another image of Kansas beauty at its finest.

This wheat planting season has been a marathon - not a sprint. We started October 2, but we were slowed by some much-needed moisture interspersed throughout these past three weeks.(I told Randy that we can't complain about moisture after a dry summer.)

We finally got done with planting last evening, October 23. There are months of sunrises and sunsets until we'll harvest the 1,326 acres that will be Wheat Harvest 2018. (Let's hope it warrants the capital letters in 9 months time!)

Now it's on to harvesting another crop - milo. 

The Sun Sets on Wheat Planting 2014

It was perfect timing:  Randy finished planting wheat at noon on Thursday. After lunch, we made several trips back and forth from the final field, moving the tractor and drill, the seed wheat truck and the fertilizer tank.

Then, it started raining Thursday afternoon. During the weekend, we've collected 3.20 inches in the gauge, and it's still sprinkling this morning. Most importantly, though, it's fallen fairly gently on the planted wheat fields.

And while there is a lot of time between planting and Wheat Harvest 2015 next June, we are thankful for this moisture to give the crop a boost before cold weather hits and it "sleeps" for the winter.

We began planting September 22 and finished on October 9. (Ironically, I looked up the timetable last year: We began planting September 23 and also finished October 9. How often does that happen?)

This intersection demonstrates the difference in growth following planting. The wheat on the left side of the road was planted a week sooner than the field on the right, where you had to look closely to see the tender sprigs of wheat from the road. However, a walk out into the field showed that these little "soldiers" had broken through the barrier of the soil and were marching their way toward their ultimate goal, 9 months down the road.

Wheat is the primary crop here on the County Line.

Here in Central Kansas, we plant winter wheat. It's planted in the fall and then goes dormant during the cold months of winter before coming out of its "hibernation" and growing again next spring, then maturing for a June harvest. There will be plenty of turns and twists as this crop moves toward harvest. That's just the way it is.

Saturday morning, after 2.30" of rain. We got another 0.90" Sunday evening/night.

But it's easier to be optimistic when the crop has just gotten a timely drink of water, especially when we've planted our wheat crop into dust the past two years. We are thankful for this good start!

Kim's Taxi Service

Kim's Taxi Service:  

Moving food, fuel, fertilizer and fellas. 

On call, 24 hours a day. 

Short distances are our specialty.

I've added fertilizer retrieval to the to-do list this week. With Jake disking corn ground and Randy drilling wheat, Kim's Taxi Service has again been called into action.

The working conditions aren't spic and span. But the scenery is a great fringe benefit.

This is our version of a country traffic jam. I had to wait to weigh onto the scales at the Zenith branch of the Kanza Co-op. Then, I pulled the pickup and the fertilizer tank onto the scales for an "empty" weight. I went into the office and asked for 950 gallons of 19-17. For the uninitiated, it may seem I'm speaking a foreign language. Maybe even a math language. (But if you know me, you'd know that would be an anomaly!)

The 19-17 stands for 19 percent nitrogen and 17 percent phosphorus. This starter fertilizer will give the 2015 wheat crop a boost. It's applied by the planter, right next to the seed kernels.

I pulled the trailer into the fertilizer building.

The co-op guys hooked up a hose from the storage tanks at the co-op to the "nurse" tank that I would pull back to the field. I handed them a ticket that tells them what fertilizer I'm there to pick up and how much to put in.

Then, there's time to visit, check my phone or wander around and take photos.

I don't usually use an HDR setting on my photos, but I liked it on this one.

After the tank was full, I pulled around to the scales and weighed the pickup and tank again, giving the full weight. That way, the co-op knows how much to bill us. I wish I could skip that step, but, alas, it's not possible. How else would I get a manilla-envelope-sized "letter" from the co-op each month?

Then, it was back to the field, slow and steady. There are no speed records set on these trips (which, I admit, is a little different from normal for me.)

We weren't the only ones planting in our neighborhood. (See the other seed wheat truck at the corner.) Thankfully, they did not hire Kim's Taxi Service for their fertilizer, mealtime or moving needs. I had enough to keep me busy. 

The guys transferred the fertilizer I've brought from the co-op to the tank on the drill, as they needed it.

Once all the fertilizer had been transferred from the nurse tank to the drill, it was time for a repeat trip to the co-op.

Kim's Taxi Service again ready for action. Cheap AND dependable!