Fall Bounty

I took my first "vacation" shot a mile after we left home last week. Admittedly, I take a lot of photos. But unless it's a departure selfie of Randy and me, I usually get a little further down the road.

But, as we departed for a trip to Eureka Springs last week, I noticed the eastern sky and I just couldn't resist. I sent our kids a text to that effect. Our son-in-law texted back: "Pretty, but hopefully you can make it a few more miles before the next picture or it will be a long trip!"

For the record, I did make it to Independence, Kansas, before getting my camera out again. (I will have more photos from our trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in upcoming blog posts. I don't like to post photos to Facebook while we are gone, and it takes awhile to edit photos and write about our adventures.)

I had another reason for my premature snapshots. Randy had told me the milo would likely be cut while we were gone. And another confession: I don't take nearly as many photos of the farm as I did when we were actively farming. 

The milo field at the corner south of our house had been pretty for weeks, but I hadn't ever taken the time. It was now or never, so I had Randy pull over the at half-mile line for a few photos.

And, indeed, the milo was cut while we were gone.  

The average yield for milo raised on our farmground was 110 bushels per acre. Kudos to Tye and Todd: That's the best milo we've ever had.

Also while we were gone, our calves from the Class of 2024 were weaned and averaged 638 pounds apiece. Tye and Todd arranged to sell the feeder calves (ours and theirs) directly to a feedlot.

Pretty sweet, huh? We didn't have to deal with any breakdowns or other harvest issues with milo. We didn't have to round up the cattle from summer pasture and do the sorting of mamas and babies. This retirement gig is all right.

 

Mountains: Kansas Style

On trips to Colorado, this native flatlander Kansan is always searching the horizon for the first glimpse of the mountains. Even as a child, I remember the anticipation, searching for the shadowy hint of the peaks against the sky.

This fall, as we've driven into Stafford, my farmer has been scanning the scenery, too, watching to see the piles of milo and corn develop into their own farm-country version of mountains. They may not be Pike's Peak. But they are pretty impressive nonetheless.

We haven't raised milo for the past three years, but we have watched the milo mountains grow this fall at both the Stafford and Zenith locations of the Kanza Co-op. (It was a great year for milo, so, as Murphy's Law would have it, we didn't raise any.)

 

As of October 26, the Kanza Cooperative, where we haul our grain, had corn receipts of 8.2 million bushels and milo stores of 1.2 million bushels. Kanza Co-op has 10 locations in South Central Kansas.

There at two on-the-ground milo piles at both Stafford and Zenith, two of Kanza's branches. To me, they look a little like one of those sand art projects, but we'd need a mighty big jar to contain them.

Milo is having a bit of a revival as a fall crop in Kansas. Last year, Kansas farmers sold milo (AKA grain sorghum) to China. In fact, in 2014, more than 85 percent of the U.S.’s sorghum was shipped to China.

Last month, Kansas welcomed six grain buyers from South America. They went to several Kansas locations to see how milo is turned into livestock feed, fuel for vehicles and food for human consumption. The six buyers from Colombia and Peru toured milo country from Texas to western and central Kansas.

Portable unloading auger at the Stafford branch of the co-op

In Kansas alone, 3.15 million acres were planted to milo, up 17 percent from 2014, according to the October report from the Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service. Kansas production is forecast at 258 million bushels, up 29 percent from last year. Additionally, sorghum has caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy, which, earlier this year, announced providing $30 million in funding for research on better varieties of sorghum – such as for drought tolerance and better biofuels.

Bunker filled with corn, Stafford branch, Kanza Co-op

In addition to the milo piles, the Kanza Co-op has bunkers filled with corn at four of its locations. (Our County Line dryland corn was a bust, but irrigated corn in this region did well this year.)

Three of the four piles of grain at the Stafford branch of the co-op

It's even more unusual to have piles of grain on the ground at the Zenith branch, where we take the majority of our grain.

 

But there are two milo piles there, too, and we see a few fields still left to harvest in our area. 

After harvest, the piles will likely be trucked away, leaving us with our flat landscape once again.

Harvest Sprint

When I drove by the silage field after my parts run, it looked a little like scattered whiskers left behind on a clean-shaven face. The 2012 silage harvest came and went without me - and without my ever-present camera. Unlike wheat harvest, it's not a marathon, but a sprint.

It hasn't always been that way. For years, Randy's family and a neighbor family did the job themselves. When Randy was young, they had a one-row, pull-type silage cutter. Then they upgraded to a two-row, pull-type silage cutter. They each provided a tractor, one to pull the cutter and the other to use to pack the trench silo.

They each provided a truck to haul the cut silage from the field to the silo. And the wives provided a harvest meal for the four- to six-man crew. Randy says it took two days to get everything ready. It took a week to get both family's silage cut and in the silos. And then it took another two days to get everything cleaned up.

That's a little different than hiring Sallabadra Harvesting to cut our 23 acres of silage. They came in with a crew and got it cut, hauled and packed into the silo in just about 3 hours

We grow silage (also known as forage sorghum) for cattle feed. This particular variety is dual purpose: It has both grain and forage (or roughage), both of which are important to the cattle's diets.

During this second year of drought, the chopped silage filled only about half of the trench silo.

2012 silage crop

Compare that to 2010, when the silo was filled to overflowing, and we sold our "leftovers" to a neighbor.

2010 - The silage came all the way to the fence, about where I was standing to take this year's photo, labeled above.

Still, we are glad to have the silo full enough to feed the cows that will calve again in late January and February.

It may not look like much to you and me. But the cows seem to like it just fine.

Since I missed getting photos of this year's harvest, check out this step-by-step pictorial  from 2010 about the whole process - from start to finish. And here's another look from last year, which was also impacted by drought.