April Showers Bring Fall Corn?

If April showers bring May flowers, we hope May showers bring fall corn. (And those May showers sure don't hurt the wheat crop, alfalfa or pastures either!)

Randy started planting corn on April 24 this year, later than normal. I took these photos the afternoon of May 2, the second day when our part of the state had the chance of severe thunderstorms. Thankfully, we got 1.40" of rain, but missed the hail, tornadoes and high winds that other parts of the state experienced. It rained Randy out before he could finish the field, but he got done yesterday afternoon.

The rain certainly gave the newly-planted corn a boost. So does the nitrogen fertilizer Randy applies  to promote germination and early growth.

This year, we planted 280 acres of corn, a little less than last year. I'm sure that seems like small potatoes - or small sprouts - to anybody who has circles of corn. Since we are an all dryland farm, wheat remains our primary crop.

On a walk last Friday, we checked out the newly-emerged corn coming up in fields where he'd first planted.

Our walk also took us past a wheat field, where it was starting to head. The 2018 Wheat Quality Council's Hard Winter Wheat Tour was last week. And the 95 participants who traversed the state along six different routes found what we already knew: The 2018 wheat crop is behind schedule. Because most of wheat country has been in a severe drought since last October, the crop is shorter than normal and head size is smaller. 

Friday, May 4, 2018

The Wheat Quality Council's estimate for the 2018 Kansas wheat crop is 37 bushels an acre. Kansas Wheat reports that total production of wheat to be harvested in Kansas is 243.3 million bushels. If realized, this would be about 90 million bushels less than last year's crop and the lowest production in Kansas since 1989.

Monday, May 7, 2018

By Monday afternoon, many more heads were unfurled in the wheat fields.

My eternal optimist reports that the rains late in April and early in May should help some,  especially if we don't plunge right into summer temperatures. However, these days with 85-degree-plus temperatures won't do the crop any favors.

A Trip Down Memory Lane: Skyline Reunion

If I'm honest, I don't remember that very first day, walking into a brand new school as a fifth grader.

I know what I was wearing because my mom always took a photo on our first day of school. My sister Darci probably remembers without the photo cue, but not me.

Mom had made my olive green print dress, which I'd paired with white bobby socks and loafers. She put my hair in pin curls the night before, but even brushed out, the curls clung tightly to my head since I had a fresh home perm. As I boarded the school bus, I'm sure I had a bag full of new school supplies, including a Big Chief tablet, yellow No. 2 pencils and that coveted extra-large box of Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener.

Our DNA and many of the incumbent personality traits are already set by grade school. So even though I don't remember the actual moment of pulling open those heavy doors and walking through them, I'm sure my stomach was in knots and my heart was in my throat. The anxiety was likely tinged with excitement, but this was a big change in a 10-year-old's life. 

It was 1967 and the first day at Skyline Schools, a rural consolidated school just west of Pratt. I was walking into a classroom of strangers.

3rd and 4th grade class at Byers Grade School - I'm front and center! I was in 3rd grade at the time.

At Byers Grade School, where I'd attended 1st through 4th grades, my class had just 3 to 5 students, depending on the year. There were two classes in each room taught by one teacher, so we worked with other students, too.

Those familiar faces filled the school bus as we traveled toward rural Pratt. Before, I had only 3 1/2 miles to ride from my farm home to Byers. Now, it was closer to 12.

Evidently, my tendency to be taking the photo and not in it was alive and well in 5th grade, too! This was my 5th grade class at Skyline - minus me! Thanks to my mom for labeling it. I wouldn't have known some of them otherwise!
Bottom row: Tom Durall, Robbie Statts, Randy Pinkerton, Steven Campbell, Paul Petrowsky, Eugene Stotts.
2nd Row: LaTricia Pritchard, Cindy Blasi, Trella Konkell, Cheryl Hickey, Margo Bale, Betty Carson.
Back row: Mrs. Opal Hemphill, Judy Lee, Marilyn Lambert, Carol Beberstine, Darci Jones, Cindi Snyder, Tina Maphet, Lindi Snyder, Kay Brown

Once I got off the bus, my classroom at Skyline would be filled with new faces from Cullison, Coats and Sawyer. At least there was one familiar adult face. My 3rd and 4th grade teacher at Byers - Opal Hemphill - was the new 5th grade teacher at Skyline.

It's not that I didn't know the details about how Skyline came to be. My dad, Bob Moore, was president of the consolidated school board. Long before that opening day in 1967, he and his fellow board members had been touring the rural towns of Pratt County talking about the state-mandated consolidation and trying to build consensus on something that was inevitable. It wasn't always an easy "sell." Small towns love their school and look at it as their very life blood. And for good reason.

6th Grade Girls with Mrs. Bales - again, minus me!

But the Byers Hornets and Coats Bulldogs and Cullison Owls and Sawyer Eagles were going to become Skyline Thunderbirds. Their old school colors would be traded in for Columbia blue and white.

 

My dad and other board members had toured other schools, looking for designs and ideas that would ease the transition and provide the best possible education for students. So, yes, I knew all about Skyline because it had been a conversation around our dinner table for several years. But knowing about something and experiencing a big change are two very different things, especially for a 10-year-old, first-born girl who liked order and routine.

However, as with most other situations in my life when I've dreaded a big change, it turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Last Saturday night, April 28, we celebrated Skyline's 50th anniversary. In the gym where I'd sung the National Anthem in my basketball uniform before holding down the far end of the bench during girls' basketball games, 550-plus people came to celebrate the school and its role in making us who we are today.

 

Some just had to travel a few miles to walk back through the doors of their alma mater.

 

Others came from across the country. There were farmers and lawyers and doctors and accountants and pastors and the proverbial "butchers and bakers and candlestick makers." (Well, maybe not candlestick makers.)

In my 1975 Class Prophecy, someone predicted I'd become a New York Times reporter. But this  small-town girl was better suited to work at a regional newspaper, rather than a gig in the Big Apple, and that's fine with me.

Probably not a lot of those far-reaching prophecies came true. But we all came together Saturday night as a T-bird family pieced together by common memories and a place we called "home" for so many of our formative years.

I remembered some teachers who left a huge impact.

• It seemed I spent most math classes parked at Mr. Bisel's desk, where he patiently tried to explain algebra and geometry to me ... yet again. 
• I only typed 55 words a minute in Mrs. Kennedy's typing class. She'd be amazed at how quick I am on a computer today. And, boy, that job typing and mimeographing the Sawyer CWF's cookbook for a junior class fundraiser would have been so much faster with a word processor, but that newfangled contraption was still a few years away.
• I thought about Mr. Sittner, our science teacher. He was no pushover, and I was thankful for that when I got to K-State. This girl from a rural consolidated school could help girls from Kansas City with their chemistry.
• Mrs. Jones was the home ec teacher. Yes, it was called that back then. And she awarded me the Betty Crocker Homemaker Award, probably based on a written test. But, if truth is told and if we could have predicted the future, it should have gone to her daughter, Darci, or to Diana Hemphill, both of whom use their home ec sewing skills a whole lot more than I do these days. 
• My stint as yearbook editor was my first experience laying out pages and writing copy, something that eventually became my career.
• The reunion planners had organized an alumni band to play with the current T-bird band during the banquet. But I was afraid I couldn't remember the fingering on the saxophone. I don't think I've played it since walking out the door of the band room that final day. Instead, I joined in the impromptu alumni choir and sang the National Anthem yet again in the Skyline gym.

Some alumni have children who are also Skyline graduates. Some have grandchildren who are now Thunderbirds, too. Some of us have adopted new mascots as our children have made their own journeys through their school years. But on Saturday night, we were all Thunderbirds again.

My dad is the only surviving "founding father," or member of the original Skyline board.  He and my mom manned a memorabilia table and visited with former students, faculty members and friends.

In the crowded gym, I am sure I didn't see everyone. Facebook connects me with several of my Class of 1975 classmates, but it was good to see 14 of them in person and not scrolling down a computer screen. The eyes of those eager 5th graders were still lurking underneath a few more wrinkles as we greeted one another and "remembered when."

Class of 1975

My cousin, Dr. Justin Moore, was the emcee for the evening. He said it better than I could with his closing remarks. (It hardly seems fair that he's smart enough to be a doctor AND a talented writer. Read it in its entirety here.)

So much of life is temporary: what we do, who we love, our friends, our enemies, even our names. But where we come from is permanent. And just like a church isn’t its walls, where we come from isn’t just a dot on the map. For many of us, where we come from doesn’t even warrant a dot, just coordinates.

Where we come from really is the sum total and interaction of the people and experiences of our youth. Not geographic happenstance. ...

Once upon a time, people decided that it was worth their time and their money to give the kids of the little towns and farms of this county their own place to be proud of and their own place to be from, and it’s the reassuring knowledge that the voters, some of whom are in this room, but many of whom are no longer with us, approved their plan in a special election by a 3:1 margin. ...  Thanks to all the people who have poured their taxes and their careers and all their good intentions into the futures of the kids who attended school in this building.

I know I'm thankful, too.

***

Thanks so much to the Skyline Schools Foundation board led by President Lisa Befort for their work in organizing the reunion. The current staff and students at Skyline also made our evening a pleasure through their hard work.

Note: Several of these photos were pulled from Facebook and friends. Uncharacteristically, I took very few photos that night. I'm glad others did a better job than I did!

My, How Times Have Changed? Or Have They?

My mother-in-law Marie, Jean Newell Fritzemeyer & Marjorie Giedinghagen

In an old scrapbook, this photo was labeled "3 cooks for cattle round up day."

I didn't wear my apron or my crisp cotton dress for our latest cattle round up day. I may have been the cook, too, but I was breathing in more than soup from the slow cooker ...

Like dust from an old barn's alleyway ...

... and eau de toilette (I know lots of consumers are into "organic" these days. This was organic all right! That's what happens when you're trying to push baby calves into the trailer!

While the trio of cooks from the 1950s were busy putting together a meal, the fellas were rounding up and sorting the cattle.

L to R: Clarence Fritzemeier (Randy's Grandpa) Milton Giedinghagen, Ben Fritzemeyer, Melvin Fritzemeier (my father-in-law) & Harve Fritzemeier. Yes there are two different spellings on Fritzemeier - it's not a typo!

My, how times have changed!

I'm certainly not denigrating the role my mother and mother-in-law fulfilled as farm wives and partners back in the 1950s during the early days of their marriage. The times were different. And I've had reminders of that as I've been reading the final book in my book challenge - a book written in my birth year - 1957. (I'll talk more about the book challenge in another post, but just to name a few differences - making phone calls in a phone booth and a $90 weekly salary as a secretary.)

But even though gender roles during the cattle sorting, working and moving process may be different in 2018 than they were in 1958, for example, some things never change.


Mamas protest from Kim Fritzemeier on Vimeo.

Mama cows still protest being separated from their babies ...

... even if it's only for a short time and even if it's for their baby's own good!

Back when Melvin and Marie were first starting out, they raised horned Herefords.

Today, we still have Hereford blood in our herd, but it's provided by two polled Hereford bulls.

And we've added Angus genetics to our crossbred herd as well.

We still sort the baby calves from the mamas, but it's no longer a men's club doing the separating ... hence the organic matter on my jeans!

Some mamas form "picket lines" and protest when their babies leave for their doctor's appointments.

Mother and calf, 1952

They were just as glad to be reunited then ...

... as now.

 A woman may be the person handing the ear tagger and syringes to the chief cattle "worker" these days. But at many farms, it's probably the woman doing it all herself.

But some things on our Kansas farm haven't changed during the five different generations that have been living and working along the Stafford/Reno County line.

 

And that's the desire to do our job to the best of our abilities and to make a difference in our community - man OR woman!

***

And, this morning, it's time for more of that hands-on cattle work. We're moving heifers and bulls. Wish me luck! And Happy May Day!

The Birds and the Bees: Farm Style

I saw this graphic from Faith, Family and Beef while scrolling Facebook last week. It made me laugh. I agree with most of the bullet points, though at the County Line, we do "fire" bulls for being obnoxious and destructive - especially if that "insubordination" is directed toward humans.

But think about the rest of it: Wouldn't it be a sweet job to have room and board, health care and food provided for only a few months of work?

For all those fringe benefits, we do expect our herd bulls to do their job. That's why four of our bulls again went through a "job interview" last week with Dr. Dayul Dick from Prairie Vista Veterinary Hospital and Supply. (The fifth bull was the one we just purchased at Sandhill Farms production sale, so it had already been tested.)

Quality bulls are a big part of the beef business. It's a good management practice to test bulls before you turn them out into the pasture with the heifers and cows each spring. Bulls have no value if they can't perform. So Dr. Dick came to perform bull breeding soundness examinations.

First, Dr. Dick measured each bull's scrotum and examined it for defects.

He then needed to collect a semen sample using this contraption.
He set up a mobile laboratory on the hood of a pickup, smearing a sample on a slide and looking through the microscope.

With the first look, he was testing the semen for motility, its "swimming" ability to travel to the cow's egg.

Then he smeared the slide with a dye, which killed the sperm. He could then look at morphology, the shape of the sperm. He was looking for abnormalities in the shape, which could indicate a problem with the ability to breed.

After the fertility tests, the bulls were each given vaccinations to keep them healthy during their summer in the pasture. It's similar to giving our children vaccinations for their optimal health.

Vet assistant Liz also applied a pour-on dewormer.

While all the bulls passed the fertility test, there was a slight problem. Only one fit properly in the squeeze chute.

That called for some creative acrobatics by both Liz and Dr. Dick to get the samples they needed, as well as a strategically-placed steel pipe to keep the bull in position.

The bulls aren't the only factor in the "birds and bees" of a Kansas cattleman.

The heifers who will become first-time mothers next winter also have been getting some extra care.

Beginning in March, our 25 yearling heifers had their silage topped with MGA. MGA is melengestrol acetate, which suppresses the ovulation cycle for the heifers. For 14 days, Randy added the MGA to the silage and fed the equivalent of 1/2 a pound per head per day.

This is the first step in getting the heifers to come into estrus (or heat) at the same time. These young ladies were born in early 2017. In 2019, they will become mothers for the first time.

On Monday, we sent the heifers through the working chute for the next phase of their OB-GYN appointments.

There, they each got a shot of Lutalyse, which makes the heifers come into heat.

So why do we try to synchronize the heifers' cycles? We do it to shorten the calving season for the heifers, which saves labor at calving time. (Well, it saves some labor for the humans - not the mama cows.) Because heifers are first-time mamas, we check them frequently in case they are having trouble calving.

Randy also gave each heifer a vaccination to prevent respiratory issues and diarrhea. 

 

Then it was time for the "birds and bees" to happen. The heifers were put in a pen with the bulls.

Some 283 days later, the babies are supposed to arrive. So we will expect to get our first 80-pound bundles of joy next January 28 or so. 

The bulls are ready. The heifers are ready. And if all goes as planned,  the miracle of life begins yet again on the County Line.