Pot of Gold? Wheat Harvest 2026

Photo taken Saturday night - June 13, 2026

 

It's not a year when the wheat crop is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the sun has set on the 2026 wheat harvest. 

June 4, 2026

As my brother aptly described of his harvest in Pratt County, "Wheat 2026 is in the bin. Just didn’t fill the bin."

We don't have the final figures in. The Millers have the wheat custom cut by Frederick Harvesting out of Alden. They started cutting on us last Thursday and finished on Saturday. We are always amazed at how quickly it goes when a custom crew is involved. Back when we were farming full-time, it took a minimum of 10 days to get everything cut ourselves. It often stretched out further with weather delays and breakdowns.

You can barely see the third combine in the dust behind the grain cart.

 

But, when there are three combines in the field with 40-foot headers, things go quickly. (The one combine we owned at the end of our active farming (2022) was 35 feet. Randy says he thought that was big at the time.) 

With a custom crew racing on to the next customer's fields, you often don't get the scale tickets immediately, so we don't have the yield-per-acre numbers yet. 

But it was a year when we didn't get timely rains during the time when the wheat heads were filling, so we knew it wouldn't be a "pot of gold" year for our golden crop. It was a dry winter in our area. Until two weeks ago, we were in a swath of Central Kansas in extreme drought. Now, we're in an area classified as severe drought. 

Randy rode along with one of the combine operators a few times. Saturday morning, we spent quite awhile just watching the action.

Two combines were cutting during most of the time we were there, with a third broken down. 

But they eventually got it running, too, taking even bigger swaths through the fields. 

We were glad they got to our fields when they did. Weeds were starting to emerge, brought on by June rains. Those rains weren't beneficial to the wheat, but it was extremely helpful to alfalfa fields, pastures and fall crops. 

Still, we anticipate that the yields will be a little higher than we initially predicted. 

But time - and those scale tickets - will tell.

Speaking of pots of gold: Our neighbor Gary called us Saturday night and asked if we'd seen the double rainbow to the east. Our house is surrounded by trees, so we had not. But with his call, we hurriedly put on shoes and went down the road for a better view.

And what a view it was! 

 We had never seen a double rainbow that lasted so long and was so vivid. What a treat!

 We watched until the clouds swallowed up the rainbow.

 The photos don't do it justice. What a blessing to see an unobstructed view!

Bends and Folds

Sunset, looking south

A week ago at Sunday School, our facilitator handed each of us a white square of paper. Kristen said that the small group lessons we'd been using every week had taken an unexpected departure. While she read the Scripture for the week, along with some supporting materials, we were supposed to follow the instructions she'd copied for each of us and create an origami sea turtle. It was a pattern provided by the World Wildlife Federation.

Origami is a 6th century Japanese art form that transforms paper into shapes. The photo above shows what it was supposed to look like when we got done. Then there were three pages of detailed instructions. The first two pages are shown below:

 

There also was a third page of instructions. I didn't take the time to scan it and include it here because not a single one of us got past Step 5. 

It led to a lot of laughter and camaraderie. But it didn't lead to any marine sea turtles. It also led to me volunteering to find non-origami Sunday School lessons for as long as this particular series lasts. May 4, we were supposed to make a fish. May 11 is supposed to be origami sheep and May 18 is supposed to be an origami dolphin. You get the idea. I'm guessing our success on these creations would have been about the same as the sea turtle.

I've done some thinking about origami (and why we were all so bad at it) since the laughter died and we turned off the light in the Sunday School room for another week. I don't think I have any answers. Some in the class were convinced the instructions weren't definitive enough. Some suggested that a YouTube video with visuals to follow might have helped. Others of us were reminded of our less-than-stellar stint in high school geometry class. Those diagrams were looking just a little too much like geometry, so that self-preservation gene kicks in and you figure you might as well give up now. 

No matter the reason, there were a lot of crumpled pieces of paper on the table by the time we were done. The trash can in the Sunday School room will likely need dumped more quickly than normal after all our "sea turtles" and instructions were deposited there after class.

Springtime blooms and weather prompted more musing. One night not long ago, I went out to look at the sunset sky. While the western sky is usually the main attraction during sunset, that night, it was the south, east and north that provided more drama - more bends and folds (if we're thinking origami). 

Sunset colors looking northeast

From my vantage point, the thunderheads just made for a dramatic sky. I might have been a little envious of the rain that was likely falling under those far-away clouds. But I wasn't sorry to miss the hail that also was part of the evening drama. 

So what does this have to do with origami? I did some Googling and found a devotional by Megan Simons called "The Origami of Life." It said, in part:

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, can be incorporated into devotional practices in several ways. One common approach is to associate origami with the concept of transformation, as a simple piece of paper is folded into a more complex and meaningful shape, mirroring the way God shapes and transforms individuals. 

The origins of origami exist within creation itself, where God has planned careful fold patterns for leaves and petals inside of buds. He has created insects whose wings precisely fold and tuck beneath their protective shells. Recently, as I have wrestled through some difficult questions, I have found great comfort in God’s precise planning and careful attention to every aspect of his creation—to the origami of each life. 

Megan Simons

Looking east

When I'm in nature, I'm often struck by how perspective skews our view. That evening of sunset, I had a different perspective than the people who were getting pummeled by hail stones ... or those being blessed with rain. 

It was all in where we were standing. Some of us were in the midst of beauty on the horizon. Others were in the midst of a storm.

We got a little of that beneficial rain last Wednesday. We weren't expecting it, but it left behind about an inch of much-needed moisture.

It will be great for this year's wheat crop and for newly-planted spring crops. 

 

There was even a glimpse of some rainbow colors peaking through the clouds.  

 

Maybe we all gave up a little soon on the origami. (Maybe not. But it's possible.) One of my friends said she was going to take it home and ponder it more to see if she could figure it out. Her husband came back with Sunday with an origami shirt fashioned from a dollar bill. (He watched a YouTube video to do it.)

Another devotional by Rich Forbes shared this prayer at the end:

Father, I am but a crumpled piece of paper in your hand, and at times the suffering I experience is almost too great to bear. Lift me Lord and, with a simple fold, move me past this tribulation; bring me closer to the shape of Christ and reveal more of Him in me each day. Lord God, let your hand hold me until at long last you can place me before you and see me as beautiful and good... made in your image. Holy Father, I realize that I will suffer and face many trials in this life, and I ask that you give me the strength to endure them, and the faith to understand that you will not abandon me to them, or ask me to endure more than I am capable of. Shape me to your liking and take pleasure in your work, and I will seek you always.

 Maybe those crumpled papers weren't so hopeless after all.

Multi-Tasking

 

I don't believe I'll be entering this photo in a contest or using it for our family birthday calendar. But it's indicative of the quality of photo you get when you're using one hand to hold the end gate of the working chute open and clicking the camera shutter with the free hand.

It may not be a good photo, but I'm kind of guessing Dr. Bruce prefers it to getting a concussion from a falling end gate while in the "business end" of a bred heifer.

Last week, Dr. Bruce came for the first of a series of pregnancy checks for our cattle herd. The heifers were his first patients on the County Line this fall. These 25 ladies are first-time mamas who began life as part of the Class of 2019 calf crop two winters ago. 

They were a lot smaller when they went through the chute in the spring of 2019!

Now, they'll be delivering the first arrivals of the Class of 2021 to The County Line at the end of January and early February.

Just look at the tilt of that head: Believe me, ladies, I can feel this way about my annual ob/gyn appointment, too. 

But back to photo quality: As I learned last year, there is a marked decrease in photo quality when working cattle now that I have more hands-on assignments. With no hired man, I have added a few more roles on cattle-working days. Photographer is not one of them.

I started taking photos as we were gathering the heifers from the Palmer Pasture. 

Here's the ringleader of our little caravan, bringing the heifers along the fence.

So far, so good ...

But, when they began circling back around - away from the open gate - the camera went in the pocket, and I got more serious about urging the ladies to go the direction we requested.

That mission was accomplished. However, getting them to quit turning in circles and go through the open barn door was the next challenge.

I didn't take the camera back out of my pocket until I was guarding the gate while Randy took the first load to the farmstead. 

I didn't fare much better during our appointment with Dr. Bruce. 

Between encouraging the heifers to move the lane for their appointment, then holding the end gate up while Dr. Bruce did his exam, I didn't get many quality photos. And I then went around the table to record each heifer's ear tag number, along with the "degree" with which she was "with child." Most were 5 or 6 months along. 

On a few occasions, I snapped a few photos while Bruce gave vaccines, but alas, those hurried "clicks" didn't yield any memorable shots.

I'll have some other opportunities in the next couple of weeks. We're supposed to work the next group on Saturday - Happy Halloween farm style! That's if we can get the group gathered from the Ninnescah Pasture tomorrow. We'll see whether the rain curtailed those activities ... not that we're complaining about rain. The Rattlesnake Pasture round-up will on the agenda next week. 

My cattle working photos weren't anything to get excited about. But yesterday, we loaded up the three open heifers for their ride to the Pratt sale barn. Sometimes those extra cattle tasks put you in the right place at the right time.

I guess it all evens out in the end.

We also saw 14 whooping cranes on two different days this week. They were too far away to get a good photo, but I tried anyway. 

On Tuesday, they were at a circle just about a mile from our house as the crow - or whooping crane - flies. On Wednesday morning, they were on ground we farm. But again, they were half a mile from a road and my camera zoom just wasn't powerful enough.

On a trip to the pasture, I had Randy stop for a quick snapshot of the fall leaves with our dusting of snow.

So I guess I can't complain about the view - unless it's the one where I'm holding up the working chute end gate.

Sometimes, being at the right place at the right time keeps the vet from getting a concussion from a falling end gate. Other times, it brings you rainbows. Which is more important? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. I'm guessing Dr. Bruce would vote for the end gate - even if it doesn't yield the best photos.

For the Beauty of the Earth: A Random Post

During the past few weeks, I've captured sunsets and faint rainbows and the first flowers of spring. I haven't used them in a particular blog post or even on my Facebook page. Often, when I'm out in nature, one of my favorite hymns, "For the Beauty of the Earth," plays in a never-ending loop in my head. Then an email devotional from Guideposts came, and it seemed to fit this time of uncertainty, too. I don't want to forget these beautiful moments (or the random photo or two I've found as I've cleaned out cabinets), so I'm sharing them in a kind of random post today.

A Time to Think

Our lives are full of supposes.

Suppose this should happen or suppose that should happen;

 what could we do; how could we bear it?

But, if we are living in the high tower

of the dwelling place of God,

 all these supposes will drop out of our lives.

We shall be quiet from the fear of evil,

 for no threatenings of evil can penetrate

 into the high tower of God.

—Hannah Whitall Smith

A Time to Act

When fear comes, counter it with an affirmation of faith.
 

A Time to Pray

Lord, in a world filled with change and uncertainty You are my constant Hope.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 

Hebrews 13:8 NIV 

 (Guideposts email devotional - Spring 2020)

For the Beauty of the Earth

Can you find the rainbow? It's faint, but it's there.

For the beauty of the earth,

For the glory of the skies, 

 

 For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies.

 

Lord of all to Thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour,

Of the day and of the night, 

 

Hill and vale, and tree and flower,

 Sun and moon, and stars of light.

 For the joy of human love,

Brother, sister, parent, child, 

 Friends on earth and friends above,

For all gentle thoughts and mild.

 

For the church, that evermore

Lifteth holy hands above, 

Offering up on every shore

Her pure sacrifice of love.

 

For Thyself, best Gift Divine.

To our race so freely given, 

 

For that great, great love of Thine,

Peace on earth and joy in Heaven.

Lord of all to Thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise.