Deja Vu, All Over Again

It was deja vu all over again for this Grandma. Kinley is quite the little kitchen helper.

She will even attempt to climb into the dishwasher to complete her unloading duties.

The dishwasher and kitchen cabinets provide a never-ending supply of diversions while Mom is cooking dinner. Who needs toys when you can crinkle the purple plastic covering the formula scoop then put it in a basket conveniently found in the cabinet?

It sent me in search of photos of another little girl who used to like to play in her Grandma Marie's kitchen cabinets.

And believe it or not ...

... I found them. Jill was closer to 15 months in these cabinet photos.

So I also had to find one that showed her at about 9 months old, Kinley's current age. I think this one of Jill was after a spaghetti meal. Kinley found out that she liked lasagna last week, so I guess they have more in common than their big blue eyes. Italian food is tasty, mother and daughter agree.

Jill - 9 months

Who can resist those eyes? Not me!

Kinley - 9 months

I had a few other favorite snapshots from the weekend.

Once she tired of the dishwasher, Kinley had to check out what was happening in the backyard while she waited on her Sunday morning pancakes before church.

She will be ready to play outside with this cute hat crafted by Eric's cousin, Jana. The trick will be keeping it on her head.

I have some cute photos of Kinley in her Halloween costume, but they have been embargoed until October 31st, Mommy's orders!

A Willie Good Weekend

Kinley talks to Brent on Skype.

I spent the weekend with all my kids. Sort of.

Kinley dialed up Brent on Skype Saturday night, so he was able to "join us" after he worked the Morehead State football game. We had all gotten texts from Brent mid-morning on Saturday, imposing an embargo on texts regarding the K-State/KU football game. He was DVRing it, and he didn't want any spoilers. As it turned out, it's pretty much impossible in this technological age to avoid scores of teams in the Top 10. (Not that any of us are complaining about the whole Top 10 thing!)

I also had an embargo of photos from the K-State football game. I took one blurry photo:

And then my camera said: "The battery is exhausted." I think the Jayhawk was exhausted after Willie's knockout punch at mid-field, too.

Thankfully, after the Wildcats warmed up, their battery was not exhausted. It must have been the cheering from home from this trio of Baby Wildcat fans that pushed the 'Cats on to victory.

Kinley, Henry & Hannah at Jill's & Eric's cheering on the 'Cats from home.

It was a great K-State victory. (Yes, President Schulz. I said a K-State victory, 56-16.)

From the September 1st game when I actually had a camera battery.

More to come from our weekend. It was a Willie good one.

Eyes Wide Open

I was rummaging through books at our church's Oktoberfest used book sale last year and found this Little Golden Book, Prayers for Children.

Little Golden Books were a part of my childhood, so when I was a young parent, I loved reading the familiar stories to my own children. There was The Shy Little Kitten, The Poky Little Puppy and The Little Red Hen, just to name a few. 

I don't remember Prayers for Children in my childhood library, but last year, with my new granddaughter on the way, I paid my money and took it home.

The copyright is 1952, and the moms illustrated in the book look more like June Cleaver with their circle skirts and high heels. It may seem out of sync in today's world of jeans- or sweatpant-wearing moms.

The little ones pictured on the front of the book also looked like they were  from my era growing up in the 1960s with little hats for Easter and dotted Swiss dresses in different hues for my sisters and me. Jill had little bonnets and lacy dresses, too, and Brent had a suit or two for Easter finery when he was a little boy.

Easter 1965, me at age 7; Easter 1967, me at age 9 with my whole family; Jill's first Easter, 1986; Jill & Brent also in Easter clothes, probably 1990? Wouldn't it have been great if I'd done a better job organizing and dating the thousands of photos I took?!

It's a much more informal approach to church clothes in 2012. Jeans are fine. So is a dress. People have come to discover it's not about what we're wearing.

As I paged through the Little Golden Book, I realized that while the clothes may seem old-fashioned, the prayers are just as relevant today as they were in the 1950s.

One of my favorites in the book is Father, We Thank Thee by Ralph Waldo Emerson. As I read the words, I thought about how we should open our eyes to the blessings all around us, each and every day.  I just started reading Ann Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts, for the second time. And, as she reminds me:

"I pay tribute to God by paying attention. ... Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing."

 Ann Voskamp in "One Thousand Gifts"                                                          

Celebrating today the ability to pray with eyes wide open - and the gift to do it in such a beautiful place as this.

Father, We Thank Thee

Words by Emerson, Photos by me

For flowers that bloom about our feet,

Father, we thank Thee.

For tender grass so fresh and sweet,

Father, we thank Thee.

 For the song of bird and hum of bee,

For all things fair we hear or see,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For blue of stream and blue of sky,

Father, we thank Thee.

For pleasant shade of branches high,

Father, we thank Thee.

For fragrant air and cooling breeze,

For beauty of the blooming trees,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For this new morning with its light, 

Father, we thank Thee,

For rest and shelter of the night,

Father we thank Thee.

For health and food, for love and friends

For everything Thy goodness sends

Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

***

If you are in the Stafford, Kansas, area on Saturday, October 6, you are cordially invited to the Stafford United Methodist Women book sale at 218 West Stafford St. Proceeds from the book sale go to mission projects, locally and beyond. It will be in the church basement from 9 AM to 4 PM Saturday. Maybe you'll find a treasure like Prayers for Children, too! There are tables full of hardcover and paperback books for adults as well. There are lots of other activities going on in downtown Stafford this weekend. Come join the party!

***

This is a reprint of my October post at the Lovely Branches Ministries website. Check out the other bloggers there!

Marketing Proposal

I have a new marketing scheme for the maker of Vet-R-Sem gloves. They could develop a niche market by visiting orthopedic doctors' offices and peddling their wares.

The gloves are used by veterinarians and ranchers for preg checking cows or for helping with difficult deliveries.

It says right on their packaging: "The veterinarian's choice for sensitivity and strength."And who needs sensitivity and strength more than a Kansas farmer with a broken wrist attempting to plant wheat?

The gloves have gotten daily use at our house the past 2 1/2 weeks as cast covers. They are just the right shape for sliding over a cast prior to a shower.

Add a little packing tape strapped to the top, and you have a waterproof cast cover. 

Pretty ingenious. Yep, it was my idea. It's a whole lot easier than trying to figure out how to tape a garbage bag over said cast. 

While Randy can't get his fingers down into the glove part, the plastic sleeves have served their purpose quite nicely, and he has avoided giving his cast a shower.

However, his cast looked like it could use a shower by the time we went to a follow-up appointment in Great Bend yesterday morning.

Randy's plan was to wear a sock over the cast when he did dirty jobs. However, it wasn't a fail-safe method. The cast was decidedly dingy by Randy's doctor's appointment yesterday morning.

The X-ray showed that the cast had been doing its job - dirt and all. The wrist is still in line. Randy was hoping to leave the doctor's office cast-less. I went to the appointment to make sure Randy confessed how busy he is and how much he's attempting to do, even with a cast.

Dr. Hildebrand grew up on a farm not too far from here, so I probably didn't need to "tattle" on my hubby. But, nevertheless, Randy is back in purple after a brief reprieve for the X-ray. He contemplated switching to camouflage or to red and black for the Stafford Trojans. But, in the end, he went with purple so he'll be game-ready for the Sunflower Showdown this weekend.

He was in a purple cast when we beat OU. He didn't want to take any chances.

And for you marketing execs at Jorgensen Labs? When you start visiting orthopedic offices and selling your gloves, remember you heard it here first. You're welcome.

With Apologies to Otis Redding

When Randy sat down to wait on the 100-gallon diesel tank to be filled the other morning at the co-op, that old Otis Redding song, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" flashed into my mind. (My mind is strange. I know it.)

So, with apologies to Otis Redding and his popular song, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay:"

Sittin' in the morning fog
I'll be sittin' there like a log
Watchin' the trucks roll in
And I watch 'em roll away again. Yeah.

I'm sitting on the edge of the slab.
Waitin' to get back in the cab.
Watchin' gas numbers roll
The bill will be quite a toll.

Sittin' on the edge of the slab.
Markin' time.
 
I'm sittin' on the edge of the slab.
Rain instead of fog would be fab.

Sittin' on the edge of the slab.
Markin' time.

It's amazing that I'm not in Nashville writing songs, isn't it? Or perhaps I've found my calling as parts runner, Meals-on-Wheels lady and part-time fertilizer/fuel hauler.

We have gone through a lot of fuel as we've been planting wheat. We use dyed diesel in our off-road vehicles (tractors). Dyed diesel doesn't have a road tax, so it is around 30 cents less per gallon. It is treated with a dye, so if someone is caught using the dyed diesel in a road vehicle, there is a hefty fine.

The pump at the co-op turns itself off when it reaches $250. Since that was only 69.5 gallons, we needed more to fill the 100-gallon tank on the back of the pickup.

We fill the tank at the co-op then take it back to the field to fill the tractor.

Randy had to run the card through again to fill the rest. Ca-ching!

The sad part? The 100 gallons fills just one-third of the diesel tank on the STX375 Case tractor pulling the disc. Yes, it holds 300 gallons. Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Ca-ching! That's about 2 days worth of fuel just for that tractor.

The drill tractor holds about 80 gallons of diesel, enough to drill for a day and a half.

You can even watch the fuel level drop from the cab of the tractor by watching the gauge on the right below. 

That wasn't the only thing we spent money on while we were at Zenith. We also had them fill the nurse tank (the white tank in the photo below) with additional fertilizer, also part of the cost of planting the 2013 wheat crop. Each tank of starter fertilizer costs about $2,400.  We use about one tank of fertilizer per planting day. (Maybe I didn't want to ask that question and find that out. Ah well! Too late now.)

Fuel and fertilizer make for hefty bills from the co-op. (Our bill doesn't come in a business-sized envelope. It comes in a bigger manilla one. Randy pointed out that our co-op bill last month was more than we paid for our house 27 years ago. Sad, but true.)

It may not be as fun as spending money on a book or a new skirt. But it's an investment we are making in hopes of a quality wheat crop next summer. Now, if we could just order a nice, soaking rain. That would be priceless.

"Sow?" What's Up?

"Plant into the dust, and your bins will bust." I'd never heard the saying until I read it in The Hutchinson News last week.

I don't know whether it's an adage from The Farmer's Almanac or just wishful thinking from one of farm country's eternal optimists. But we are among the South Central Kansas farmers who are putting the old adage to the test again this year.

We started planting - (or sowing or drilling, depending on your terminology) - our 2013 wheat crop on September 21 and are still putting wheat in the ground. The chances for rain showers passed us by yet again, though we had several days of overcast skies that looked promising. I think we had two drops and a bug in the rain gauge after a brief shower Friday afternoon.

Randy says the dust is hanging in the air as he and our neighbors put the winter wheat crop in the ground. We are coming off our second straight year of drought conditions.

This summer has been the driest since 1936. At one point, three-quarters of the land area in the 48 contiguous states was experiencing drought conditions. As of last week, 20 percent of the country was still experiencing “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. Kansas is one of those places.

BUT, if you don't plant, you don't have a crop. That's for sure. So, we are planting.

The roles have changed somewhat this year. Yes, I'm still the chief go-fer and chef. But, in an effort to keep Randy's purple-casted wrist out of the heavy lifting, Jake has done most of the planting this year. Randy has been driving the tractor with disc ahead of the drill.

So Jake has filled the drill with wheat ...

And he's added fertilizer to the tank on the back of the tractor from the nurse tank after Randy or I travel to the co-op for regular fill-ups.

As with every planting season, I think about the optimism that seems to be part of the fabric of every farmer. They put a seed in the ground and then wait like a kid on Christmas morning. They slow down as they pass a planted field, just waiting for that first glimmer of green. And then the miracle begins again for yet another season.

Sow? What's up? Hopefully, some wheat will be coming up soon. And it would be ideal if while the wheat is coming up, a little rain would come down. 

(For more detailed information about planting wheat, click here for my blog post from 2010. And, my blog title for last year was Dusting. Same song, second verse.

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.