Silence Speaks Volumes

It has been a very long time since I have written a new blog post but I have to share the truth about the overwhelming silence about the heartland.

The question over and over again is where is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the national news media whom have gone silent about the heartland in the last few weeks. There have been wildfires that have killed people, livestock, wildlife, consumed buildings, equipment, hundreds of thousands of acres of grass land and hundreds of miles of fence line. So where are all of the people that say they have the best interest of the animals at heart and they want to do away with animal agriculture production because the animals are not cared for properly?

The simple answer is that there is no money for them in the heartland. No money to be had in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Colorado from these wildfires.

The long answer is that they can’t make money off of the truth. The events of late and the response from ranchers and farmers from across the nation flies right in the face of their common business practice of using lies and propaganda to raise funds to line their pockets. Ranchers and farmers across these four states are showing up day after day, hour after hour doing what they have always done, taking care of their livestock and land to the best of their ability. They are heading out individually or with veterinarians in search of animals who survived and determining their mortality. Those that can be saved they are getting them brought back to food, water and the best possible care they can give them and the rest they are humanely destroying because they don’t deserve to suffer. This is what ranchers and farmers have been doing for generations and it completely defies what all of these “humane organizations” would have everyone else believe as the truth.

You see the truth of the matter was exemplified by Sydney, Cody and Sloan when they went out and did their very best to save the cattle on their ranch from one of these wildfires. They sacrificed their own lives trying to save the cattle on their ranch. So much for those “humane organizations” claims that ranchers only care about the money. I didn’t hear about any of them jumping on a plane to one of our fly over states to race head long towards a fire pushed by 50+ mile an hour winds to try and save cattle and I doubt I ever will. There are others that lost their lives doing the same thing and I wish I knew their names and their stories of how they fought for their cattle and ranches because they are truly the heroes of this nightmare.

The firefighters, law enforcement officers, volunteers and neighboring ranchers and farmers who dropped everything to rush to their community or neighboring communities aid is another truth these organizations can’t compete with. You see they would have you believe we are in this for ourselves and if anyone gets in our way we will take them down. That lie is the furthest thing from the truth. Farmers and ranchers are out there shoulder to shoulder taking care of business. A business that is at this time extremely hard to stomach as they head by head total the actual cost of the wildfires. There are a few glimmers of hope here and there with a cow or a calf found alive and well, but losing 80+ percent of your 500-1,000 head of cattle is not an easy pill to swallow.

Some of these strong hard working ranchers and farmers are dealing with all of this while at the same time not knowing where they will sleep tonight because they have lost their homes as well. There are multiple generation families that have lost all their homes, buildings and equipment to these fires. They are tending to their cattle and kids because they need the most care right now. Hour by hour, day by day they are figuring this new way of life out with the help of their neighbors and friends. There are donations of hay, fencing supplies and trucking coming to these areas from across these four states and further. They are coming from fellow ranchers and farmers who know that if they were in the same situations there would be others their stepping up to help.

Even our next generation is stepping up to the plate with 4-H’ers volunteering to take in bottle calves so ranchers affected by the wildfires can focus on rebuilding while at the same time knowing their calves are in good caring hands. You see those who are in the farming community are there for their animals and each other from the youngest tot holding a bottle to feed a calf to the oldest among us sharing advice and strength. And all of this good old fashion love, fight, spunk and resilience has always and is currently being passed down through our generations of ranchers and farmers.
Ranchers and farmers have walked the walk the only way they know how, with God, compassion and a strong love of their businesses. All of this is too much truth and reality that in compasses all of agriculture and the “humane organizations” just can’t compete with the truth.

When you speak and walk the truth you silence your critics.

My daughter Elizabeth checking on the heifers.



From one of the sets of boots in the pastures,
Stephanie Symns

Grain Truck

Today I made my first trip to town in the grain truck and oh was it a doozy of a first trip. Yes I’ve ridden in the semi with Matt to town but I had never driven until today.

I drove and Matt rode shot gun since this was my first time in the truck, which is not ours, among other reasons such as the fact that I didn’t want to be driving the truck in the first place.

To start from the beginning the whole topic of me driving the truck started Monday when he called me and asked if I was going to be close to a truck dealer to look at some trucks. (I wasn’t, wohoo.) Tuesday also included an inquisition about driving a grain truck, as well as Wednesday. I was out of town on Thursday so I escaped the question that day. This brings up to today and the dreaded question about driving a grain truck.

Up until today I had been really good at changing the subject or just not acknowledging the question in the first place. Today started with “just going and looking at the trucks” haha just look yeah right. I refused to give an answer and changed the subject about 100 times. We jumped back in the car and that is where Matt held me hostage. He told me he wasn’t stopping the car until I made a decision about which one of three trucks I was going to choose to drive.

So if you have caught this it has changed from will you drive a grain truck to which one are you going to drive in the span of five days.

We made it to a town 20 minutes away before I committed to even picking a truck. (Needless to say whatever patience Matt was attempting to have was quickly wearing thin and my shoes were about worn out from me dragging my feet on the subject. Hehe.) Back home we went to grab a quick bite to eat for lunch and then back down to the landlord’s shop to get said truck started and back up to our house. Just getting it started was a problem because the batteries were dead and then when he got it out of the shed it was over to the hose to wash all the dirt off of it from sitting for at least a year.

The truck in question is an automatic (yes automatic not a stick) twin screw with an 18 foot bed with a PTO hydraulic lift. (The fact that it is an automatic leads into another story that I’ll pass on for now.) But I digress, so we get said truck home and Matt unloads the last of the wheat from the combine into the truck and me now down to severely raw feet, since by this time I had drug my feet so much on doing this I had ruined my shoes and socks, get into the driver’s seat.

Matt says from the passenger seat just back over those chemical boxes and jugs (they were empty) it won’t hurt anything. So back over the chemical boxes and jugs I go and to the end of the driveway we head. Getting to the end of the driveway was a feet in and of its self because I kept stepping on the breaks and hitting them just hard enough to jerk us forward in our seats. Matt of course is having a hay day with this.

Out on the highway we go and not even two miles south of the house we get flagged down by an escort truck. He tells me there are TWO 16 foot wide loads coming through! We live on a two lane highway with no real shoulders and I’m driving a twin screw truck for the first time!! So I pull over on the little bit of a shoulder there is at a corner and wait for the first semi to make its way through. All the while Matt is saying don’t get over so far. Then the semi comes around the corner and Matt starts saying maybe you should get over a little further. I don’t move the truck.

We decide that we are going to continue on down the highway until we see the next set of escorts for the second semi. We ended up making it a couple more miles down the highway to a gravel road intersection on a curve that allowed me to completely pull of the highway and wait for everyone to go by on the highway. Whew. While we were waiting for the second semi the conversation consisted of Matt telling me in the last 14 years of driving the trucks and semis to town he has never had to pull over to allow a wide load to go through, let alone two wide loads within in a couple miles of each other!!

Really!!! This is not my idea of a fun trip in the first place and this event is not changing my opinion in the slightest.

Big sigh, and off we go again. I make it to town (finally) and snake through town to the south end to the elevator. And to great us is a line of semis waiting to go across the scale. Ugh, now there are witnesses at the elevator to my domed trip! We fairly quickly make our way up to the scale and then to the probe (where the elevator staff take samples out of the trucks to determine the quality of the grain) and the dreaded vacuum for the truck slips (as Matt’s analogy went, if you’ve used the vacuum they have at the bank you can use this one). The truck slips are what you use to identify your grain, the seller, share and who delivered the grain. It is also the first time you have to get out of your truck, so now everyone knows I’m driving!

I make it through this and head off to wait in line to dump. Remember I said this was a hoist truck which means the bed of the truck lifts from the front in order to use gravity to help clean out the flat bed of the truck. So the next thought that runs through my mind is I’m going to hit the roof of the pit or I’m going to tear the bed off the truck.

I enter the dump, raise the bed (just missing the roof) dump the wheat, put down the bed and head off to the outbound scale. Hugh sigh of relieve exhaled at this point.

I stopped on the outbound scale and snagged the printed ticket for the load. All 87 bushels of wheat dumped. (I know such a huge load right!!!)
Then off to home we go, snaking through town and I’m sure making a few people mad while dodging for cover. We parked the truck back in the shed where we got it from and jump in the car to head to the house.

Then as we are pulling into our driveway with the car we see one of those used chemical boxes lying next to the driveway. You remember towards the first of this little trip he told me to back over said boxes that it would be okay. Now one is laying at the end of the driveway because I must have got it caught in the axle when I backed over them.

I’m sighing and shaking my head as Matt again says I’ve never backed over a chemical box and drug it around with a truck.

To that I think, I’m glad you have never done that but I’m more than willing to use this as another valid point as to why I should not be driving a grain truck.

Matt is right about one thing this will be one trip to and from town I will not be forgetting any time soon.

And here is everyone else’s fair warning.

You see the truck pictured here this fall and you had better get out of the way!

Later,
Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife

Corn Field.

A couple of weeks ago, May 15th and 16th to be exact, we had some cold weather come through at night. It got cold enough to cause some frost damage on the corn that was up.

And talk about an upset husband who used to be able to look at some nice green healthy plants, but now sees nothing but a brown mess of dead leaves. Thankfully in the case of our corn the frost came while the corn was only a few leaves tall; about three to four to be exact. This means the growing point on the corn is still below ground level, which means that the ground acted much like a coat for the corn plants.

It has only been about four days since the frost and already you can see the green coming back to the corn. Yea!

It is still too soon however to have a crop insurance adjuster out to look at the damage. As one of those adjusters I thought I’d give you a few points of interest when looking at frost damage.

Frost damage falls into the realms of hail damage we have to wait 7-10 days before we can come out to appraise any affected fields whether it be corn, soybeans, milo or wheat. The reason for this is we have to wait to see what is going to live and what is going to die. Just like it take the corn weeks to dry down in the fall it takes a few days for to true extent of the damage to become apparent on frost/freeze or hail damage.

Some things we look at when we are in the field are if the plants are starting to green back up, meaning they are still alive. We also look to see what size of an area is affected by the damage or if the damage is worse on one portion of the field. The frost we had affected the corn in the lower laying areas since cold sinks closer to the ground. The corn on the higher ground was not dinged at all.

Another thing an adjuster might do is to pull a plant out of the ground and cut it in two. By cutting a plant or two in half we can see the inner most parts of the plant to see if the middle of the plant is still alive (like in the picture). If the interior color or composition of the plant is questionable an adjuster will probably elect to wait longer to make a final appraisal on the field. This will give the plants more time to either come back or to die off. This will lead to a more accurate appraisal on the crop.

This is one week after the frost.

The one thing an adjuster cannot answer is, how will this hurt overall production? There are too many variables to consider, will the weather stay warm, will you get rains at the right time, will you get enough rain to make a difference, will it get to hot and stay too hot for the rest of the year? These questions are some of the unknowns of farming an adjuster just cannot answer.

These are some of the unknowns that all farmers deal with on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis.

I help this explains some things the adjuster is looking at when they inspect your crops.

Later,
Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife

The Rocks.

A simple, quite Sunday was what I had in mind last week. I’d hang out with little man while Daddy was in the tractor planting corn.
This didn’t happen at all but I did get a good bragging picture out of the deal.

It all started with a phone call from my husband, just like most farm jobs, to come over to the field he was in across the road and pick up rocks that had been left behind after some dozer work.

Little man and I changed cloths and got the bale bed cleaned off and off we went to the field. For little man this was a fun job because he got to run around on the freshly tilled ground and up and down the terrace we were working around pointing out rocks that he just wasn’t big enough to pick up.
We were doing well for a while, then my spotter decided it was time for a snack and drink break and left me to the job alone. That was just fine with me since this meant I wasn’t tripping over him anymore.

After his break he came back refreshed and he picked up the small rocks and was throwing them on the back of the truck seeing just how high on the pile he could get them. When he was bored with that he climbed up on the bed of the truck and scaled the mountain of rocks and the back of the truck.
A move of the truck later, and after watching me use the shovel to unearth some of the bigger rocks, little man took it upon himself to pick up the shovel and start unearthing the rocks too. This worked great for me since I didn’t have to fight to get some out of the ground.

All of this was fun and games to him, but what he didn’t realize at the time was the little bits and pieces of lessons of life he was learning.
You’re never too little to pitch in and help in any way you can.

Sometimes in life there are jobs we may not want to do but they need done anyway. If we didn’t pick up these rocks it could mean the senseless tearing up of equipment later; which could be rather expensive.

Completely do the job to the end no matter how tedious it can become. (With the exception of two rocks I left that Daddy will have to use the tractor and loader to retrieve because they were way too big for Mommy to pick up.)

Even a Mommy can do a Daddy’s work. Just because a person is a female doesn’t mean they can’t do the things a man can do.

There is a payoff to completing a tough job. The mental fortitude to know you can do more difficult things in the future because you have already built a base to work from.

All of this to me is otherwise known has having a good work ethic; something that can’t be taught in entirety in a classroom and will hopefully live on within him for the rest of his life.

So a few life lessons, two hours at least and at least a ton of rocks later we finished up and gingerly made our way back to the house.
These are the things farm kids grow up seeing and doing. I know my little man does not understand all of these things now but as he grows and matures he will start to see and understand these things. My hope is that he will be willing and able to continue in his father’s footsteps upon the foundation we are building today.

Later,
Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife

In the Dog House

I’m in my own dog house because I haven’t posted a new blog since August of last year. In my defense it seems longer ago than it has been.

Since my last blog I finished off our garden with great success and my husband telling me I’m not allowed to plant green beans this year. ;-) We finally finished a harvest; we never though would start, the last day of November. We didn’t get any fall field work done like fall pre-spraying or anhydrous ammonia (NH3) put on.

That brings us up to the beginning of this year. We’ve worked on two tractors, split one in half to fix the Power-Take-Off (PTO) clutch and I took off and had the steering motor on another fixed and also put it back on by myself. ;-)

My husband spent 63 hours in the tractor two weeks ago putting on most of our NH3 while I pulled about 35 tanks from the field to town and back. That same week we also spent several hours checking the cattle as they are in the midst of calving. I even tagged my first calf ever.

We’ve pulled up stock field fence, electrified fence around a field of corn stalks we use as great winter roughage for the cattle to munch on. This last week I’ve been fixing some electric fence around some summer grazing areas that the deer have knocked down and/or torn apart.

My husband is gearing up to get more field work done with the spreading of dry fertilizers and getting the sprayer out and ready to go.
The planter has yet to make it out of the shed but it is next in line this week or next as we should start planting corn here pretty quick.

I’m hoping I will do better job from now on posting things that are happening on the farm as well as some thoughts that keep running through my head about farm related topics.

Sorry for the delay in posting a new blog.

Later,
Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife

P.S. If any one knows what is wrong with either Google Blogger or what I'm doing that won't let me insert pictures please let me know so I can fix it and add pictures to my posts again. Thanks.

Midst of an Explosion.

The ingredients for this explosion were pretty simple 1) a house more than 120 years old, 2) on hand tools for the using and 3) the crazy thought that you should add just one more thing to the list.

Okay, so the whole explosion started thanks to my husband who decided we needed new furniture in the living room. Not a bad idea but the aftermath well that is “the rest of the story.” It started with me having the goal the next morning of getting the new furniture into the house. As I was cleaning to move the old furniture I had the bright idea that I should shampoo the carpet while there was no furniture in the room. Well that entailed a trip to town to get my Mother’s-in-law carpet shampooer and soap and take some items to church. (Not so bad yet but hold on to your computer.)

As I was shampooing the carpet in the front living room (not what I was planning but a first good suggestion from my husband) he says since you’re going to all the work cleaning the carpet why don’t you clean the windows too. Me: Well okay, they do need it and I can do that while I’m waiting for the carpet to dry. While cleaning the windows my husband comes over and says, “Wow the outside of the windows are really dusty how about I power wash the outside of them for you.” Me, “That sounds great and while you are at it why don’t you power wash the rest of the front porch too.” (I guess that could be taken as me getting back at him for the window comment right? ;-)) Husband, “Okay, help me clean the porch off.”

So while I’m waiting on the less dusty windows and for the carpet to dry back to town I go to get more carpet shampoo, as there was only one tank of shampoo in the bottle. Keep in mind this is the first time I have ever shampooed a carpet in my life so I had no idea how much shampoo I was supposed to use in the first place.

Okay so I get back and my husband stops power washing the porch long enough to help me move the furniture back into the front room. Whew, one room down for the most part. (I still have yet to clean the outside of the windows.) And off to shampoo the main living room, two rounds later I take a break from that project just in time for me to run off and pick up little one from daycare. My husband disappears to the basement and returns with several cans of white primer paint to put on the porch after the wood floor dries out as I’m getting ready to leave. Now don’t miss interpret this that the porch washing was the goal at this particular time. The primer is old oil base primer that has been around for a while.

By the time I get back my husband has started slapping primer on the porch railings. Back into the house I go to shampoo the carpet one more time and after this round I’m calling it passable. Sigh…. As I’m finishing I hear “Will stay out of the paint.” coming from outside. I grabbed some paper towels (handy from cleaning the inside of the windows) and clean little ones hands.

Now it’s off to the porch to clean the outside of the windows. After scrubbing at the windows for quite some time they are clean. Now to clean the windows of the screen door and front door and to realize most of the day is gone and the new furniture is nowhere close to being in the house yet. Break for dinner, bath, story time and bed for little boy.

Another big sigh…. And vacuum the floor before running out to the truck to back it up to the porch to bring the new furniture in (mind you it is dark outside now) the house. Take the packing off the furniture complete with the crumbling Styrofoam and put it in place. Vacuum the floor again this time to clean up the Styrofoam and have husband decide we need to switch the couch and loveseat around. So move them again call it good for now and…… collapse.

Sigh, get back up and rummage through the fridge for dinner and call it a day. Several days (or maybe a week) later we finally got the porch completely primed and some detailing completed and we again have a useable porch.

As I write this I know there are lots and lots more of these project explosions coming our way (we are still in the middle of the back porch explosion) as we have all three of the necessary items to cause it. I just hope that we are not the only ones that suffer from the dreaded project explosion from time to time.

Later, Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife

Tractor.

Yet another month has slipped by in the hectic craziness that is our farm life.

Matt finished up planting (and replanting some) soybeans and we got the planter put away. With planting finished up that meant it was time to start haying and what a time that has been. It started off well but about half way through we just kept getting just enough rain (.1 to .2 inches) to make it impossible to bale the hay he had mowed down.

However, when it did clear up long enough I ended up in the tractor. The last time I talked about the tractor I was using it was in two pieces to repair the clutch. Needless to say we (mostly Matt) got it put back together and in working order. The reason I was in the tractor was to rake the hay. By raking the windrows of hay it does two things, first it gives the hay next to the ground a chance to dry a little bit more and second it takes two windrows and combines them into one fluffy windrow for the baler to gobble up.

This is the first time I’ve ever driven the tractor with the rake! And everything managed to go fairly well. I did hit a couple of bales but I blame that on Matt for kicking the bales out in the wrong places. J In the picture with the rake you can see a bit of the hills we farm on in Northeast Kansas as well as the tractor and baler Matt was operating.

In the month before raking the hay I’ve been busy with work thanks to Mother Nature. Some storms that have come through the area I cover have brought hail and torrential rains which have led to lots of replant claims and some hail claims for me to work. This has taken up most of my hours during the week, leaving only the weekends to work on everything else.

When I haven’t been working as an adjuster, I’ve been trying to work on little boy’s bedroom. And wouldn’t you know that about the time I am just about finished with the final round of mud on the walls in Will’s bedroom I ran out. So off to town to get more just so I could finish, sigh….

 

But, since that set back I have managed to get everything sanded, two coats of primer on his walls and ceiling, and just today I got his ceiling painted blue!!

Matt’s found some time to run the tiller through the garden a couple of times so that has helped with the weeding. I’ve picked the peas a couple of times and I believe I’ve picked the last round of lettuce for the “spring” season.  I did end up planting some cucumbers, watermelons and two varieties of pumpkins. We’ll see if they actually come up.

Later,

Stephanie

The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife