Raindrops on Roses ... errr .... Wheat

"Raindrops on wheat fields" just isn't as catchy as "Raindrops on roses" from the song in The Sound of Music. But rain was definitely among this weekend's "favorite things," as the song says.  Put all those raindrops together and they totaled 2.10 inches of moisture.

It was a timely rain for our 2016 wheat crop, which is "heading." That means it is producing wheat kernels. An old wives' tale - or, probably more accurately, an old farmers' tale - says that harvest will be 6 weeks after the wheat is headed. If so, it could be an early harvest this year, depending upon how much more rain we get and how warm it gets in the next few weeks.

 

The rain should help fill more kernels and make the plants grow a little taller. The yellowish-brown places in the field still show that the crop was stressed due to lack of moisture before this life-giving rain. Back to that folklore thing ... Wheat is said to have nine lives, kind of like cats. The rain will help, but it likely won't fully recover. We could definitely use more rain, but we're thankful for the moisture we did receive.

My lilacs lapped up the extra moisture, too.

I have been waiting several years to have lilacs in my yard again. After an unfortunate herbicide accident, I have been missing the fragrant bushes. Randy replanted some several years ago and they finally decided to bloom this year.

With the rain and lilacs, it smelled like springtime and was better than any perfume.

I am not much of a gardener, so I appreciate the flowering plants that return, year after year ... especially when "kissed" with a gentle, soaking rain.

Into Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall

"Into each life, some rain must fall." So sang Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots back in 1944.

Could we please have ours now?  Our wheat could use a healthy drink of water.

Randy thinks the 2016 wheat crop looks good, but it definitely could use a rain. However, unlike California and other western climes, none of Kansas is currently on the U.S. Drought Monitor. That's good news for us.

Still, with all the warm temperatures and the strong winds that have intermittently appeared during the last few weeks, we could definitely use some rainfall as we move closer to Harvest 2016.

There's an additional concern with the warm temperatures. If it stays warm for an extended period of time, the wheat crop could break dormancy and start to grow, which would make it vulnerable to a late freeze if a cold snap hits in late March or early April, as it so often does.

Wheat at the golden hour

That's a whole lot of "ifs," isn't it? As Randy is fond of saying, "There's a long time until harvest."

But the wheat fields sure looked pretty during the golden hour ...

... and at sunset.

The Journey Begins: Wheat 2016

As the leaves and grasses begin their fall wardrobe change to yellows and browns, it seems counter intuitive that a blanket of green begins to cover Kansas fields.

While the rest of the world is preparing for winter, a new crop is beginning a 9-month journey from planting to harvest. Tender wheat blades erupt from brown soil, like soldiers in a row.

We started planting our 2016 wheat crop on September 24. We got a  total of 1,559 acres completed last Tuesday evening, October 6. We planted 200 more acres for 2016 than we harvested this year.

All but the latest planted fields are coming up, despite dry conditions. But it desperately needs a big drink of water. A nice, gentle, soaking rain over several days would be ideal. (We started putting our final cutting of hay down on Friday, so we've done all we can to entice it to rain!)

During the planting "marathon," we added 600 miles to the white pickup's odometer. By "we," I mean mostly "me" as I hauled fertilizer tanks and fuel to fields (and saw my fair share of sunrises and sunsets in the meantime.)

 There will likely be many twists and turns before harvest in June 2016 - whether we're talking weather conditions or market volatility. That's just part of farming.

Only when we look in the rearview mirror after next year's harvest will be know whether we've made the right decisions - to plant or to wait on rain, how many acres to devote to the crop, what wheat varieties to plant ...

 

Right now, there are more questions than answers. But I suppose that questions are as much a part of life as the seasons and the mystery of a fledgling green crop emerging as the rest of the world gets dressed for fall.

Back in the Bin

In 1,352 blog posts, I've never written about binning seed wheat. How did that happen? At harvest time, I guess I've been too busy serving as chief go-fer and making and transporting meals to go down to the bins and take photos. Since 2010, there have been five other opportunities to chronicle our seed wheat's journey from on-farm storage bin to Miller Seed Farm for cleaning and back home again to the bins.

But somehow in those millions of words and thousands of photos, I've missed recording it for posterity. Until now.

Farmers may store their own wheat and plant it for their next crop, but only for their own use. During harvest this summer, Randy saved two varieties: 1863 (a K-State Wheat Alliance release) and Cedar (a WestBred wheat variety). Each year, Randy has specific fields from which we harvest the seed wheat. Usually, he plants that wheat fairly close to the farm headquarters, where we have the capacity to store 2,100 bushels in on-farm storage in two different bins.

After the wheat came back from Miller Seed Farms, the guys hoisted the truck bed up and opened a hatch in the center of the truck bed, just raising it enough to let a slow, steady stream fall into the rubber trough.

An aside: Every time I see the back end of our old white truck, I have to smile at the irony of the "I Like Cotton" bumper sticker. The closest we've gotten to cotton production around here is through wearing jeans. But the bumper sticker came attached when we purchased the truck several years ago. So there it stays.

The wheat is that color because it's been treated with Cruiser insecticide and Vibrance Extreme fungicide.

I should have stepped back a little ways to show that the tractor was running the PTO that makes the auger run. (If you use your imagination, you can see a tiny portion of the tractor in the shadow on the lefthand side of the photo above.) The white rod was attached to the tractor and then to the auger, where it provided power for making the auger run.

The auger is used to transport the wheat back into the storage bin, where it will stay until we're ready to plant wheat in late September and early October.

Because Miller Seed Farms gets so busy closer to planting time, we schedule our wheat cleaning early. That way, it's ready to go when we are.

Photo from 2013 wheat planting

Wheat planting is probably about a month away.

And then, we'll again begin the 9-month journey toward harvest.