kansasfarmer's blog

I have a great feeling of relief tonight.  Yesterday we finished seeding soybeans.  Some were after wheat, some were for the first time, some were for the second time, but every acre we are going to plant is in the ground.  Never in my life, not even last year which was plenty bad, has planting been this much of a headache.  We are lucky though because I do not have to go very far north or east(about a mile north and 4 east) to get to a great swath of land that was hailed out, and had to be planted over, other than the wheat which was ruined.  Some of our stands are less than ideal, I spent several hours yesterday evening with the drill patching in spots that had drowned out or washed out.  We have several days of rain forecast, it would be nice to pick up an inch because the corn is already showing alot of stress. 

Our temperatures and humidity last week were nearly unbearable.  I spent the 4 days on the combine praying that the air conditioner didn't quit.  One evening I drilled beans until 10:30 pm after I finished a field of wheat, when I got off the tractor the temp was 90F with a humidity of about 60 % and not a whiff of breeze, that is really miserable weather.  Our days flirted with 100, but what made it so oppressive was the unbelievably high humidity.  A cold front came through last Saturday and washed some of that out, gave us a half inch of rain, and cooled temps into the high 80s.  Sunday felt so much better you just couldn't believe it. 

The main task now is haying, I will not be turning a tap though for the next few days as we are celebrating my fathers July 1, 70th birthday Saturday evening in conjunction with the 4th, and then with a meal for many of his friends and cousins on Sunday.  I will spend tomorrow trying to make the lawn and farmyard presentable, and Saturday night I will be the chef grilling ribeye steaks for our entire family.  We hope to horrify vegetarians with our excessive meat consumption, and global warming zealots with the amount of smoke from both the grill and our fire works.

July 4th to me always is the halfway mark of summer time.  Mrs. KF goes back to work in 30 days, from here on out rather than cussing rain we will more than likely be asking, "when will it rain??".  Our hottest weather is ahead of us, and in 60 days time we may well turn from lush green to a dusky brownish green.  July and August will now determine this crop, along with September, because everything is so late it will be especially vulnerable to frost.  We need nearly a perfect 75 days to raise any crop at all, and history has proven there are very few perfect July and Augusts in Kansas.

Out of curiousity I took the online assessment a minute ago to see if I would qualify for a UK work visa.  Mrs. KF and I both have university degrees, no criminal records, speak remarkably good English for foreigners, and are able to bring in excess of 3000 pounds of money with us, 3000 being the highest amount listed.  At any rate, at the close of the online assessment I was greeted with, "Sorry Brian, you do not qualify".   I am not knocking your nation, but I have to wonder what would make us good candidates to come to the UK, in the eyes of your government, for permanent residency. 

It would be interesting if a couple of you over there gave our process a shot, just to see if you qualify.

Looks like a corner was turned this weekend.  I got my gentle rain Saturday in 3 half inch increments, total of 1.5 inches.  A neighbor got the 3 inches this time, however much of my area only got a half to three quarters.  Much of the area ended up under tornado warnings Saturday, but most of the damage was at least 75 miles from my farm.  The week ahead is to be very hot, highs brushing 100 if not getting there, with the heat index(a formula using humidity and temp to tell you why you feel so miserable) running 105 or better.  For those of you not fortunate enough to have ever experienced 100F with a humidity around 40%, I can assure you there is nothing comfortable about it, and you have to hope for a nice wind to give you any degree of comfort.  What couples with this is it usually won't drop below 70 or 75 at night, and the humidity runs up to 50%. 

But, the hot weather should dry out our wheat, harvest has been dragging, I would hope to be in full swing by the end of the week, time will tell.

I have a couple of good farming friends who more often than not I talk with at least every other day on the cell phone.  We were in agreement all winter that there was no way we could have 3 abnormally wet springs in a row.  This is Kansas, we are a drouth prone state,usually we need rain....no way would '09 be wet.  Well, we were wrong.  At first it didn't look that way, after all we lived through March under extreme fire weather nearly every day.  The first of April was cold and dry, all looked in line to get in the field in a timely manner.  My corn ground was fertilized and worked down like a garden, ready to plant, then, the rains came.  They weren't just our ordinary spring rains either, they were big, hard rains.  My new norm is 3+ inches at a time, the faster the better.  I quit keeping track, but I guess for the last two months we are nearing 20 inches on this farm, much of it coming in increments of an inch or more an hour, one morning we got in excess of 3 inches in just over an hour.  I finally got the corn planted the end of May, just about one month later than I like.  I did get a perfect stand, except in the low places that drowned out.  I got some soybeans planted then too, because I hired a friend to plant some while I was planting corn.  All in all I guess I had about 5 good running days in May, then the calender turned to June.  Nothing changed, it kept raining.  Two weeks ago tomorrow I got a good day in drilling soybeans, only to have a hard, 3 inch rain that night crust them under.  Then last Friday and Saturday I had a good run, I stopped Sunday because of an 80% chance of heavy rain, I really didn't want any more crusted under than I already had...when it didn't rain Sunday night, I headed to the field on Monday and planted just a few acres then quit again because of the weather forecast.

By 6pm Monday evening the weather looked very bad, a little after 6 the Sheriff called to inform me a deputy was watching a tornado on the ground just crossing the county line, and if all things held together it would hit our area and for us to be ready to deploy spotters.  We deployed about 8pm and shortly thereafter our immediate area was put in a tornado warning.  Our new remote controlled siren was activated by the Sheriff, problem was it gave the fire sounding, three successive blasts, our chief protested over the radio it was the wrong signal but I interjected nobody would know the difference anyway, as long as the siren was blowing they would take cover.  One other problem came to light(aside from the fact we still could not activate it ourselves remotely) that was when we activated it manually we also were sounding the all clear in a neighboring community.  I was spotting with another fellow, our cell phones rang constantly asking what was going on, I guess the siren means call someone you know is busy rather than take cover.  The first storm passed with just a funnel and no touchdown in the area.  A short debate was held to decide whether we should sound the all clear, we decided it would just lead to more confusion and nothing would be wrong with whoever took cover staying under cover a while longer so we didn't sound it.  Another guy had picked me up to spot, on the way home the second storm hit, and hit hard with straight wind, so hard we had to sit on the road with several other vehicles and wait it out.  That yielded 2 inches of rain in about an hour and a half.  I slept through the next storm that came through at 3am, all neighbors agreed it was the worst, and gave another inch of rain, giving me my standard 3 inch yield.  Tuesday morning though it was not the rain that bothered me or the fact the soybeans were now going to crust(although the rain did soften the crust to let the beans from the week before through), what bothered me was all the corn(maize) was laying flat on the ground, very battered.  What was amazing was the wheat did not go down, just the corn.   It has stood back up, the leaves are rather tattered.  I cannot fathom how the yield potential will be the same but time will tell.  However, I still have the matter of about 100 acres of soybeans crusted under, and a forecast of temps in the high 90s next week, so, what I want now is a GENTLE quarter inch of rain to soften the crust, then I would very much like 10 days of dry weather, so we can finish planting, and replanting, and haying, and cutting wheat, and maybe if we are lucky put in some soybeans or milo after wheat.  We have a 50% chance of rain tomorrow, and guess what, they say it might be heavy.

The last several days with temps in the high 80s and low 90s our wheat has taken a decidedly more yellow look, a reminder that the 2009 Kansas wheat harvest is near.  I would guess that sometime in the next 4 or 5 days we will learn of test cutting in the southern tier of counties, if this has not happened already.  My best guess is test cutting will probably start in our immediate area sometime near the 18th to 20th, and by June 25th harvest will be in full swing. 

Unlike the previous two years I have posted on FWi, this year our wheat appears to be respectable.  For us, that would put yields in the range of 40-50 bushels per acre, or about one to one and a quarter of your tons to the acre.  Our temps have been fairly cool, so we should also begin harvest with good test weights.  As always, the weather will be the wild card, we have had a particularly stormy Sunday, and are to be in a severe thunderstorm watch until 5am Monday, we went into the first watch at 5pm, so that gives us 12 hours of being in a watch, quite a long time really.  The first storm came through about 8pm, it only gave us 2 tenths of an inch of rain, and winds of around 50 mph.  The second storm hit around 11pm, and apparently we will get a third and maybe fourth before this is over early tomorrow morning.  With all this moisture and good soybean prices, I feel confident to predict nearly every acre of wheat harvested will be planted back to soybeans in eastern Kansas, if the fields are dry enough to plant.

When this "crisis" started last fall, before our historic elections, a friend of mine summed the future up this way.  He said, "we are going to see some things we never thought we'd see,and some things we don't want to see".  Today, those words echoed through my head as the reports that GM had declared bankruptcy circulated over the airwaves and internet, leaving another 21000 without work, on top of the 1000 or so dealerships they forced out, after the US taxpayers had infused a huge amount of money into GM in hopes of avoiding this very thing.  This event was perhaps the tops, thus far, of the things I simply could not fathom would happen in my lifetime. 

The old jingle use to go, "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet", that was an ad, but it summed up America.  You could interchange the words at the end of the phrase, "as American as..", Chevy and GM were as American as you could get.  I now have to wonder what exactly America does produce, other than food and lots of sophisticated weaponry.  I needed some bearings for the drill today so my wife and I drove to the nearest big town, Emporia, for a "parts run" that also turned into a grocery and work boot run. Most of the bearings for my Great Plains drill were made in China,( the Timkens were made in France), my workboots were made in Thailand.  Amy's car was made in Germany, running on tires made in South Korea, just like my pickups run on either Chinese or Korean tires.  We spent perhaps $700 today, about $200 or so was on American goods, mostly food.  I have to wonder how long this can last without the USA becoming a third world nation. 

The experts seem to believe by the fall of 2009 or at the latest the spring of 2010 our economy will be recovering.  My simple farmer mind has trouble reconciling that idea with the things I see happening around me, and the reports I hear on TV and the radio.  GM takes out bankruptcy, the state of Kansas has revenues far below expectations that will perhaps force even more budget cuts (equalling lost jobs) when the new fiscal year starts in July.  Nearly everything we use in our day to day lives is made somewhere besides this nation.  Our own federal reserve predicted a week or so ago unemployment would rise to 10.5% by fall, and our new and dynamic President continues to propose even more deficit spending.  I guess this is why I am a farmer and not an economist, because all these "signs" don't point to a forecast of recovery from my vantage point.  Of course, these are the same economists who didn't see any of this coming........perhaps they should be doing something else for a living, like farm???

Finally today the sun came out, after a very light rain this morning.  For the first time in what seems like forever the ground dried out on top, and you could begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel, in other words without anymore rain we might be in the field by Saturday....but...we have heavy rain forecast for tonight. 

The grain trade seems to be taking this all in stride, understandable if my mainly pasture corner of the world was the only part of this nation unable to plant, but that is far from the case, wet unplanted fields stretch from here to Indiana.  Moreever in Texas where the combines will soon be rolling if they aren't already the USDA rates the wheat crop at 75% poor to very poor according to the radio at noon, and our Kansas crop is forecast to be 330 million bushels, off the average of 350 million bushels.  The grain trade figures US farmers pulled a good crop out of a disasterous start in 2008 and we will do it again.  Of course, we were helped by cool wet weather all summer, if we get a severe hot dry snap in July or August, the summer grain markets could be very interesting and very wild.

Well, we just picked up a half inch of rain in a little over 6 minutes.  The forecast is for rain every day but one for the next 7 days.  Our soil is saturated after 6 inches of rain over the last 2 weeks, and I am one of the lucky ones, about 12 miles north of here they got 6 inches in just one rain.  I was convinced all winter we would have a dry spring, and March certainly led me to believe I was going to be right.  However the taps got turned on in April, and for the first time in my memory May 1st rolls around with not one single kernel of corn in the ground on my farm.  As a rule we feel that May 15th is when you would like to be finishing planting, with the forecast we have today it may well be I will have to make the decision to start around May 15th.  At this point other than we can't get anything done(including turn out cattle, I have 1400 acres of pasture without a hoof on it) we are not critical because we can switch over to grain sorghum for a feed grain, there are alot of people who don't even like to plant it before the 1st of June.  What is an issue is rather than pace things out like we would all prefer to on our mostly mixed livestock and crop farms in eastern Kansas, we are going to be looking at planting corn, beans and milo all at once, turning out, and putting up hay in a very narrow window, with wheat harvest about 50 days away.  Given the relative ease with which it rains this spring, I would guess I will spend most of the next 2 months being very flustered. 

The most remarkable thing about all of this is, we are looking at 3 wet springs in a row, very unusual for Kansas.  At the rate we are going, we may also be looking at 3 poor wheat crops in a row, since wheat does not like this warm humid weather.

When I was a kid, my brother and I took great pleasure making fun of my dad when he got out of bed in the morning.  It wasn't like we all slept in the same room, but you could hear dad all over the house.  First, there was a big groan as he woke up, then you could hear his feet hit the floor, another groan, then a shuffle across the bedroom floor accompanied by a cough or two, some more groaning, maybe a swear word or two.  To make a long story short, he had alot of aches and pains, and we thought it was funny. 

Well, I make all the same sounds in the morning now as dad used to(and I am sure still does), I am not nearly as humored by my own sounds as I was dads.  I make even worse sounds at night.  At 40, I am one of the youngest farmers in the community, and that is fairly sad.  Today among other things I burned 640 acres of pasture, a 320 I rent and a neighboring 320.  My landlord and the neighbor and I did it as a cooperative effort.  It was our first really warm day, and the fire made it warmer.  We had to fire guard around a cemetary, and around the landlords house, it all took much longer than planned, which isn't that unusual.  When we had the entire section contained, we were standing back surveying our handiwork and talking about the "old days" back 30 or 40 years ago when it was all backfires and wet gunny sacks.  I am constantly reminded by the geezer brigade how in the old days they didn't need all this fancy gear to fight fire(whether fire department or controlled burning) all they needed was a steel rake, and wet gunny sack, and a back fire.  This is actually true, I can well remember my father and grandfather coming in from fighting a wildfire black with the soot stirred by slapping the fire with wet burlap bags, you drug a bucket along with you and soaked your bag every little bit.  There were more people in the neighborhood then, and they were younger.  The county had one solitary 3/4 ton fire truck in this end of the county, and you made do with it and an army of farmers swinging gunny sacks.  My neighbor John (who is about 55 I would guess) pointed out today that in order to fight fire like that now, you would need at least 6 ambulances coming along behind the fireline picking up all the heart attack and stroke victims, because everyone out here is so old now.  The age thing came into play with my landlord Mike as well, as halfway through our backburn he suddenly remembered his paddle boat was in the tall grass next to his dock, and we had to make a made dash to save it. Yes, along with your physical abilities, your memory goes as well.  We were going to burn another 160, but decided we were all too tired, just old I guess.

As you get older, everything gets just a little tougher.  Saturday after it had rained over an inch, I found myself hopping over a steel hog panel one leg at a time, only to find my foot sinking into the soft mud on the other side resulting in me becoming high centered.  With all the power I could muster, I finally got my other leg over, only to just catch my heel and go down with a thud in the mud.  Only my pride was hurt, but I could remember a time when I could have recovered from something like that without even a bruised ego.  Just the day before I had been trying to tag baby calves.  My grip isn't as good as it used to be, and to my surprise 2 got away from me.  I guess I am not as brave as I used to be either, because rather than tough it out as the cow bellowed and blew snot down my neck, I let go of one calf and ran away(I ran away, not the calf)....I just don't think I could come through a cow mauling as well as I used to. 

My granddad retired when he was 83...if I can live that long I have about 43 years left.  Problem is, I am not sure I will be in as good of shape as grandpa was...I am not sure I am in as good of shape now as he was when he retired.  Oh well, I have one bright spot in the entire aging saga, a quote from a sign that hung over our old pharmacists desk....."old age and treachery will overcome youth and vigor everytime".  I guess what we lose in physical prowess as we age we make up for in deviousness.

 The PS to this blog is I thought we might start corn planting Friday, but it is raining now, so, I guess we are still a few days out.

The weather of the last few days makes me think spring has arrived for real.  The past 10 days have seen rain in generous amounts, easing my fears of an early long lasting drouth, and moving them to a regular old July and August drouth prediction.  Corn planters have stayed in the shed, and seed corn in the bag.  It is raining tonight, but the week ahead is forecast to be dry.  Without knowing how much it has rained, I would guess perhaps we could get in the field by Thursday if we get the temps forecasted, in the high 70s and low 80s.  Our vegetable garden is showing signs of life, with the taters coming up, and the radishes, carrots, spinach and parsnips all emerged.

Although most grass leases have started, save the few that begin on May 1, there is for all practical purposed no grass to go to thanks to our cold weather of late.  Most pastures are either brown or black right now, with just a few cool season pastures bright green.  Our warm season grasses need nights that don't fall below 50 to grow at all, and really need nights of 60F+ to grow well.  For most, calving is winding down.  I sold 66 head of steers and heifers Thursday with the steers averaging 755 pounds at $1.01 per pound, and heifers 680 at $.9610 per pound.  This is about $.15 per pound less than this time last year.

There is concern about freeze damage in some Kansas wheat, our 10pm newscast had that as one of the lead stories(go to www.kwch.com ). There is also a saying that wheat gets killed 3 times before harvest, so time will tell how much damage is really out there.

After so many cold windy days, yesterday yielded winds of the right speed and direction for me to burn some of my pasture, aided by a strip burned through the middle of the 320 acre tract from a fire that jumped the highway last week.  It took much longer than I thought it would to fire guard around buildings and neighboring property, we started our backfires at 4pm and got done at 11pm.  I have posted pics in my gallery that I think are pretty good, if I do say so myself.

I see nothing on the BBC about this, as with the left in this nation they are probably doing their best to ignore it.  Today is our tax day, the day our federal income taxes are due(and state in Kansas).  Today is also the advent of the tax TEA party, an acronym for taxed enough already.  This is supposedly a grassroots movement in the spirit of the Boston tea party, during which patriots dressed in Native American garb dumped British tea into Boston harbor in a pre- revolutionary protest against your parliament and its taxes. 

The left is doing its level best to either ignore these tea parties, or label the organizers and participants as far right nuts. In the case of the tea party organized in our community for tonight, the organizers are a young farm couple(not Mrs KF and I , we are middle aged).  By their own admission they didn't care at all about politics until 6 months ago.  My feeling is this is not a radical movement at all, nor is it confined to the far right.  Millions of us are scared to death over the huge national debt and huge and growing deficits.  We all remember that both the Democrats and Republicans for years have decried both growing deficits and the debt, now suddenly according to those in power, we should just not worry about it anymore.

I have no idea how many people are going to attend these functions going on all over the nation through this evening.  This may be the beginning of a whole new awakening in our democracy, or simply a blip on the radar screen of history.  Time will tell.

For most of the the last 2 months through day after day of dry weather and strong winds, with a huge fuel load on our prairies I have figured we would have a big out of control fire.  I had been wrong day after day, through all the red flag warnings and the like.  Just when I quit carrying the camera, it finally happened, yesterday (April 4) we got a big one. 

The problem really started the day before.  It has to be understood first of all just how important fire is to the tallgrass prairie, I guess the best way to put it is that fire is just as important to the Flinthills rancher as fungicide is to the UK wheat grower.  Fire keeps our prairie from going to trees and brush, it gets rid of the old grass to allow the fresh young grass to grow.  Getting rid of the old fuel also ends the ever present danger of fire we live with every dry windy day from the 1st of October to the time the pastures are finally burned in April.  I have been surprised more burning has not already been done, but we have had such a string of windy high to extreme fire weather days, along with cold temps, that most people have been reluctant to burn.  For one reason or another, all that ended Friday afternoon.  It might have been because high winds were forecast for Saturday, and rain Saturday night, it might have been because we are just a few weeks from going to grass and guys are getting nervous about having so much work to do in such a short time, or it might be all of the above, but mid afternoon Friday the sky began to fill with plumes of smoke, even though it was fairly windy.  In no time at all, the pager began sounding its various tones for the divisions throughout the county as the fires started jumping roads.  By 5pm our tone sounded, a fire had jumped and was going through a 640 acre pasture that will probably be burned in a week or less anyway, problem was a strong southeast wind was driving it straight toward a small town of about 50 people, and if it jumped the next road it would be in some oil storage tanks.  Our snow and rain from the weekend before made for some muddy fire fighting, but we were able to get a handle on that fire in about an hour, a stuck truck led to some yelling by the chief and some sore feelings...not good with volunteers.

At around 10:30 pm the tones sounded for the 2 divisions directly west of us, in 5 minutes our tone sounded for the same fire, some 15 miles away from home, in very rough terrain.  When I arrived at the firebarn only one other person was there, no doubt in no small part due to the harsh words over the stuck fire truck earlier in the day.  The pager was sounded twice more, and after a considerable amount of begging by me over the radio, 3 more guys showed up.  Our trip overland through hills and draws took us 45 minutes, we had been told this fire had come from the adjoining county and we would meet up with fire trucks from that county fighting the fire....either we did not find the right fire, or we were misinformed, because when the trucks from all three divisions finally met up at about a quarter of midnight in a moonlit pasture, we found lots of fire, and no one putting it out.  The terrain was such we could not get to the fire, a walk by flashlight around much of the perimeter seemed to indicate the fire was contained by a creek, and burned grass on either side.  The area west of here is about 400 feet higher than the area I live in, we were able to get a good view of much of the county looking back to the east and south, there were numerous fires all over, and the thought crossed my mind as the wind was supposed to come up to gusts over 40 Saturday, these fires could become uncontrollable the next day.  We left without doing much of anything, and I crawled into bed at 2:30 am Saturday morning.

When I reluctantly awoke later in the morning, the first thing to greet me logging into the weather was a red flag warning.  The strong south wind picked up strength all morning, just as I was about to sit down to a wonderful lunch Mrs. KF had prepared, the phone rang from our chief, telling me there was a good deal of smoke coming from the general area we had been in the night before.  His unsaid message was he wanted me to drive the 15 miles on my own to see what the situation was, I did not take the bait and did not offer to do it.  So, he had dispatch set of our pagers, and with my lunch sitting on the table, off I went again.  On the way to town I called one of the ranchers in that area, John.  John is never much for putting out a fire this time of year, as he says, "it'll all be black in a week anyway".  However, John was some 7 miles north of the fire in a 5000 acre pasture he rents checking his calving cows, the fire happened to be heading that way.  He further commented, very slowly, that "it is rolling right along Brian".  It was agreed he would get closer to the fire while we headed trucks that way.  Within 5 minutes my phone rang again(John talks with a very slow drawl) with the following report, "weeeellll I reckon it has gone 2 miles in about 15 minutes, this whole country will be black in a few days anyway, buuutttt this wind is blowing pretty good and there are alot of oil wells and tank batteries in the path of it to catch fire...I think it will stop at the creek, buuuuttt, the creek ain't very wide and it might jump it.........if it does, well, then Katy bar the door....the only cattle between it and the river are my cows......fellers, I reckon we better stop it, I guess if we can't the north branch will stop it by evening" (meaning the river I live on, 10-15 miles away). 

The fire was somewhat closer to town than the one early in the morning, although it appeared to have traveled about 3-5 miles back toward us when we got near it, I am unclear yet if it had started from the fire we did not put out because we felt it was contained,or one of the remnants of the half dozen other fires we drove through to get to it. At any rate, when our first 2 trucks arrived we faced a fireline of about 3-4 miles, that we could see.  There was a discussion with the owner of the ranch, and back and forth over the radio as I pleaded with our chief for more trucks.  He agreed and 7 more were dispatched to us.  Meanwhile, John and another rancher began a backfire on the other side of the creek against a road, in case it jumped.  By this time, the fire was running nearly 2 miles wide at the head fire.  The owner wanted the fire stopped at a 10 foot wide mowed path across a mile of pasture, because he was in a government program to preserve bird habitat.  This was impossible, and I told him that with as much diplomacy as possible.  He did not want any back fires set either...however the two other ranchers went about setting them all the same.  Our first two trucks tried a frontal attack on a fire coming down the hill toward a tank battery, after only 10 minutes of trying to plow up the steep hill in mud and rock I called back to the boss that the situation was impossible running head on into it.  3 trucks came from the far south end and worked the east side, our tanker set up at the tank batteries we were trying to protect to nurse everyone.  The two trucks we brought and 3 others from neighboring divisions worked the line from the tank battery to the north backfire, perhaps a mile and a half long, or 2 miles.  As the afternoon wore on, what had appeared to be an impossible situation gradually was brought under control, 8 attack rigs, one tanker, and 2 pickups with water tanks and pumps provided by the owner, 22 volunteer firemen and 8 ranchers were able to move to the west fire line by about 5pm and to get it controlled and out by 6pm.  We lost no buildings(to be fair, there were just a few outbuildings in the area), no oil tanks(there were lots of them) and no stock.  Just a rough guess was maybe 2000-3000 acres burned.  It all would have burned anyway(we even managed to save most of the bird grass), just in a more controlled fashion. Had it gone past the backfire point, it probably would have put a house or two in danger, and many more oil fields, and gone perhaps another 5-8 miles. 

I didn't have my camera, but half way through the afternoon managed to borrow one.  I took some decent pics, just none of the main action.  Eventually I will get them downloaded and post a few. 

Just in time for spring, and April, cold weather arrives in Kansas.  Snow a couple counties north of us this morning in the range of 4 inches, so says the radio, while we just saw the stray snowflake.   Just when I thought we had missed the worst of it, a wonderful cold rain started.  At 2:40 pm our current temp is 38F(that is 3C, I figured the conversion just for my British friends) as I glanced at the London forecast on the homepage I noted our current temp is 4 degrees below the predicted London low.  Not to worry, Saturday afternoon strong south winds are supposed to usher in temps in the middle 70s, along with a high fire danger and a chance of severe storms Saturday night as a cold front collides with the strong southerly flow, giving us a high Sunday forecast at 42F.  Farm work is at a standstill, once again we are in the fix of it is time for the grass to grow, but too cold to grow it(our warm season grasses need night time temps that don't fall much below 55F to really grow).  I am nearing the end of my silage pit, and the cool season brome grass growing in the road ditches gives the cattle something to aspire too, generally resulting in one or two out every day.  It seems that it is always either too dry with warm weather in April, or too cold with wet weather, either way our grass always gets off to a slow start.

With our recent moisture thoughts of drouth are not as prevalent for me, we have excellent subsoil moisture, so all we need are warm days and nights and the grass will explode.  Much less has been burned than I thought would be by now, probably because nearly every day has strong winds and the fires are just too hard to control.  The minute it gets dry the corn planters will start rolling in earnest, as we are now within the ideal time to plant corn.  The race is about to begin, I can't believe it is time to start all over again.

I don't care much for surprises, as generally they are not good.  Today I had several surprises, the two bearings I needed for the front hub of our TW 35 were $600 apiece, that was a bad surprise.  The weatherman put a 70% chance of snow in the forecast for Friday night and Saturday, with a low of 25F, after the last two relatively balmy weeks that have tricked the vegetation into believing warm weather was here to stay, this will be a rude awakening for the fruit trees.  Given our ability to dodge moisture, I will not be surprised if we get very little snow(although they are calling for up to 6 inches in western Kansas).  The snow being in the forecast is a bad surprise, not getting any would be a good surprise, having them miss the low would be an even better surprise. 

Life also gives us big surprises, and little surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant.  Saturday I had a very big surprise, of a personal nature I will probably regret sharing.  My sister-in-law posted pics of my nieces on Facebook, I am leery of getting on such sites(surprising eh?? given my love for this one) so Mrs. KF joined so we could view the pics.  Everyone is on Facebook, in this nation anyway, including most of my family my age and younger, I learned.  Coming in from fieldwork I was met by my ashen faced wife who said, "there is something on here about your cousin you will not like".  It was from Facebook I learned my cousin (age 20 who is much more like my niece) had gotten married to a young man not in this nation legally.  Mrs KF was right, I did not like that, that is an example of a big surprise, that is not necessarily good.   I am hopeful after digesting this surprise for a week or so I will look upon it with more favor, which in itself will be a surprise. 

I got another big surprise this afternoon.  Fall of '07 we had what I refer to as a "train wreck" driving my fall calving cows down from summer pasture. I have learned, the hard way, that the cows remember where they are headed in the fall and spring, and know that both times the feed is better at the end of the journey.  When I open the gate to move them they make the 2 mile journey at a dead run.  Not a problem when the calves have been pulled off, but a big problem when they are trailing baby calves.  The plan was for my dad and another fellow to block the road with their pickup trucks to hold the cows back, and make them walk the road down to fall quarters and not outrun their calves.  However, one snakey old rip evaded dad, dad broke ranks to retrieve her, failed and in the process lost the entire bunch of 70, leaving 70- month old calves wandering aimlessly.  We managed to bring part of the cows back, but in the resulting chaos ended up with cattle strung the entire length of the 2 miles, and part of them got in with my dads cows, including one heifer calf "with a little ear", here in the states that means she has some Brahman in her, I think you know it better as Zebu.  "A little ear" makes a Limousin look calm.  I ended up leaving her with dads cattle, she got bred too young, and for two weeks I have watched her, wondering if she could possibly calve unassisted at 18 months of age.  Thursday morning(last) to my surprise she stood with a baby calf sucking eagerly, a nice little surprise.  That little bit of ear made her very protective.  She was in a 7 acre "trap" and had crossed the creek onto a corner of about an acre, I figured I would leave her since she was a little mean and the calf was new, and come back in  a bit to try to drive them both across the riffle and into the pen, to take her to the other cows with new calves.  Upon my return, the calf was gone, my conclusion after searching the entire 7 acres was he had gone into the creek and drowned.  This was a bad surprise.  This afternoon, after getting the hit for the bearings, I was amazed to find the heifer in question with the calf in tow, I haven't a clue where that calf has been, but it was in excellent shape.  Finally, a very big, very good surprise.  Hopefully I have had my quota of surprises for the spring.

If you are an American with any mental capacity at all, there is one company on your mind tonight, AIG, American Insurance Group.  No matter if you are a farmer in Kansas, or a teacher in California, old, young, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor or in between, three simple letter raise your hackles, AIG.  For those of you Brits who don't know, AIG is the company that has taken the most out of the bailout the US taxpayers have been saddled with, billions of dollars to this one company.  The revelation they will be paying millions of dollars in bonuses to top brass is perhaps a smoke screen according to many news organizations to cover up the fact billions of taxpayer funds have left our country for places like Germany, courtesy of the folks at AIG. 

Judging from the TV talk shows tonight, news, and public blogs and forums, Obama should have perhaps asked Gordon Brown to bring him a nice pair of Dunlop wellies like I bought in Scotland, because the golden child has been stepping in it right and left lately.  Right now, Democrats are just as mad as Republicans over the AIG debacle, and since Obama today claimed that the buck stopped with him, in order to shield his tax dodging Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner from the public wrath over this matter, Obama may soon wish he was still a community organizer in Chicago, fighting the system rather than being a part of it.  It didn't help this week that Obama's plan to make injured war veterans pay for their own medical care surfaced, I think another week like this and our "hope and change" President may see his approval ratings racing downward to meet those of George W. Bush.

 The mood over here just doesn't get any better, and more and more people are beginning to realize it really doesn't matter what party a given politician belongs to, it is pretty much a certainty if they aren't a crook, they are probably incompetent.  The bright side is, we now have a central conversation theme that is not related to the weather.  No matter where you go you can strike up a conversation simply by saying, "so, what do you think of this AIG thing??".