Kansas Connections

     Some last minute details had to be taken care of before we could leave for Kansas.  While checking the tree-watering I noticed the ash, those that have survived, are starting to change colors.

 

                                                The walnuts haven't changed much.

    

    I have to get the hydraulic hoses out of the sun.  They last a long time if they are out of the weather.  So here they are in their winter home.

 

                                 (This what I promised in the last blog--a more colorful entry.) 

                                       And away we go, as Jackie Gleason used to say.

    

      Lots to do here in Kansas.  One of the main reasons to return was a commitment by the barbershop group to perform at a neighboring town to help raise a few funds for the school’s music department. 

     We practiced on Thursday night, then showed up on Saturday night.  They fed us spaghetti and we sang.  Fair trade.

 

                                      We did a Western set, thus the bandanas and jeans.

   

    Our group matched the proceeds from a free-will offering for the spaghetti supper and the concert, up to $500.   We paid $500.  Proceeds were over $1K.   I think they plan to add a few instruments for the band.

 

    I had a few jobs lined up.  I keep saying I won’t do any more roof jobs, but here I go again.  Floyd is a barbershop compatriot.  And his roof isn’t that high or that steep.

 

                                  I had to measure the roofs so we can order the metal. 

 

       There’s always work at home.  I fixed the garage door once a few yearsago, after the Goodwife opened the north door and tried backing out the south door.

 

                                                      (Another colorful entry!) 

     I used MFD board to try to reinforce the door, but it had too much give.  Two fairly heavy pieces of 1/2” angle iron are doing a good job, so far, of keeping the door from bulging out, like a bad hernia.

    Then there’s the counter top to finish.  A couple of seams to grout and some trim work on the supports underneath just about took up my whole day.

 

     We finished off the day, Tuesday, by taking a long route to supper.  We went for a ride across the Nebraska line to a marina that features some good walleye.  Not open on Tuesday.  Nor were some other places we called on.  Back to the local bowling alley for a pizza. I don't even want to mention how many miles we traveled to ge to the local bowling alley, with gas prices approaching $4 in Kansas.

                       We returned to Colorado on Wednesday where we found a little rain!

 

 

We're Back in Kansas, Toto

     We closed up things at the farm last Thursday and headed for Kansas.  As usual, we forgot lots of things, like all my picture stuff, so sorry, no pictures this time.

 

     The wheat is all planted.  I planted across the paths made between windmill towers, including the underground cable routes.  It was a time-saving maneuver which saved me lots of turning and sowing over the turns.  It was like planting in flour.  Not much will come up unless we get some moisture.

    The wind farm crews are still doing lots of reclamation.  Our temporary neighbor who is the dirt foreman says they will replant the CRP grass they have destroyed and will cover it with straw as you see on the highway projects.  I don’t know what they will do about the wheat.

     We plant to check in on Wednesday on our way to the hills for our annual family get-together to see if any of the wheat is up.  So far, no moisture yet. 

     So along with the dry weather and dry (pictureless) blog, here are a few dry statistics to finish off with.

       As of today, I have invested $9415.10 in preparing and planting 180 acres of wheat.  That includes direct input costs, fuel, repair and maintenance, and seed wheat.  It doesn’t include taxes and insurance and other costs that have to be shared for the whole farm.

     I probably will add another $1000 to insure the wheat crop, so if it fails, I will have another $10,000 to try again.  So bottom line, about $58 per acre to put in the crop.

    At $6 per bushel, it will take about 12 bushels per acre to break even (figuring $12 per acre for harvest costs).

     That “tventy bushel to the acre” doesn’t look so bad.  Well, musn’t count your chickens before they are hatched.  There are a lot of “if’s” out of my control between now and harvest time—market price, Mother Nature to name a couple.

        Better check out that crop insurance.

 

      I should have my thumb drive and card reader and a more colorful entry next time.

        

Wheat Planted

     Here’s a rural legend for you.  Sorry, I don’t remember the speaker or the occasion.  This was a story my dad told. He quoted the speaker who said,

    “There was one time Joe Twoya, he planted wheat way out in the middle of November yet.  That wheat no come up at all.  Next year when he harvest that wheat, it make tventy bushel to the acre.”

     Joe was the man who homesteaded the quarter section where we now live.  Tradition has it that the original one-room “shack” still exists, nestled next to the “Ramsey School” that has served as the farm shop for over 60 years.

 

      Imagine what it was like to have that as your only refuge from the wide open pairie.   There were no other buildings, no trees (the trees were all planted during my life time), no running water.  They were a tough breed, those homesteaders.

    Anyway, the wheat planting was finished on Tuesday September 18, 2012.  It has a chance of coming up.  If it doesn’t, maybe it will make “tventy bushel to the acre.”

 

      Work continues on access roads and restoring compacted soil around the wind generator towers.

 

     Really compacted soil as you can see from the size of the clods turned up.  It would take an Olympic athlete to be a “clod-hopper” following that machine.

 

 

    Sunday was a day off from planting.  It was a new moon—not good for planting some say.  So I worked, er, played, in the junk garden.

 

      The peas are done, so remove the dead plants.  The beans are just starting to produce, in the background.

     Not a good tomato year either.  The plants have something bad.  The leaves roll up and the plant slowly dries up.  No amount of water helps, nor does fungicide or insecticide. 

 

 

     About 11 a. m.Sunday, a cloud blew in from the northwest.  Moisture!?  No, the nose tells the story—smoke.

 

                  Must be a fire somewhere to the west.  If it is in Colorado, I haven’t about it.

    Well, about time to return to Kansas.  Clean up tractors and put them in the shed,  do other end-of-season chores today.

      I’d mention “pray for rain”, but it’s like the last scene in “Cincinnati Kid” where the Kid loses his last coin to the newspaper boy.  “You’re tryin’ too hard, Cincinnati.”

     Don’t want to be tryin’ too hard to make it rain.

Planting Wheat

     Off to Kansas for an elongated weekend.  The Goodwife dropped me off in Colby on Thursday evening to meet with the barbershopping guys.  Saturday I helped the Lions take tickets for the Mud Bog.  The mud bog is a contest to see who can get their vehicle through a pit of mud and water the fastest.  Sorry, didn’t get any pictures of that.

    Sunday, the Goodwife and her quilting friend from California traveled to McCook where her friend put on a demonstration of quilting techniques.  No pictures of that either because she forgot to charge her camera battery.  (I got her a new camera for Christmas, one that has a rechargeable battery so she wouldn’t have to be buying new batteries all the time.  But you do have to remember to charge it.)

    Meanwhile I sang in a quartet at the Methodist Church to help introduce and dedicate a new sound/video system.  No pictures of that either.

    Back to the ranch on Monday.  Start the tree-watering process again.  To Denver Tuesday for our last Rockies game of the year.  Game time: 6:40.  At 6:30, drops began to fall.  It “rained” off and on throughout the game (Rockies lost 9-8 to San Francisco) never enough to stop the game, but enough to drive us up under an overhang.

 

    We left Denver about 4 o’clock Wednesday after a small round of shopping.  It had rained all day, nearly an inch.  As we approached the farm, we slugged through the mud on County Road 3N.  Could it be?!  Could it be?

 

     That’s right, .16” of moisture. (The whole inner tube has to be full to register one inch in this fancy new--hardly used--gauge.)  .16"!  Tell the car that.

 

    I spent the last hour of daylight washing the car.  In an attempt to keep down the dust, the wind--farm guys applied mag chloride and umpteen million gallons of water to 3N.  I guess that explains the muddy state of that road after less than a quarter inch of moisture. 

    Well, “nowt for it” but to plant wheat.  It has cooled off enough, it is September, and Neighbor Jay is planting. 

     So, let the record show that I began planting on Thursday September 13, 2012.  I got off to a slow start.  Had a little trouble clearing the electric fence wire enroute nto the field.

 

       Some 2 X 4’s under the front wheels and we cleared.  Still a final calibration to do before really getting after it.  Fill the drills.  I haven’t handled a scoop shovel in years.  Wait.  Make that a scoop shovel in wheat.  I have scooped some snow in the nearer past.

 

     Make one “round”, a trip east and back west in this case, refill the drill, measuring with a half-bushel measure.  Then you have to know how many acres you covered in the back-and-forth trip.

  

    Enter the 4X4, with a little attachment to a lug nut.  Drive along the south edge of the field counting the revolutions (you can see the black pipe from the driver’s seat).  Each revolution is 7.67 feet.  Multiply length of field by 48 feet, what the drill covered in the trip.  Divide by 43,560, the number of square feet in an acre.  Divide the acres covered by the pounds of wheat it took to refill the drill and you have your planting rate.  There’s a calculator in the truck.

    Result, I closed the seeding gates one teeny notch to get close to the 40 pounds per acre planting rate.

 

     Let ‘er rip, and off we go.  End of day 1.  Note the three essentials for drilling on the catwalk in the photo below:  grease gun, sun glasses, big hammer.

 

    There’s an old rhyme, the beginning of which I don’t remember:  Plant in the mud and your granary will rust, plant in the dust and your granary will bust. 

 

                                          Order up the granary-reinforcing package.   

Dove Hunting

    In the last exciting adventure of the 50’s Farmer, we returned to the farm from the baseball game.  Still dry, not quite as hot, too hot to plant wheat.

    The seed wheat is on the truck and in the barn ready to go.  Still some work to do on the drills.
      Freeing up the feeding mechanism was covered in a former post.  Still to do, make pins that fasten the press wheels to the “axles”, replace the catwalk, and calibrate the seeders.

 

 

      Above is the remnant of the catwalk from 20 years ago, and below the “new” replacement.  It will hold 200 pounds—me and a bushel of wheat.

 

    To calibrate the seeders, jack up the press wheels, put some seed in the drill, place some catch-cups under the seeding tubes, roll the press wheels 26 and ¾ turns (1/10 of an acre), weigh the result from each cup (about 3.2 ounces per cup is the goal), adjust and start again.  It took a little time, but it’s done.

 

 

                               Note the catch cups on the ground beneath the seeding tubes.

 

 

                               See the handle to turn the press wheels on the left press wheel?

                    A quick trip to Ft. Collins for Jimmy and Beep’s 40^th wedding anniversary.

  

                  Groom and daughter in foreground, daughter-in-law and bride in background.

 

                                   Grandson Luke bestows a little tidbit of charity on Lola.

    Back to the farm.

    

    And then the dove-hunters arrived.  Actually, they arrived before we got home Sunday evening.  Monday morning found them greeting the rising sun among the cedars.

 

 

    The hunt was moderately successful and there were a few birds to clean.  We even had time to roll out the Chuckle Truck and do a photo shoot.  The real model didn’t show up, so you get what you got.

 

           We were such good hosts we provided a mouse or two for the guest dogs to chase.

 

                   We did a mock drill-filling exercise.  The real thing coming soon, we hope.

 

                   We worked in a trip to our neighbors for a look at a real live buffalo ranch.

                                      

     The hunters left Tuesday morning, leaving a hole in our lives for awhile.  Back to the mundane humdrum of everyday life on the farm—to the shop and the “G”.

     When I reworked the crankshaft on the old tractor, somehow I got the thing out of time and it backfired marvelously when it ran.  Back in the shop it went, where I figured I’d have to remove the flywheel to separate the camshaft and crankshaft gears.

      But no.  Flywheel and camshaft are in perfect accord with each other, if not exactly in a state of Nirvana.  Somehow the governor and camshaft lost track of each other, probably while I had the crankshaft out and the cam shaft loose.

 

   Step 1, set tappets.  The tappets are the black greasy things, the tappet cover lying at an angle to the left.  Step 2, remove enough stuff to make room to raise the governor off the crankcase. 

    Stuff to remove includes the starter and the crankcase cover, because an oil line has to be unfastened to allow the governor to rise.

      Step 3  raise governor enough so its gear no longer meshes witht the camshaft gear. Then turn the governor a little so that the magneto drive slot is perfectly horizontal.  That hasn’t been done yet in the photo below.  The slot is in the circular housing in the right of the photo, sitting at about a 2 or 8 o’clock position.

 

    It’s all done now, just have to replace the removed things.  But first, a little trip to Kansas to catch up on things there. 

     Well, it has been quite a week with a lot of variety, something for everyone.  Maybe it will rain while I’m in Kansas.

 

 

 

Hot and Windy

       August’s end should bring some cooler temperatures.  Hasn’t happened yet.  When to plant wheat (whether to plant wheat) takes front seat right now. 

     Well, you can’t control the weather, and the pursuit of pleasure marches on.  Water the garden and head for Brighton early Sunday morning.

 

                          One thing about junk-gardening:  the drought never bothers the junk. 

 

 

      The siblings’ band (band of siblings?) sang for church in Henderson.  After the service, we headed for the Adams County Museum where we played for a memorial celebration for one of the museum’s ardent supporters.  We were slightly outshone by the John Deere combine. 

      We played for about an hour and a half.  I don’t know about the attendees, but the performers enjoyed themselves immensely.

 

                                             We imported our own support group.

 

      We enjoyed a meal together, then departed our separate ways.  We spent Monday rubber necking in the Ft. Collins area.  One of the attractions—Jimmy’s garden.

 

    The Goodwife never refers to his garden as a junk garden.  Raised beds are easy on the back—now, not when they were being built.

       Tuesday found us in Denver at the Rockies game.  The scoreboard tells the story.

 

      The highlight of the evening:  Matt Kemp crashed into the outfield wall trying to corral a fly ball and had to be removed from the game.

     Wednesday, back to the farm.  Wind farm traffic is still heavy.  Here is the intersection of Roads 26 and 3N, altered to handle the trucks ferrying the tower segments and blades to the area.

 

                      Hot and windy.  Better get the water on the trees and the garden again.