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Here’s how Kansas’ wheat crop is looking so far according to Kansas Wheat

By
Guest Columnist
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A late March freeze, blustery days of blowing dust and predicted 80-degree afternoons — the dramatic springtime weather in Kansas can leave everyone wondering what exactly is coming next, especially wheat producers watching their stands green up after the winter.

Kansas Wheat caught up with farmer leaders from across the state to check on how this crop is stacking up compared to last year’s drought-stricken fields.

According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) crop progress report for the week ending April 7, 2024, winter wheat was rated at 49 percent good to excellent, 37 percent fair and 14 percent very poor to poor. A third of winter wheat, primarily in the southern tier and central-to-east regions of the state has jointed, ahead of both last year and the five-year average.

Producers are currently spraying a good stand of wheat for bugs and worms in far western Kansas, where Jason Ochs farms near Syracuse. The area is in a pocket of Kansas that received adequate, but extremely variable, moisture over the winter, which was just enough to keep them out of drought status and maintain a good stand of wheat.

The wheat drilled in absolutely beautifully, and we got a good stand right off the bat,” he said. “It’s a nice change.”

The cold temperatures at the end of March did burn just the tips of wheat, but Ochs was more concerned about spraying and getting that next round of moisture than freeze damage. He reported the top two to four inches is starting to look pretty dry.

“We missed the last three or four moisture chances, so optimism is going down a little bit,” Ochs said. “As of now, it looks like we are going to definitely raise above-average yields. I don’t know how you cannot be a little excited about that.”

A swath through central Kansas is in moderate drought, having missed out on the winter moisture that benefitted the western part of the state. That’s certainly true where Martin Kerschen farms in Reno and Sedgwick counties. He reported that ponds are still dry, and the wheat is starting to show that blue tint, indicating drought stress. He is also more concerned with the impact of upcoming 80-degree days this weekend than with the singed tops from the freeze late last month.

“Without moisture, it’s not going to be the best of situations,” Kerschen said. “But it looks a lot better right now than it did last year. That’s one positive.”

Near Plainville in north-central Kansas, Mike McClellan also feels like he’s always waiting for moisture. He planted his wheat late, waiting for rains, and some of it did not come up until the first part of March. The late emergence prevented freeze damage since the wheat was not in as vulnerable of a growth stage.

“Most of the wheat in our area is really small and has taken off now, so that helped us get through the freeze ok,” McClellan said. “Now we’re starting to get some growth and all of a sudden we’re starting to worry about moisture again.”

With four days of wind at more than 40 miles per hour, that next rainfall event is critical. However, he pointed out that he did not cut any of his winter wheat last year, so this year still has him feeling better about this crop’s chances.

Further north, near the Nebraska border, Chris Tanner feels like the drought may finally be breaking where he farms around Norton. He had nice fall moisture to drill in his wheat and then had a couple of torrential downpours and a few snows that maintained good moisture.

“Our profiles are a lot better than we’ve had in the last three years,” Tanner said. “It feels better coming out of a drought rather than going into it. We’ve done our time.”

The wheat in this area was not far enough along to suffer from cold temperatures, but a few spotty fields are showing a little stress. At this point, however, he is feeling optimistic about this year’s crop.

“We’re a lot better off than we have been in the last several years,” he said. “Right now, it’s one of the better-looking crops that I’ve seen in the last 10 years.”

Follow along with Kansas Wheat at kswheat.com for more updates from the field as the 2024 wheat crop continues progressing to this summer’s harvest.

 

Blender Pie

By
Debbie Dance Uhrig
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‘If’ I would have had a bit more time this weekend I would have enjoyed a warm blender pie from the oven. When I think of springtime or even warm cozy coffee times this simplistic pie always comes to mind. It doesn’t usually stay around past a few hours, because it is delicious while it is still warm from the oven. Or a few hours later, about the time it should head for the refrigerator.

Actually; this past week I’ve been faced with a serious ‘clean’ the house mode. I’m one of those who cannot cook or basically ‘function’ if the house is not tidy. It’s almost like when your parents said: ‘You can play when your room is clean.’

I have been doing quite a bit of studying this week. Finished a new recipe which I will debut the last week of the month, after it greets an event in Lewistown, Missouri on the 20th of April. I’m also working on a cherry bread recipe. For several years I have desired to capture the essence of a cherry bread that was once made in Leavenworth, Kansas. The writing stage is pretty close, and then I’ll be ready to feed the neighborhood, and get responses. I can hardly wait to get it done.

You obviously will need a blender, or a food processor to make this yummy pie.

Don’t forget to stir in the coconut by hand, at the very end. Another good thing is most of the recipe calls for ingredients you will readily have on hand, except for the coconut. If you don’t like coconut, just leave it out, I would miss it, but if you don’t like coconut, you don’t like coconut!!!

Those with big gardens are probably busy putting in the early vegetables. Our property doesn’t have enough sunlight or flat space for a garden. This doesn’t mean I don’t can. Right now, I’m looking at blueberry syrup, and I’ve stumbled upon ‘cherry bounce’, which was George Washington’s favorite cordial. His was usually made with quality bourbon or whiskey, mine is going to be made with vodka. Then there’s the vacuum sealed blueberry pancake mix to go with the blueberry syrup. I can’t imagine not using our creative skills which can bring so much happiness and joy to those in which we share. About now you may be asking yourself this question: ‘Why did they call the cherry cordial cherry bounce?

All I know is I can already see the ‘cherry bounce’ in a tall clear glass with a slice of lime and sprite. Of course, there are cherries in the there too. Enjoy your week friends, bake a quick pie and enjoy a bit more of life. Simply yours, The Covered Dish.

Coconut Blender Pie

2 cups milk

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup biscuit mix (can make your own, check on-line)

4 eggs

1/4 cup soft butter

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup Sweetened Angel flaked coconut

Combine all ingredients except the coconut in the blender. Blend on low for 3 minutes. By hand, stir in the coconut. Pour into a greased 9-inch pie pan. Let stand about five minutes and then bake in a 350-degree oven for 40 minutes. The pie is done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Use a thin knife like a parey knife, not a butter knife. Serve warm or cold. I like mine served with a dollop of fresh whipped cream, and a sprinkling of cinnamon or toasted coconut on top. Serves 6-8 persons.

If company drops in unexpectedly this is the perfect rescue dessert.

Canaries in the Water

By
Steve Gilliland
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Many a good fisherman has cut his or her “teeth” on bluegills, often catching them from a farm pond with nothing but a hook and a bit of worm under a bobber. Some of us can even remember catching them with a cane pole and an old cork fastened on some sort of heavy cord. They’re feisty fighters and provide just enough action to get and keep a youngster “hooked” on fishing. When spawning, they scoop out oval shaped beds in the pond bottom, and in defense of their spawning ground, the little rascals will chase about any bait or lure thrown into the water.

I recently stumbled across another role for bluegills besides helping kids learn to fish. Do you remember how coal miners of years ago carried caged canaries into the mine with them to detect toxic air? It seems the birds were able to detect toxins in the air well before the miners could, and by watching the birds’ reactions the miners would be warned in time to exit the mines before breathing the poisoned air. It seems that some time back the Army developed a system of using bluegill fish to detect toxins in drinking water, much like the canaries were able to do with air in the coal mines. The original process was named IAC 1090, or Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System, and though it was developed by the Army for its own use, the system is currently used to monitor the drinking water at Fort Detrick, Maryland, plus several large cities including New York City, San Francisco and Washington DC, and since 911, even more large US cities have begun using bluegills to help protect their water supplies.

It seems bluegills are extremely sensitive to toxins in the water where they live, so the system works by employing bluegill fish at water treatment plants. Each fish is kept in an individual plastic case that is described as looking like a trunk made into an aquarium. Fish do a three week tour of duty and are then replaced. They are kept inside at the water treatment facility and water is piped through the case, where electronic sensors monitor each fish for what amounts to “fish coughs.” Much like we humans cough to expel something foreign from our respiratory system, bluegills do the same by flexing their gills to expel something foreign, say a grain of sand, from their breathing passage. The instruments pick up these “coughs” and other irregularities and send the information to computers that constantly compare it to the fish’s normal behavior. If the computers sense that enough of the fish are upset by something in the water, they automatically trigger water samples to be taken and notify workers.

Bluegills are best able to detect non-biological threats such as pesticides, mercury, cyanide, heavy metals, fuel spills and phosphates. By monitoring the fish, workers are not able to tell exactly what toxins they are reacting to, just that there is threat to the drinking water that needs immediate attention. One article I found said that the Army had tested bluegills against 27 different toxins, and the fish detected them all.

The system at Fort Detrick tests both the raw water coming into the plant and the fully treated water just before its leaves the treatment facility. One example of the bluegill’s effectiveness cited a situation when the computer monitoring the fish sensed that the bluegills sampling the raw water pumped from the river had become agitated. The incoming water was immediately shut off and samples taken, revealing that someone had evidently washed a pesticide truck upstream in the river. The incoming water was so poisoned that all the fish that initially sensed it died, but not before the threat had been

addressed and identified. In this case the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia also benefited from the bluegills, allowing it to shut off its incoming water also, which was being pumped from the same river just one hundred yards upstream.

A spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, had this to say about their system that uses the little fish to protect its drinking water. “We appreciate that there’s an irony to this, that the oldest technology in the world -life- is now being combined with high technology to keep the water supply of the region safe. We want to use what works, and if that means we have to become fish keepers, then we will.” So the next time you catch a mess of bluegills, look upon them with a whole new respect! Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Instantaneous Irritating Itch

By
Milo Yield
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Thayne Cozart
Milo Yield

At my age, seldom does a week go by that I accidentally don’t do sumpthin’ that is what I call “chuckle worthy.” It happened again last week. It’s funny enough to share in this column. Here’s what happened.

As I’ve been mentioning, I’ve been trying to “soil build” for my row garden and raised garden beds. To get the job done, I’ve been scrounging rotting organic material to mix with the top soil that I had hauled in. One neighbor donated square bales of half-rotted hay.

Another neighbor saw what I wuz doing and volunteered to give me quite a few bags of half-rotted bromegrass seed that had gotten wet on a hay rack. Since bromegrass seed is organic in nature, after I took a look at the seed, I took him up on his offer because it would work perfectly in my soil building effort. I figure the small seeds should decompose rapidly in the soil and give the soil much-needed organic matter.

So, I got myself the job of hauling the brome seed back to my garden site. For the first load, I took my all-terrain vehicle to haul it. I’ll mention that the plastic seed bags had been exposed to the wind and weather long enuf for all the bags to be at various stages of deterioration and decomposition.

They were all split open on the top. They all had a layer of heavy, wet, yucky, black rotted seed on the bottom. But also, all the bags had a layer of dry, fluffy, weather dried seed on the top. The sorry condition of the bags posed a dilemma. Some of them would hold together enuf to lift and put into the bed of the ATV.

But, alas, I learned that some of the bags would fall apart when hefted. As I wuz lifting one bag from the hay rack, it gave away as I wuz transferring it to the ATV. The fluffy brome seed flew everywhere and — sad to say — a healthy portion went straight down the front collar of my shirt.

Within an instant, gravity pulled the dry seed down and embedded it tightly into my T-shirt, my inner-underwear, my long-handled underwear, and clear down to my socks. I had an instantaneous, irritating itch from my Adam’s apple to my ankles.

For those not in the know about bromegrass seed, it is very much like wild oats seed or tickle grass. It’s most disgusting trait is that the seeds penetrate any fabric and stick there until pulled out. And, pulling out the seed is like a porcupine quill. It doesn’t come out backwards. It only comes out when you pull it through the fabric.

Well, that’s the predicament I found myself in and I wuz a quarter-mile from home. I won’t go into detail about how it felt to have prickles on my skin from top to toe, but if you have an imagination, you can conjure up a funny Mental Home Video of my situation.

Continuing to work wuz not an option. Getting rid of the itch wuz the only option. So, I hopped “itchingly” onto my ATV and headed home. When I got to the security of my garage, I began the process of “deseeding” my stripped-off clothes. I used my fingers for awhile. Then a pair of tweezers. I must have spent close to a half-hour at the job.

And, even after my clothes went through the wash. I’ve been finding a few remaining bromegrass prickles. Let my experience be a precautionary tale for anyone handling prickly seed. Do it carefully or experience an instantaneous irritating itch.

***

I did eventually get the brome seed mixed with the topsoil. And, with the help of my son-in-law, ol’ Harley Ryder, we got the first two of my raised beds set and filled with mixed soil. Only two more to go.

***

Our grand-daughter in North Carolina relayed a funny little story about our great-grandkids. Our great-granddaughter is nearly five years old. Our great-grandson is a three-year-old. The kids were playing outdoors near their patio table. There wuz a pink fly-swatter laying on the table.

Soon, the sister ran into the kitchen and told her mother, “Mom, there was a big fly on the table, and we spanked it to death.”

***

At our Old Geezer Gang Gathering this morning I wuz complaining about how increasingly I think of something to do elsewhere in our home, but when I get to that room, I can’t remember what I came there to do.

One wag in our group made this suggestion: “Buy yourself some new shoes with that Memory Foam sole. Then you’ll quit forgetting.”

I just might take his suggestion — providing I remember it.

***

A overbearing farmer got so overbearing than everyone he knew avoided him. He eventually got frustrated enuf that he went to a psychiatrist for help.

When the doctor asked the farmer to describe his problem, he replied, “Well, Doc. Nobody will talk to me anymore. My neighbors won’t talk to me. My hired men won’t talk to me. My aging parents won’t talk to me. My kids and grandkids won’t talk to me. Even my wife won’t talk to me. Even my dog ignores me. So, why it it that no one will talk to me.

The psychiatrist looked up from his notebook, looked at his assistant and said, “Next patient, please!”

***

Words of wisdom for the week: “Even with the price of everything going up, writing paper remains stationery.”
And, “Old gardeners never die. They just spade away, then throw in the trowel.”

Have a good ‘un.

Legendary Horsemen Eager To Help Others Develop Their Unique Skills

By
Frank Buchman
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Passing along their horse working skills to others was emphasis of legendary horsemen at the EquiFest of Kansas in Salina.

Moderated by veterinarian Dr. Stan O’Neil, the Legendary Kansas Horsemen Panel was a unique combination of knowledgeable horse professionals.

Gary Wiggins of Brewster is a cowboy who has developed a business making bits and spurs demanded throughout the country. “It is a great honor to do what I do for our living. Our cup ‘runneth’ over,” he said.

Lifelong horse enthusiast, Ann White owns and is head trainer at Vermillion Valley Equine Center near Belvue. She coaches the Kansas State University Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association (IHSA) English team. “I’m all for having fun while increasing horsemanship abilities of English riders of every caliber,” she said.

Russ Wiegers, professional farrier from Leoti, started shoeing horses when he was 18 years old and has continued 46 years. “I’ve shod a variety of horses but there is always more to learn about the trade through farrier associations,” he said.

Learning to make bits and spurs from seasoned tradesmen, Wiggins is most diverse making anything to do with cowboy gear. His abilities have been honed through variety, receiving prestigious awards and considerable media coverage.

A leader in the Kansas Horse Council, White was brainchild for the now successful EquiFest of Kansas. “I attended a number of similar attractions across the country seeing the many benefits which could also serve Kansas’ horse industry,” she said.

Initially shoeing horses for feedlots over a wide area, Wiegers now works more with arena performance horses. “There are many situations that can arise with working horses due to the high level of stress. I take special pride in therapeutics extending usefulness of top horses,” he said.

A silversmith, Wiggins learned that skill from his dad Denzil Wiggins and uses many of those “hand me down” tools. “In the business two decades, my passion is making quality gear for the working cowboy,” he said.

Active in the Kansas Hunter Jumper Association for 40 years. White has trained champions on all levels collecting national titles. “This is a family operation with crops and livestock while my daughters have also become involved in training,” she said.

Achieving the Certified Farrier status in 2018, Wiegers is emphatic about continuing education to uphold integrity of the farrier profession. “I take pride in mentoring young farriers with their careers. They soon learn it can be profitable, but a lot of arduous work,” he said.

Honored as the Academy of Western Artists Bit and Spur Maker of the Year, Wiggins initially marketed his talents at major livestock shows. “I now only go to a couple of such events but have waiting lists for my work on order,” he said.

Both Wiegers and White have developed sideline businesses merchandizing equipment important to their professions.

“It got so I couldn’t find horseshoes and farrier equipment for my own use, so I started a business now with clientele nationwide,” Wiegers said.

“It is always difficult to find the right English horse equipment, so I started a store in Wamego. I also offer English horse merchandise for sale when attending shows,” White said.

Teaching shop in high school for a time, Wiggins invites young people interested in making bits, spurs, and cowboy wares to work with him. “I learned from others and want to pass those trade skills on to the next generation,” Wiggins said.

“There is always more to learn about the farrier trade. I offer as much assistance as I can and encourage all interested in horseshoeing to join farrier associations,” Wiegers said.

“I always been a horse enthusiast although my family was not initially interested. I want to help all those people fascinated with horses to learn more about them and improve their skills,” White said.

Love for horses and their unique work in diverse trades for horse enthusiasts was most apparent in the humble legends.

+++30+++

 

CUTLINE

Gary Wiggins, Brewster; Ann White, Belvue; and Russ Wiegers, Leoti, were on the Legendary Kansas Horsemen Panel at the EquiFest of Kansas in Salina.

Tune into Roamin’ The Range with Frank J. Buchman, KFRM 550 AM radio or computer, 1:47 p.m., April 10, 2024: For The Love Of Horses “Legendary Horsemen Eager To Help Others Develop Their Unique Skills”

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