A Kernel of the Process: Cleaning Seed Wheat

 

"On the road again
Can't wait to get on the road again ..."

With all due respect to Willie Nelson, I have lost track of the trips we made to Miller Seed Farms in the last couple of weeks. (One of my trips was when Randy left his phone in a truck, but who's counting?)

You can't beat the scenery along the way. Rains have made the pastures a vibrant green. Blue skies dotted with fluffy white clouds made it absolutely "necessary" to make a brief stop for a photo op.

And, yes, I still arrived on time.

I'm not the only one around here who likes to plan ahead. Randy is already looking toward planting our 2017 wheat crop. Before planting this fall, we take the wheat we stored in on-farm bins during harvest time to get cleaned and treated before wheat planting.

Randy uses an auger to move the wheat from the bin into the truck. The tractor's PTO runs the auger.  After the truck is full, he tarps it and takes it to Miller Seed Farms. As seems to be a recurring theme this summer, we had a breakdown during the process. But, thankfully, the shaft on the auger held together until most of the seed wheat had been taken out of the bin. (This morning, before the temperature soars to the 100-degree mark, the guys are going to work on taking apart the auger. Hopefully, it will be an easy fix.)

We had a different kind of wheat stored in another bin (but I wasn't there to take photos at that time).

Once at the seed farms, the first stop is the scales. Just like at the local co-op, we need to know - and the seed farm needs to know - how much grain was trucked in.

We brought wheat in both the tandem truck and the semi.

Farmers may store their own wheat and plant it for their next crop, but only for their own use.

This year, Randy saved two varieties at harvest time, KanMark (a K-State release) and WB 4458 (a WestBred variety) to plant for seed wheat for our 2017 crop.

 

We have our wheat treated with an insecticide - Cruiser - and a fungicide - Vibrance Extreme. This is an extra expense, but we believe it will get the 2017 wheat crop off to a good start. Detractors worry about the amount of chemicals that go into the mix. However, only 0.48 ounce per bushel of Cruiser is used, while 1.68 ounce per bushel of the Vibrance product is used. Think about a little bottle of eye drops (usually about 0.5 ounces). Adding slightly more than 2 ounces to a whole bushel of grain is really not much!

Once the wheat is cleaned and treated, it's loaded back into our trucks for the trip back to the on-farm storage bin.

This fall, we'll also pick up some certified seed from Miller Seed Farms. This year, Randy reserved more KanMark and WB 4458 to plant for the 2018 seed wheat. At wheat planting time, we'll pick it up in sacks. The journey toward another wheat harvest has already begun! (I started the blog post with a Willie Nelson tune. Cue The Lion King's "Circle of Life" to end it!)

All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

One evening, I drove by the huge mountain of milo on the ground in Stafford and saw a line of birds perched on top of the grain. Others were lined up along a nearby power line.

I thought to myself, "I'll bet those birds have been eating at the all-you-can-eat milo buffet and are taking a little time to let their food digest." (Yes, I have a vivid imagination, but I'm no Doctor Doolittle: I definitely don't talk to the animals.)

Around here, we saw plenty of birds eating their fill from the unharvested fields of milo. (It's a little hard to see, but all the little black dots in the blue sky were barn swallows who were dining at the milo field.)

But some of birds went the lazy route and dined at the all-you-can-eat buffet. None of that tiresome hunting and gathering for them, no sirree.

While there are plenty of places in Kansas with rolling hills, my area of Central Kansas is fairly flat. But we have our own version of hills these days.

All across this part of the country, co-ops are having to store grain on the ground. In Stafford, besides the milo pile east of the co-op (pictured at the top of the post), they've begun another pile north of the highway.

There are two bunkers of corn. One has been covered and is protected from the elements (and hungry birds).

They are still dumping trucks at the other corn pile, though they are also trying to load out some of the grain.

Even in a rural community, the storage method is not without its detractors.

I have heard more than one person complain about the grain dust generated when harvest trucks dump outside in the brisk Kansas wind.

I certainly understand people who struggle with allergies. My husband and my son are two of them (and me, to a much lesser degree). Outside storage is nobody's first choice - the producer, the co-op or the community.

I'm sure the co-op is thankful for dry weather this fall. Last fall, there were repeated rains on the unprotected grain. And, even with no rain, there's some inevitable quality loss and deterioration during on-the-ground storage.

I, for one, am thankful for a plentiful, bountiful harvest.

In Stafford, there are probably 1.5 million bushels of corn and milo on the ground. Believe me, nobody would choose to store in the neighborhood of $7.6 million dollars of grain on the ground. There's just no other place to put it.