From Planting to Harvest: A Review in Photos

June 21, 2022

 

Back in September, during planting, I began documenting our 2022 wheat crop.

September 2021

We began planting wheat on September 21, 2021, so I decided to use the 21st of every month to take a photo at the same location and post it to my blog and Facebook.

I patterned the concept after Hudson Cream Flour's Facebook page. ("Patterned" sounds better than "copied." Thanks for the idea, Tabra!) During the last growing season, Stafford County Flour Mills posted a monthly update on the wheat crop to its Facebook page. The mill - which is located in Hudson, Kansas, in our home county - produces Hudson Cream Flour. (It's the best flour there is, if you need a testimonial. They also have a Hudson Cream Flour Baking page on Facebook. Check it out, too!) They did similar reports in 2022. 

I decided to take my photos on the same day, mainly so I'd remember each month.

My June 21st shot at the same location revealed a stubble field. We harvested that field during the first week of harvest.

Here's a recap of the photos, without having to go back to each individual blog post. (Click on the photo collage to make it bigger.)

Since I always took the monthly photo on the 21st, it didn't reveal the whole story. Here's one from January 26, when we got a little snow on the crop.

We began our harvest the evening of June 13, and we are about halfway done. We had a stretch of long, hot cutting days but were halted when we got 0.25" of rain Tuesday evening. It didn't dry off during the day yesterday, and we got another 1.10" last night.

During many of those days, we had clear blue skies, with no clouds. But, as an amateur photographer, you always hope for a little drama in the sky to offset that beautiful golden wheat.

Father's Day provided some fluffy clouds for some photogenic shots.

Speaking of photogenic, that storm that rolled through on Tuesday evening provided plenty of drama, including a rope cloud that I captured in a panoramic shot.

The sky provided a free show. A brief shower had moved through about 5:45 PM, dropping a few sprinkles, and then quickly moved on. 

Still, the dramatic blue sky to the east was a startling contrast to the sunshine behind the weather system. It made for pretty photos as I delivered supper to the field.

We thought that was the extent of the weather, but just 30 to 45 minutes later, another system rolled though. 

We watched as the rope cloud developed from the west/southwest.

It constantly evolved as it moved across the plains.

My final panoramic shot was just as the cloud was about to go over me. I made my way back to the car, and then Randy called from the combine to get picked up as the rain began to fall. There was quite a dust storm as I drove a mile over to pick him up.

After more than a week of hot harvest weather, it appears that we'll be dodging raindrops for awhile. We have a custom cutting crew scheduled to come and help us finish. We'll see when we close the chapter on Wheat Harvest 2022.

Up A Creek: Wheat Harvest 2016

Progress on Wheat Harvest 2016 is up a creek ... so to speak. You know the old saying, "God willing and the creek don't rise." Well, our 4th of July had a rising Peace Creek, so there was no wheat cutting then or for the foreseeable future.

As the clouds moved in again Friday night, we finished up a field near our house. If you look closely (photos below), you can see weeds poking through the wheat. With more than 6 inches of rain since harvest began June 20, we are going to be battling weeds, muddy fields and downed wheat as we try to salvage the rest of the crop.

 

Yesterday, on the 4th of July, we surveyed the 275 acres of wheat we still have to cut north of Stafford. You don't have to look too hard to find the weeds in those fields.

We also don't have to look far to find hail damage. This particular location has gotten hail twice during harvest, so there's quite a bit of wheat on the ground. Some of the corn leaves have also been shredded there.

While the weather hasn't been conducive for wheat farmers, we did find a creature who is really liking the soggy weather.

The guys had to pull a wheat truck out of the field this morning. It's been sitting there since Friday night, since the co-op wasn't open over the holiday weekend. (There was no need. No one could cut wheat.)

Hopefully, the sun hasn't set on Wheat Harvest 2016 quite yet. We'll have to see what this week brings. Until then, it's hurry up and wait.

Sky High

From my vantage point, a summer sky (July 13) provided a beautiful backdrop to my trip to deliver supper and shuffle vehicles from one field to the other.

But, on the other side of the storm, an EF-3 tornado was romping through a rural landscape much like my own, toppling power poles, upending trees like Tinkertoys and tearing a family's get-away cabin into pick-up-stick-like pieces.

While I waited for the guys to get to my end of the field for their taco pizza supper, I took a photo of a sky that reminded me of an alien mothership, hovering over a neighbor's soybean field. A county away, a farmer was losing his soybean field to 165 mile per hour winds.

We give great value to eyewitness accounts. We want reports from the people who are there, recording history as it happens.

But as I watch beautiful Kansas skies, I have come to a realization. Our eyewitness account often depends on what direction we're facing. Context colors our experience.

Our experience may be standing right under the storm cloud as life tosses us to and fro at a whim. Or we may view the storm from a distance and not personally witness its fury. 

Life is like that, too. Unless we are personally experiencing the storm, we don't understand its every nuance. If we're not the ones being struck by the "lightning" of the storm, we can't really speak to the experience.

We can be empathetic. We can be sympathetic. But maybe our best response is just to listen to the eyewitness, no matter how tempting it is to add our perspective.

The Sky's the Limit

Whether it's sunrise or sunset or the blue expanse dotted with the marshmallow puff clouds of spring, I love sky watching. 

Sunset, April 19, 2015

Friday night, as I was driving home from a birthday party in Stafford, I stopped several times to take photos of the stormy sky. If I would have driven straight home, I wouldn't have gotten wet. But I also wouldn't have witnessed the ever-shifting majesty of the Kansas sky.

Zenith branch of the Kanza Co-op (HDR photo treatment), April 24, 2015

Even though I didn't get any lightning photos, I marveled at the beauty and the power of God's creation. I'm thankful we missed the hail and tornadoes and just got the beauty shots.

I saved a devotional that arrived in my in-box last week from Guideposts. These photos seemed made to illustrate it. 

April 24, 2015, Stafford/Reno County line, looking east

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.  Genesis 1:31

A Time to Think

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after winter.

 Rachel Carson

April 24, 2015, Stafford/Reno County line, looking northwest

A Time to Act

Look at the world with a vision magnified by the power of faith deep within you.

Sunset, April 19, 2015

A Time to Pray

Father, today I resolve to be a good steward of our world.

We Now Interrupt This Program

"We now interrupt our regularly scheduled program." Remember hearing those words as you were watching your favorite television show as a kid? It always seemed like it was at a crucial moment. You know, like wondering, "Will the Coyote finally catch the Road Runner? And I'm going to miss it because the president needs to tell us something?"

In some ways, you feel like that when there's a rain during wheat harvest. We got 0.70" of rain here at home yesterday evening, where we were cutting wheat. We'll see if we got more or less at other locations where we still have wheat to cut. (We are nowhere close to being done.)

Earlier in the day, the clouds dotted a bright blue sky and made for a beautiful Sunday afternoon ride.

 

The sky provided a picturesque backdrop as we approached the Zenith branch of the Kanza Co-op to take a load of wheat.

But, by 6:30 or so, Randy was racing to get as much cut as he could before the skies opened up.

It sure made for a pretty backdrop for the golden wheat. You have to look at the bright side, right?

Even more importantly, the rain gave the corn a good drink of water at just the right time. Some of the corn is tasseling. The rain and the cooler temperatures forecast for the beginning of this week should make for good growing conditions for the corn and for the alfalfa.

In the Face of Tragedy

A photo from our December 2007 ice storm. We were without electricity for 12 days.

The photos from the South Dakota blizzard are painful to see. One came through on my Facebook feed last night, showing dozens of cattle who had perished, revealed as the snow melted from a deep valley. 

I have a blogging friend, Robyn of The Ranch Wife Chronicles who had planned to go to the South Dakota Women in Agriculture convention last weekend. But her husband, J, whom she calls The Rancher, had a feeling. He thought that the predicted winter storm might be worse than anyone thought. 

This is one of those times when I'm sure The Rancher wishes he were wrong. They moved cattle around to try to position them as best they could for the coming storm. They were among the fortunate ones. They don't think they lost cattle, though they won't know for sure until they bring them off summer pastures and get an accurate count. But The Rancher's cousin lost somewhere between 15 and 20 cattle that they know of so far. Others of their friends, neighbors and colleagues lost that many or more.

In fact, some news reports say that ranchers lost between 20 and 50 percent of their herds. Besides the emotional toll, think about how that will impact their financial health this year and for years to come. 

Have you heard much about it on the national news? I haven't. That's a tragedy, too. 

The numbers will continue to evolve as the people of South Dakota dig out. However, as I heard from Robyn by email today, more stormy weather is forecast. So, ranchers are again racing around, trying their best to protect their herds and prepare for the unknown. 

Last weekend's blizzard was unseasonably early. Most ranchers hadn't moved cattle from summer pastures, which offered less protection than the winter counterparts.  The cattle hadn't grown their thicker winter coats yet, providing less protection from the elements.

Yesterday, I read a post by another South Dakota blogger, Just a Ranch Wife. She was not someone in my blog feed (though she will be now). She talked about the ridiculous comments that some people were making in the comment section of stories published in the Rapid City Journal and elsewhere.

There were comments that ranchers shouldn't have more cattle than they could house in a barn. There were comments that ranchers cared more about their big pickup trucks than their herds. 

The ignorance is astounding. The callousness of people who would rather criticize than commiserate is unfathomable to me. Why do people use a tragedy to push their own agendas?

Yesterday, someone from South Dakota shared a photo on Facebook. It showed the vastness of the South Dakota landscape, with fence posts barely peeking out of snow banks. It was from

Amber Bruce West's photo, along with this caption:  

Here's a picture of all the PETA animal rights people lined up to help out with finding, feeding, and helping our poor animals that survived the storm. Can you see them??? But by golly have a circus come to town and they are out in droves.

  As you can see, there weren't any PETA people in the photo - just miles of snow. 

Yes, farming and ranching looks easy when you are examining it from your computer screen. It's a lot tougher when you're again out on the 4-wheeler looking for cows and calves to save.

Tragedy has seemed to pile on top of tragedy this month. 

This week, I went to a funeral for a young man killed in an accident a week ago. He grew up farming with his family just to the east of us. He also left behind a wife and two little girls. I was struck by the words shared by his father-in-law during the message. 

"Our families want you to know that God didn't make this happen."

Also this month, my cousin's daughter, who is Jill's age, lost her husband and father of their 4-month-old twins.

It's not part of God's plan to take people away from loving families. It's not part of God's plan to harm animals and affect the livelihood of people who work so hard to care for His creation. 

But God is there to walk alongside us when we grieve and when we try to pick up the pieces of shattered lives. He weeps with us.

If you'd like to help the South Dakota ranchers, here's a link for a Rancher Relief Fund. 

***

For another blog from a South Dakota rancher, check out this one from Opened Door: Broken Dreams and Hearts on the Western Dakota Prairie. 

Rain Reigns

Into each life, some rain must fall.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thank goodness, Henry. Thank goodness. We were beginning to wonder after two-plus years of drought.

A total of 4.25 inches of rain fell on the County Line from Wednesday night into Thursday. We farmers would like to order rain like we order a Diet Coke. Maybe we didn't need the Big Gulp size all at once. But it sure helped quench our thirst for moisture. 

As we drove down the County Line last evening, Randy and I couldn't remember the last time we'd gotten 4-plus inches of rain all at once.

We were fortunate. We just got a Thomas Kincaid sunset illuminating storm clouds on Wednesday night, while North Central Kansas got tornadoes and hail.

We got plenty of wind, but not as much as my brother in Pratt County, who had an irrigation system overturned, as did a couple of his neighbors.

I realized after I looked at photos I took Wednesday night that I should have set a much quicker shutter speed. But the wheat field definitely demonstrated its dizzying resemblance to waves on the ocean during this time that "real" photographers call "the golden hour."

 Randy says the rain was ideal timing for filling wheat heads with grain.

However, in some places, the rain and wind knocked over wheat, giving the field a look of bedhead after a rough night of tossing and turning.

But it was like that only in areas of the fields.

This year, we'll have some wheat drowned out by mudholes. And that's OK. For the past two years, there have been no mudholes at all.

The ladybugs seemed to like the moisture Thursday evening.

 (I also found some ladybug larvae. I saw a photo in The Hutchinson News last Sunday and was surprised when I found one in our field, too. I don't think I'd ever seen that before. See photo below.)

The rain didn't just benefit the wheat crop. It also gave a boost to the corn ...

... and it helped fill waterways like Peace Creek and replenished grasses in pastures, where our cow-calf pairs are grazing this summer.

It gave an extra boost of growing energy to our alfalfa fields. A guy who checks oil wells in our area has been talking to Randy about this field south of our house. Randy planted it three years ago. With the lack of rain, we haven't ever gotten a good crop of alfalfa from it. However, Carl is saying that this is the year he'll get to see big windrows of hay and then lots of bales. We hope he's right.

Kansas truly is the Land of Ahs on a day after a rain.