The Murmur of the Wheat

At church Sunday, a friend handed me a bookmark she'd found stashed away. She knew I'd love the poem, and she was right. (Thanks Gerry Ann!)

The wheat has been doing plenty of  "murmuring" as strong southern winds blew Harvest 2017 right on into South Central Kansas. Here's Exhibit A, a video I shot last night after delivering supper to the field:

Admittedly, part of the sound is the wind rushing past the camera. But listen for the rustle, too. It sounds a little like the legs of corduroy pants rubbing together. (Not that I'd know that sound or anything!)

We started harvesting wheat Monday afternoon (June 12). The strong southernly winds dried down the KanMark variety first. So far, it appears to be an average crop, though test weights have been really good.

Brief rain showers brought the cutting to a halt Tuesday evening.

Randy likely won't be able to start cutting quite as early today because of the rain. (And the wind doesn't seem to be howling this morning for the first time in four days!)

But the clouds sure made for some pretty photos last evening. (You have to find the silver lining, I suppose, when you're stopped in your tracks when you've barely gotten started!)

We'll likely be back at it later today. When wheat fields near harvest, they seem to do more than "murmur" to farmers. They give a full out "siren song," enticing them to fire up the big machines and bring in the harvest.

Note: The bookmark was from the Kansas Wheat Commission. It doesn't have a year on it. Here are both sides. If you click on the photo, you should be able to read it more clearly.

And Happy Flag Day from the County Line!

Check Please!

Check please!
I'll gladly take a "check" when it involves riding 4-wheelers on a beautiful summer morning ...

... especially when it's with this guy!

The "check" involved trips to two pastures to see if the cattle were doing OK in their summer vacation spots. The fences were in place, and the calves and their mamas seemed to be thriving.

We did find an extra inhabitant. (The bull on the left in the photo below was an uninvited guest. I never would have known. He looked right at home to me.)

A neighbor's bull seemed to think we were having a better party on our side of the fence, so he joined in.

While we were waiting on reinforcements to arrive, we took the 4-wheelers down to a bridge for another photo op.

But after our best efforts to encourage him to part with his new friends - our cow-calf pairs and our own bulls - he wanted to make himself at home. Even with two more 4-wheelers added to the round-up crew, we eventually gave up, and our neighbor called a cowboy to round him up and take him home.

But really: Who'd want to leave this place?

The dam at the Ninnescah is always a picturesque place.

But so are the venues with no rushing waters.

Randy sometimes teases me about the "flowers" I like. But at least he didn't call these pretty pinkish-purple flowers weeds. (I couldn't find them on my online Kansas wildflower guide, so if you know what they are, please let me know.)

As the day got a little warmer, the cattle decided to take a swim. Who could blame them?

But we still had one more location to check. Our pasture on the Rattlesnake is lush after our spring rains.

Pretty views of the creek were a lot easier to find than the cattle.

They were trying to escape the heat and the flies by hiding out in the plum thickets

I think I would have preferred a dip in the water.

Into Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall

Into each life, some rain must fall.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh Henry! I suppose you're right. But it would be nice if it didn't fall on freshly-swathed hay.

Don't get me wrong: Many times, we are thankful for rain. And I know some of our farm friends in other states would gladly take an installment of rain to break their drought conditions. So I truly should not complain.

However, much of our first cutting of hay has had four rain showers on it. Yes, count them: 4!

 

Randy custom bales some hay for a neighbor. He got the neighbor's field done before 0.80" of rain fell during mid-afternoon last Saturday. Earlier in the week, we'd already had between 0.30" and 1 inch of rain on the hay. Then Sunday afternoon, we got another 0.10" shower. Then on Monday, the humid day wasn't conducive to drying it out either.

Before he got going again, Randy gave it the "feel" test (demonstrated in the first photo of this blog post). But a more accurate moisture test is completed with a hay probe. Before Randy got rolling full steam ahead, he completed one round bale. He then stuck the probe in the bale to test the moisture. This one was 14.2. If it were above 18, he'd wait until it dried down some more. 

Yesterday afternoon, he got rolling again after it finally dried out enough. He kicked out 130 bales, and then we got another 0.25" of rain. In one field, he had two more rounds to go before it would have been finished. Oh well! There's nothing that can be done about it. 

People always want to know when harvest will begin. And, if they are talking wheat harvest, we'll probably be looking at next week some time.

But another kind of harvest - alfalfa - is already underway ... complete with stops and starts and false alarms.

Let's hope it's not a foreshadowing of wheat harvest!

At That Awkward Stage

What do ripening wheat fields and junior high students have in common?
They both go through an awkward stage.

A week ago, I told Randy that the wheat was at that ugly duckling, in between stage. Earlier this spring, the fields were vibrant, verdant green. Soon, they will be a striking golden sea of movement in the Kansas wind.

But, for now, they are a motley mix of green and gold.

On Saturday, against a blue sky, they were already making the transformation. Just like with junior high kids, you think that awkward stage will never end.

Then, all of the sudden, they blossom with newfound maturity. 

Still, the wheat has a little maturing to do. When Randy probed the kernels, they were at a soft dough stage. After a dry winter, we had thought that the harvest would be early. However, abundant spring rains and cooler temperatures have slowed down the march toward harvest in our neck of the woods. It doesn't look like we'll be cutting this week. That's good, since I'm scheduled to go to Nebraska for a church conference later this week.

Even with the mix of green and gold lending a kind of "grungy" look to the wheat head, it was pretty against a stormy sky as I came home from church meetings last Wednesday evening.

It was the very definition of beautiful, don't you think?

Montana isn't the only Big Sky Country!

Backdoor Neighbors Hard To "Swallow"

"On the Banks of Plum Creek" was just one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books among my childhood favorites. We are writing our own story "On the banks of Peace Creek."  Peace Creek is less than half a mile from Randy's childhood home. Our cattle spend time in what we call the Peace Creek pasture. Our daily tasks take us over the bridges that mark the various crossings for the meandering creek. .

Peace Creek has an influx of new neighbors. No, there's not a sudden population boom of people on the Stafford/Reno County line. But we do seem to have a whole lot of birds.

 

We were on an excursion to see if I could find a rainbow. The sun had come out after a rain, and it seemed like the right conditions. I may not have found a rainbow in the sky, but we certainly found a bevy of barn swallows.

 

We parked at one of the bridges over Peace Creek so I could take photos with the deep blue sky and storm clouds in the background. Before long, the air was filled with soaring and sweeping barn swallows, who didn't seem to like our invasion of their space and protested rather loudly.

Randy climbed down the banks and took photos of the nests. They completely lined one side of the bridge buttress.

The Audubon Society says:

One of our most familiar birds in rural areas and semi-open country, this swallow is often seen skimming low over fields with a flowing, graceful flight. It seems to have adopted humans as neighbors, typically placing its nest in barns or garages, or under bridges or wharves; indeed, it is now rare to find a Barn Swallow nest in a site that is not man-made.

None of the bridge dwellers were ready for their close-up, as old film star Gloria Swanson famously told Mr. DeMille. But I had a couple of photos of them from 2015. Until then, I hadn't realized how pretty they are. They usually dart around so quickly, catching insects mid-air, that I've never seen their pretty plumage.

"If swallows nested in farm buildings, it meant well-being and good fortune for the owners. People believed that the presence of these birds protected farm animals from diseases and curses and buildings from fires." 

From Spring Alive

We can use all the luck we can get, I suppose. And while we don't mind the swallows who've taken up residence under the bridges, we aren't as fond of two persistent ones who seem determined to build a nest over our back door.

You'd think they'd get the message after both Randy & I have knocked the nest down multiple times.

May 2017 - You can see some of the nest-building materials on the bird's beak!

But, no, they keep collecting material to add. And I don't really appreciate the dive bombing either. We were here first!

Though we had to settle for rainbow colors on birds and banks instead of an actual rainbow, we found plenty of beauty on our afternoon drive along Peace Creek.

Sometimes, the journey doesn't go as planned. But there can be just as much joy in a detour.