Bale Wrapping

I cannot believe how fast time flies. Each week I vow I'm going to get my blog wrote before Sunday, then it NEVER happens. Where does the time go? This week has been an odds and ends week. I took a couple days off to spend with family. I think this week I'll focus on bale wrapping. Matt got started on this a couple years ago and loves the results.

Bale wrapping is beneficial and turns hay into haylage. The best type of hay to wrap is types of hay that are hard to get dry. For example, triticale, alfalfa and sudex. One mows, rakes, then bales them the same as brome or native. The difference is the time and moisture that you bale them. Usually, we mow and bale within 12 hours compared to the 24 hours for brome or native. Of course this all varies with weather conditions and heaviness of the hay, ect. When you dry bale hay you want it to be between 12-15% moisture level, when you wrap hay you want it more in the 30-50% range. There are hay moisture testers to show this information and a lot of balers now how moisture testers built in.

After baling it, it gets put through the wrapper. Each bale is wrapped with plastic through the bale wrapper. It takes about 30 seconds-1 minute per bale. The point of doing this is to lock the moisture in, but keep the oxygen out. Then the hay undergoes a fermentation process. It becomes haylage. It's very similar to silage, but with hay instead of corn or whatever else. Matt loves to wrap hay because it's much more palatable for the cows in the middle of winter than dry brome. The cattle absolutely LOVE eating it. When you are ready to feed it, you simply cut the plastic. Then we put ours through a haybuster. The haybuster mixes the hay so the cattle consume more of the feed and waste less of the hay. Hence, they use less hay, which means less land to grow hay. Producers try to use their resources in the most efficient manner possible. 

A lot more producers are interested in doing this and there are few hay wrappers in our area so Matt gets lots of call to do custom bale wrapping. This is a picture of some of the wrapping we did for some friends of ours. You can see in the background the tractor and trailer picking the bales out of the field and the white row of hay is the hay that has been wrapped and the red machine is the actual hay wrapper. It's a pretty neat experience...the first time. It gets old fast when you stand there and watch it for hours on end. 

If you have any questions, I would LOVE to answer them. (Or in reality, have Matt answer them). That's kind of the overview of hay wrapping. Please, please, please, let me know if you have any questions. 

I'm looking forward to talking to a few of the FFA Chapters in our area this week about my blog and ag advocacy. I hope you all have a great week!!

Wedding Season

Hi all! I apologize again. This is going to be a short blog. (Your welcome Alan). It has been wedding season in our lives. My friends Audra and Strube last week. This week Annie and Abe. Janae and I were candle lighters. What Annie was thinking is beyond the two of us-putting us in charge of fire. Thankfully, we didn't burn the church down. Saturday we spent the whole day getting ready for the wedding and just hanging out with each other. Thank goodness for Janae's mom, Diane! She did our hair for the wedding. Well, she did my hair once, but Janae's twice! Thanks Soccer Mom!

New born calf we had this week. I love seeing the miracle of birth. 

My Sunday afternoon dates. Glad I got to spend a little time with them. These are Matt's sister, Jenny and Greg's twins.

The beautiful bride, Janae and I. We were so honored to be involved in her wedding. 

My dear Forever and I. I love him so much. Wedding season is in the air.  Which is why I made Matt watch our wedding video after the past couple weekends. Which he absolutely didn't like.

I just want to wish Annie and Abe the absolutely best. I'm so excited as they begin the next chapter of their lives. May their marriage be forever blessed. 

Sorry about the shortness of the blog. It's been a busy week! Hope you have an absolutely fantastic week. There will be blogs about haying season and wheat harvest coming up!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the dads. Hope you all have a fantastic day and get to spend some of it anyway with your children!

Not going to be a lot about agriculture this week. So much great things happening in my life and my friends' lives. One of my really good high school friends married another classmate of ours yesterday. I didn't actually get a picture with her. She was a beautiful bride and I'm so excited as she begins this next journey. She's moving about 30 minutes away from us so I'm excited that we'll get to be close! I have been married for about 8 months now and I couldn't be more excited for them to start the amazing trip of the rest of their lives. So change the white dress to being on her and a little different background and it would have been yesterday for her. Glad we got a pic at my wedding. Don't know how I could have forgotten to get one with her! Anyway, Strube and Audra I wish you the absolute best!

This is a couple of my other really great friends. Janae (the one on the left)  is getting married next summer. So excited for her! She and I cut the cake for Audra and will be lighting candles in another friends wedding next weekend. Shelby (in the middle) got married a couple years ago? She has two beautiful children. I'm so blessed with wonderful friends! Photo credit goes to Ben (Shelby's husband). He took it while holding their baby, a diaper bag and the phone. Then made sure to ask us if it was an acceptable photo!

This week I hauled quite a few loads of corn to the elevator. Abilene goes with me everywhere that she can. My parents and sister were babysitting her this weekend so we didn't have to leave her alone the whole time we were at the wedding. She's now 20 pounds. When we got her, she was 15. This is how she rides when we take loads. Normally, she sleeps about half the day and is really active the other half. 

My brother-in-law sent me this picture this morning. My sister and him took Abilene with her while they were choring. Apparently, they forgot to feed her breakfast so she found her own. Only problem is it's cat food, but I'm glad to know she's resourceful!

At the elevator we normally unload on one side of the elevator. There was a socket dropped into the dump so the whole thing shut down. The elevator is very high tech and detects when something (like a socket) gets dropped in the hole with the grain. They were working on getting it out, but in the meantime the trucks got to dump rail side. This means that we dumped where the trains come through. We dumped on train tracks. The system works the same, but the trains can come through and be top loaded. This is a picture of the system. 

This week we sold one of our combines and header. I've never seen them being loaded before so I found it very interesting. The truck actually disconnects with the trailer and the combine is loaded onto the front of the wagon instead of the back. You can see Matt directing so the combine is on the trailer evenly. In the background on the left is the semi that pulls the trailer. 

This is the trailer connected with the combine and head loaded. 

Matt, my ingenious Forever, welded a bracket onto a loader of the tractor. The combine couldn't lift the head high enough to get it onto the trailer so he made something to lift it with the tractor. He's so great at ideas like this and implementing them so they work. I just wish it wouldn't have been at 10:30 at night when we were doing this and getting up at 5:30 the next morning to finish it before the truck showed up at 6:30.

We have awesome neighbors in the Slipke's. I didn't take any photos (go figure). They had us over for a barbecue this week. It was so much fun! They have a puppy that is about the same age as Abilene so they had a blast playing and we had such a great time with them and the girls. Thanks Slipke's for having us over. Next time we can do it at our house! 

No recipe this week. Have fun being outside with your dads barbecuing. 

Have a great week!

Gluten: Good or Bad?

Another Sunday already? Where oh where does the time go? It's been a great week in our house. We've officially gone a whole week without any unwanted animals in our house! YEAH!!! AND in Northeast Kansas we've got some much needed rain this week with rumors of more to come tomorrow! Such a blessing to get rain when the crops need it and the grass is growing. As long as we can keep the severe stuff away that some of the more northern Kansas folks got. It sounds like all their crops will make a recovery though without having to replant.

So I was thinking about what to post about this week. The same stuff has been going on around our farm so nothing new to report there, Matt's sister Moe didn't have any suggestions (shame on her!) and I wasn't coming up with anything to post about. We were on the way home from my parents this morning. I was driving and Matt was reading a farm magazine and I glanced over and saw the title, "The Truth about Gluten". The lightbulb came on for me. What a very common buzzword. A lot of people are affected by it and several more are on gluten-free diets. I know very little about gluten. Therefore, this blog will be about the information that I have learned about gluten. I hope you learn as much as I have. Most of my information is coming out of the Southwest Farm Press, Thursday, June 5, 2014 edition. Their website is www.southwestfarmpress.com. However, the information is also backed up with scientific research I've found on the internet.

So what is gluten, first of all? Gluten is a protein found in cereal grains like wheat, rye and barley. It is responsible for the elasticity of dough. Gluten isn't bad! A lot of people think this, but it's not! Some people are gluten intolerant. What most have probably heard about is celiac disease. This disease affects 1 out of 141 people in the U.S. This is less than 1% of the population. Gluten makes these people have an immune response that harms their intestines. This makes them unable to absorb the vital nutrients and can cause very serious health problems. Celiac disease if 4 times more common than just 60 years ago. Research into out gut bacteria is occurring to see if this might be the reason more people are gluten intolerant.

There are normally two types of people that don't like gluten. The first, of course, being the celiac disease patients. The other being non-celiac gluten sensitivity group. This is the the condition that people promoting a wheat-free lifestyle say affects everyone. However, research show that it is actually quite rare. According to this article, Dr. Guandalini states, "Around 0.5 percent of people react to gluten in a way that is not a food allergy but is also not celiac."

Another doctor, "Dr. Alessio Fasano, one of the world's top scientists in celiac disease and director of the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, explained, 'Some people simply don't react well to gluten and feel better when it's removed from the diet. Unfortunately, there is no test for NCGS and this is part of why going gluten-free has become the answer to all that ails us digestively and otherwise. It's unfortunate because there are a lot of causes besides gluten for digestive issues.'"

So why do people push a gluten-free diet? One of the biggest trends is because of weight loss. People wanting to incorporate a gluten-free diet into their lives need to be exceptionally careful. According to Pam Cureton with Boston's Center for Celiac Research, "Eliminating wheat products (bread, rolls, cereals, pasta, tortillas, cakes, cookies, crackers) will result in fewer calories, but important nutrients like B-vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid), iron and fiber will also be lost. Grains provide 43 percent of the fiber in the U.S. diet and wheat is approximately three-quarters of the grains eaten in the U.S. Nutritionally, many gluten-free products are not equal replacements for their wheat-containg counterparts." She goes on to advise gluten-free dieters to consult a skilled dietician to be sure that there is a way for them to get their nutritional needs taken care of with such a difficult diet plan.

Gluten-free lifestyle promoters turn to the farmer to place blame. The "recent wheat breeding practices have led to higher, more 'toxic' types of wheat. They believe that such practices are increasing the rates of celiac and gluten sensitivity, even though you must have a gene to develop celiac disease." "Wheat like all food plants we eat, has undergone farmer selection and traditional breeding over the years. The hybridization that led to bread wheat occurred 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. All cultivated wheat varieties, both modern and heirloom varieties, have these hybridization events in common, so the kinds of protein (and gluten) present in today's varieties reflect the proteins present throughout the domestication process of wheat." This if from Brett Carver, PhD, wheat genetics chair in Agriculture at Oklahoma State University.

Many doctors and celiac specialists are very frustrated with the promotion of a gluten-free diet and the link back to farmers for being the reason for celiac disease. You must have a gene in order to have celiac disease. "Genetically modified wheat is not commercially available anywhere in the world. Wheat has been, and continues to be, a life-saving grain for most people," says Dr. Guandalini.

In conclusion, this article reiterates the fact that "most consumers can eat and enjoy the many varieties of wheat foods available without any negative impacts. And, luckily, for the few who can't, there are gluten-free options. For the vast majority of consumers, going gluten-free can be expensive, less nutritious and just plain unnecessary. The bottom line: gluten is a complex plant protein found in some of the most popular foods, and for most, it is an essential component of a balanced, healthy diet."

Be sure to look up the article. I did a lot of paraphrasing and direct quoting from the article. As with any food decision you make, take the time to do thorough research on what you are contemplating changing. Don't read one article, website or blog and believe it. Go to several sources and compare information. If at that point you decide that you want to change you and your families diet based upon that research, be sure that you consult a dietician to make sure you aren't going to be harming your families by leaving out essential nutrients. There's enough room in this world for everyone to make your own choices. I don't have to like what you choose and you don't have to like what I choose. I just ask that you don't try to force your decisions on me and mine. I don't have a problem with education or a conversation about why it is that we chose what we chose, but don't try to make laws saying I can't do something just because you decide it's the best way for your life.

Wheat harvest is approaching. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog with lots of pictures detailing our wheat harvest. My sister and brother-in-law and family live in Abilene, Kansas, so wheat harvest is a lot bigger deal for them then it is for us here in NE Kansas. Unfortunately, weather took a lot of their wheat crop this year. As farmers that live on an income that comes from the land and can't be protected from the weather conditions, every rain storm, every hail stone, every tornado, every bit of wind can be the weather event that loses our crop for the year. There's nothing we can do except try again next year and hope and pray for better weather conditions.

My recipe for the week, in honor of the wheat and gluten blog comes from one of my best friends (she's getting married in a couple weeks! So excited for her and her next journey in life), is Country Biscuits.



Country Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 T. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup softened butter of crisco
1 egg
1/2 cup milk or buttermilk

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. With a pastry blender cut in butter until mixture is course/crummy. In a small bowl whisk egg and milk. Add to the large bowl and mix together. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll it out and cut. Bake on a greased baking sheet for 10-14 minutes or until golden brown. Then enjoy.



I'm not a very good cook and not great with dough, but these are fantastic and fairly simple to make for even an inexperienced dough handler. I couldn't live without bread. It's one of my absolute favorite foods. Doesn't matter what kind of bread. It's all great.

I hope you have learned something from this blog. I certainly did! It's so important for us to know the reasons we're making the decisions we do. Know the background and facts about your choices so when someone asks you, you can give detailed and concise information. (I'm often flawed in this category.) Writing this blog gives me the excuse to sit down and do thorough research on the topics I'm not familiar with. I so often take for granted the fact that I know a lot about how animals and crops are raised, but too often don't follow through with knowing about the different types of beef (like my Beef Month blog) or details about gluten. Thank you for reading the blog and giving me a reason to become more knowledgeable!

Hope you all have a great week and enjoy!

Philosophy Sunday

First things first, had a frog in my washing machine while I was mowing the yard. I put in a load of clothes in before I went out to mow the yard. I asked Matt to put them in the dryer when they were done. I came back inside after getting rained out of mowing the yard and Matt told me there was a frog in the washing machine. Notice I said a frog IN the washing machine, not there WAS a frog in the machine, but that he had got it out for me. Nope he left it in there until I got back inside. This frog made it through an entire wash cycle alive and well! It makes me feel really secure about how clean those clothes are! So I know two things about mowing the yard.

      1. There is or soon going to be animals, that I don't want, in our house.
      2. It will rain before I get the whole yard mowed. Hence the reason there's about 5 different heights of               grass in the yard.

This week I spent a lot of time helping work cattle for my parents. As I've said before every cattle producer does things a little bit differently. My mom doesn't like putting implants into her calves. There's a market for implanted calves and there's a market for non-implanted calves. It depends on the producer to decide which option they want to take and what works for them. My parents have decided that non-implanted works for them. Therefore, we spent the week giving shots (to prevent sickness), castrating the bulls, ear notching the ears (for identification purpose) and putting fly tags in their ears to prevent flies. Flies are really bad for cattle. When cattle are fighting flies, it means they aren't eating. When they aren't eating, they aren't gaining weight. When they aren't gaining weight, they aren't being efficient with the resources they are being given. Also, they can get infections in their eyes and cause problems. Fly control is very important to cattle producers.

Another big event this week was the Jackson Heights FFA Alumni Tractor Drive. This, in theory, is ridiculous. What happens is farmers bring their tractors, pay a registration fee, then use their diesel to go on this drive. The drive consists of all the tractors registered following each other around. Our drive was 25 miles long and took approximately 3 hours with 2 stops. Sounds ridiculous right? Well, farmers LOVE doing it. There are some people that drove for 3 hours just to come to this tractor drive. It's a great fundraiser for our alumni chapter so that we can continue giving scholarships to the seniors and supporting other chapter activities.

One of my biggest mentors and role models in life is my FFA advisor, Mr. Paul Lierz. (For those of you that don't know, FFA used to stand for Future Farmers of America. It's now the National FFA Association. FFA has over 500,000 members nationwide and over 8000 in the state of Kansas. It's an organization you can be in during high school and there are a few Collegiate FFA Chapters as well. It was and is by far my most favorite student organization to be involved in. Look up their websites to get more information. (www.ksffa.org for Kansas FFA or www.ffa.org for National FFA.) Anyway, Lierz has always been a huge supporter of mine. He encouraged me to run for offices, compete in different events, get outside my comfort zone, but most importantly showed me just how overlooked simply having an incredibly great role model is. I was his first State FFA Officer Candidate (after 20 some odd years of teaching) and he supported and got me help for an intensive and rigorous interviewing process. When I wasn't successful in getting an office, we did the whole thing all over again the next year. When I again didn't get an office, he encouraged me to get involved in different things and not to give up because of a failed attempt to get an office. Lierz is a very philosophical person as any of his students should know by Philosophy Fridays in his class. (Hence the name of this blog).

I had the chance to visit with him Saturday at the Tractor Drive. I'm always amazed at the wisdom I come away with. He has the ability to make you think deeper about your life and the true meaning behind life. Lierz makes you want to really set goals for your life and work hard to accomplish those goals in life. The first day of every class you take of Lierz's starts with "Lierz's Philosophy of Life". In it he teaches student that life doesn't start on certain birthdays. For example, many people really look forward to being a teenager and wish away those years before, then when you get to be a teenager you want to be sixteen so you can drive, then when you get to sixteen you want to be eighteen so you can vote, then you want to be twenty-one so you can drink, then on and on and on and on it goes. Wishing away our lives, waiting for "the" birthday where life will really begin and be great for us. Lierz teaches us not to wish away any time in our lives, but to really live each year, not to keep waiting for "the" year.

This past week was the Kansas State FFA Convention. (Look up www.ksffa.org to see some video from the event.) It's a big deal where a lot of FFA members converge on Manhattan to compete in different events and be awarded for their accomplishments. There are normally a ton of great motivational speakers. Lierz was telling me about one message of one of the speakers and I thought it was appropriate to share in this very philosophical blog.

This speaker attended several events nationwide. At the smaller events he had all the letters in the alphabet on cards. He would give each attendee a letter and explain that they would have 10 minutes to use their letter to make as many words as possible. Atendees would get excited about this challenge until he handed the letters out and some got the q or x or z. Letters that are difficult to make words out of. Then they would get discouraged and decide they weren't even going to try to make an effort. Well, one event he was asking a student that had a q how many words he had made. He was shocked when the student replied 39. The speaker asked the student how he had done that with a q. The student replied, "Well, you can't make very many words with a q, but if you put your finger over the tail on the q, the q turns into an a and you can make lots of words with an a." What would life be like if we all thought like that rather than being discouraged when life hands us a q. What letter has life provided you with this week and what have you done with it?

Farming is a lot of time like this. Sometimes farm life hands you an "a" one week. All the projects get done, the cattle get to grass, planting done, etc. Other times farm life hands you a "z". Nothing gets done, you find dead cattle in the pastures, the crops all need sprayed, etc. It's what we do in each one of these weeks that define what kind of person we are. Matt likes the saying, "Attitudes are like flat tires, you aren't going anywhere until you change it."

Not sure where all this philosophical stuff came from this week, probably from seeing Lierz, but every once in a while everybody needs a little reminder about attitude. There is ALWAYS someone that has it worse. Probably somebody right down the street. Take time for yourself. It's a great thing we live in the country, 2 miles from our nearest neighbors. Mowing the yard has become "my" time. I get my iPod out, put it on my favorite playlist, turn it up really loud and sing my heart out. (I'm not a great singer). But, that is my time to be with me and me alone. It's a time to reflect on what I've been doing, what I have done wrong recently in my marriage, how to improve that. It's not a time for me to be planning what I need to get done and when (it probably should be), but mowing the yard is simply a time for me to reflect with myself. I don't think it's made me any better person or wife, but I enjoy the time. I encourage you to find a time like this to have "me" time. I'm sure all you moms out there know that WAY better than me. Find a time to love on yourself, forget about what you haven't got done and simply enjoy. Feel blessed for the fact that you have a mower to mow the yard, a yard to mow and a life that you are continuing to live. Some don't have near that much! I'm so utterly blessed and forget so often.

Anyway, go make your favorite chocolate chip cookies this week. Can't go wrong with any of those recipes. (I always use the one on the back of the butter boxes-that's how awesome my cooking skills are). If you need help tasting any of them, let me know!

Have a great and safe week. Starting to storm at our house tonight. Be safe when out and about. Listen to weather warnings and get inside! Don't forget about your pets!