Connecting from My Little Corner of the World

 

As I've said before, the creative person who wrote the Skyline High School Class of 1975's Prophesy for our 26 members predicted my future as a journalist at The New York Times

It didn't turn out that way. But I've certainly done my share of writing in the 46 years since I left good ol' Skyline High. (Oh my goodness! That math caused a bit of a GULP. It's been 46 YEARS! Yowzah!)

While my writing has been centered on the Kansas plains, it's still brought me some connections to far-off places. 

Earlier this summer, I got a request from Professor Helmut van Emden, Emeritus Professor of Horticulture, The University of Reading, School of Agriculture, Policy & Development, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6EU, UK & School of Biological Sciences.

His Google search for alfalfa harvest in the States netted a photo from a July 2016 Kim's County Line. In his email, he asked for permission to use it for an article he was writing for the journal, World Agriculture. If I agreed, he asked for a higher resolution photo and wanted to know how to credit my work.

I always appreciate when people ask permission. Sometimes, I'll see someone has "appropriated" one of my photos for their own Facebook page or some other use. I usually don't care, as long as they share attribution and don't imply it's their own image. Lots of times, that doesn't happen. 

But it's been fun to connect with people all over the world in small ways when people do take time to ask permission.

Back in 2019, I got an email asking for permission to use this owl photo. Here's her request:

Hi, 

Recently, I ran across your blog featuring a photo of an owl.  

I am currently writing an informational booklet for 5th graders in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.  The booklet features public domain photos to illustrate the 'science lesson' of the booklet.  

I've not run into a good public domain photo of a squinting owl, until I found your photo. 

I'm wondering if you'll allow me to use your photo in my booklet.??

The booklet is about 24 pages, published in Kenya.  There will be about 1,000 copies of the book printed, and then distributed among the schools of Missions of Hope International.  (http://mohiafrica.org/)  The books are not sold.  The printing costs are paid for by donations to the mission.  

Thank you for considering this.

LeeAnne Forman

 

  

That particular photo was from a 2011 blog post. I granted her permission, but I also asked her to tell me something about herself. Here's what she wrote back:

 

I am a teacher from Gresham, Oregon and about 15 years ago a friend of mine (who is a life-long missionary in Kenya) asked if I would come to teach the teachers in their little mission school in the slums.  The students live in the slums, as well as most of the teachers.  The teachers were simply high school grads and didn't know a thing about teaching.  So, I took my sister (who is also a teacher) and off we went.  

After three weeks of working with the 10 or 12 teachers, it was time for us to come home.  The teachers asked us what we would teach them NEXT year.  Ha!  We were thinking we were doing this only once.  The next year we took a few of our friends (and our husbands, too).  And so, ten years later, we passed our duties off to a Christian college here in Oregon.  They, now take a group of intern teachers and many of their professors to teach the Kenyan teachers how to teach other teachers.  (sort of a mini-teacher college.  

Over those ten years, several things happened.  God grew that little mission school into a 'going concern!  Check out the website.  More than 20 schools, spread over all of Kenya, 17,000 students!  Not just schools, but medical clinics, churches, tech school training.  Wowsa! 

Also, the USA teachers realized that it's hard to teach reading without any books.  There are books available in Kenya, but the quality of stories and such is not topnotch.  So, a few of us started writing and illustrating books.  Another friend of mine in Naivasha is a publisher.  I send the books to him, he edits and prints them, and delivers them to the main school (where they get distributed to the other schools).  It costs about $1.50 for each book and the funds are provided by donations from peole in the USA.  So far, we've done about 25 books.  We print about 1,000 copies per book.  Most of the books are for the K-2nd graders, but every so often I throw in a book for the older students.  That's the case with Eye Wonder, a science book about eyes.  

 I would never have known anything about it without this random photo request.

 

I got another email from Kenya, which prompted a few back-and-forth emails, but, unfortunately, no photos from a Kenyan farmer:

I was impressed by the farm, the progress on the land, the water and the cows to me seemed the best and blessed hands of a farm wife.

Your lovely and happy family, its such a blessing.

I am in Kenya but I have just taken 4 hours going through Kim's County Line. I am so impressed.

Thanks,

Abel Mwema

Also in 2016, I had a request from a United Methodist minister to use one of my daffodil photos for a Service of Remembrance at their church.

 

 

He wrote:

I am a United Methodist pastor in southern Wisconsin. My congregation is planning a service or remembrance for late April, in which we honor the memories of departed loved ones from the past year. Our theme is "Seeds of Promise" inspired by the hymn, "Hymn of Promise."

 

In searching for a possible visual image to use in our bulletin, Web announcement, etc., I came across this image on your blog.

 

I am asking for permission to use that image. It is by coincidence (or not?) that I notice that photo was posted in an entry recalling Maundy Thursday, which, of course, we are preparing for this very week.

 

Blessings to you,

Pastor Steve Scott

The United Methodist Church

Milton, Wisconsin

As a lifelong member of the denomination, I loved hearing from a UMC minister who also talked about one of my favorite hymns in the hymnal. I also illustrated the hymn in that blog post. 

 

Back in 2017, I heard from a farmer in Ireland, who had a question:

 

Hi Kim, 

I hope all is good in the USA and that your harvest is going good. 

I am emailing you from Ireland.  I came across your photos of your farm , they are really good. 

Me and my sister have been looking at crops and the problem of variable germination in say canola or corn due to cold wet weather / showers . 

We are trying to figure out is there anyway to help the seed at the start. 

I saw the photo of Randy filling the tank with nitrogen fertilizer to give the seeds the best possible start, and how you describe the plants like little soldiers

Have you ever experienced the problem of poor germination or have any neighbours you know experienced it ?  It moves around year to year depending on the weather and I see reports of farmers who say they sowed on say Thursday but got a weekend of cold weather and now the germination is poor. 

I think the farmers know they want warm weather but at the same time they are moving through the sowing window.

Any thoughts would be great.

Thank you,

Mark Marco O'Carroll

We exchanged an email or two. 

 

Sometimes, the request isn't from so far away. 

 

I've had people request prints after exhibiting at the Kansas State Fair. Requests included this one:

 

 And this one:

An email from Jeremy asked for permission to use a photo I took as a neighbor moved cattle past our house. 

He was putting together a new website for Stafford County. I don't think anything ever came of it, but it was still fun to see.

 

Another rural scene was used by a Texas writer. Last August, I wrote about it here.

In the email, Col. Edward (Eddie) Boxx asked if he could use one of my photos featuring longhorns and sunflowers. I took it in 2011 as the Kansas Cattle Drive came through our area in honor of Kansas' 150th birthday. (Click here for the blog post. Also here.)

 

He wrote an article for the Heritage Village Museum in Tyler County, Texas, about the Old Beef Trail, and he sent me a screen shot to show how the photo was used.

I have a couple of blog friends in Australia and others from across the U.S. It's great to connect with others from my little corner of the world.

And That's a Wrap: Harvest 2021

The sun has set on Wheat Harvest 2021. We cut the final 20 acres of wheat on Monday afternoon. It was at a location that had more rain, and we were trying to avoid getting stuck on the soggy ground. (It's always an additional success when we don't have to call a Caterpillar tractor to pull us out of a "sticky" situation, like in 2019).

On one of my combine rides after a supper delivery last week, I couldn't resist a photo of the sunset glow in the neighbor's soybean field. To me, it also illustrates the nature of farming. While one crop is being harvested, another grows. (There's probably a lesson for life there, too.)

View from the wheat truck

And, as usual, harvest efforts have been a combination of sunshine and rain, mechanical problems and everything in between.

 

But it's always good to look back. It's part of moving forward.

Our start date - June 17 - seems so long ago.  It's always interesting to see how start and end dates compare from year to year. Here are the stats since I began blogging:

2010:  June 18
2011:  June 10
2012:  May 26 (an anomaly and the earliest harvest, by far, we've ever had)
2013:  June 21
2014:  June 17
2015:  June 20
2016:  June 15
2017:  June 12
2018: June 12
2019: June 26
2020: June 16

2021: June 17 

The finish dates are all over the board in the past dozen years, too:

2010: June 25

2011: June 20

2012: June 9 (an anomaly)

2013: July 6

2014: July 7

2015: July 1

2016: July 13

2017: June 28

2018: June 29

2019: July 22

2020: July 7

2021: July 12

Yield averages in the years since I've been blogging have been:

2010: 37.2 bu/acre

2011: 36.7 bu/acre

2012: 45.5 bu/acre

2013: 52 bu/acre

2014: 24.5 bu/acre

2015: 50 bu/acre

2016: 48.5 bu/acre

2017: 50.84 bu/acre

2018: 39.2 bu/acre

2019: 23.6 bu/acre

2020: 49.5 bu/acre

2021: 58 bu/acre

In 2021, our high yield was 86 bushels per acre. Our low was 31. As Randy says, he's "exceptionally happy." It's our highest overall yield ever.

October 2020 - filling the drill while planting wheat

The 2021 wheat crop began last September 21, 2020, when we began planting this year's crop.  He finished up on October 6. For the 2021 crop year, 1,486 of our acres were devoted to wheat.

Really, the journey toward planting the 2021 crop started with the 2020 harvest, when we binned seed wheat - Bob Dole and Zenda - to use for this year. I blogged about taking seed wheat to Miller Seed Farm to be cleaned here.

It went back into our home bins until we were ready to plant it last September/October.

I also made the annual trek to Miller Seed Farm to pick up bags of certified wheat seed. The bags were planted for seed wheat for the 2022 crop.

Here are a few other photos of the wheat crop as it grew:

 We had an early snowfall on October 26.

I included a wheat update in this post right before Thanksgiving 2020.

Here was the wheat field (and a pretty sky) on January 23. 

The wheat field - and a visitor - were pictured on March 1 (with a blog post here.)

It's amazing how quickly the wheat begins to grow in the spring. By May 1, it looked like this:

On May 4, Kanza Co-op applied fungicide to our wheat crop. That decision paid off this year. 

By May 10, it was pollinating:

We began cutting June 17 this year and were delayed by breakdowns and weather. (Such is the life of a farm family.) But we were thrilled to have our whole family here June 18-20.

Harvest 2021

In March 2020, just as the pandemic began, Randy and I were installed as presidents of our respective branches of the Kansas Master Farmer/Homemaker organization. Because of Covid, the officers (including us) kept our offices for another year. So, in mid-June, I wrote my (our) second summer letter to our membership. 

 

I began the letter with a quote from author and evangelist Vance Havner:

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength.

I used this photo from the 2020 wheat harvest as the letterhead and then referred to it in the text of the letter:

I get devotionals in my email inbox daily, but on occasion, I save one. I suppose Vance Havner’s quote resonated with me because of my lifelong connection to Kansas farming, first as a farm daughter in Pratt County, and now as a farm partner on the Stafford/Reno County line.

Likewise, as an amateur photographer, I’ve discovered that clouds punctuating an evening sky yield the best sunsets. Case in point was this favorite photo from wheat harvest 2020, when the setting sun burst through the western sky. A “broken” sky produces a much more dramatic end to the day than a cloudless evening. ...

... As I write this, we have just started wheat harvest on our farm on the Stafford/Reno County line.  It’s always an exciting – yet challenging -- time. There have already been “broken things” that we’d rather not experience. (The guys at Case know me on a first-name basis. I’m sure the same can be said for many of you at the parts store of your choice!) But “breaking” that finish line as the last truckload rumbles to the elevator is always a good feeling, too. Here’s wishing the best to you and yours as you accomplish this summer’s tasks on the farm.

Harvest 2021

Farmers and ranchers are essential workers. And, even if the world and the way we do things had to evolve, it was still a blessing to do the work that our ancestors have been doing for five generations in Kansas.

Randy & Melvin - undated photo - One of Melvin's final harvests

 

And now on to the next thing.That's part of farming, too.

 Today, it's helping out with 4-H foods judging at the Stafford County Fair.