Big Green Combine

Whoa. What a great time William and I had at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc. convention last week. They had a record number register for this year’s meetings (8200+).  I’ll admit the main reason we decided to attend was because it was in Nashville. William and I love going to Nashville to hear live music and dance a little. Even better if we can join up with some cattle guys at the same time. After driving down Tuesday we had steaks at the Stockyards. It turned out not to be as good as the last time we were there. Wednesday we went to Robert’s Western World and listened to a singer. He was a lot of fun and played some good music.

Later that day, we headed over to Opryland Hotel to register and walked around a little ’til the exhibit hall opened. I took some pictures and made a short video of William for his blog. So the second reason I wanted to go to the NCBA was the exhibit hall. I knew it was going to be gooood and it waaaas. There were food tables scattered throughout with meatballs, fried pickles and okra.

We joined the tweetup at the Angus booth. It was amazing to finally meet many of the guys from twitter. @JPlovescotton @dailycowman @AR_Ranchhand @cowgirljesse @Agwired to name a few. Sorry if I missed someone. Please remind me in the comments. So much fun talking cattle and social media with everyone.

Afterwards we made a bee line to signup at the Beef Magazine booth for free pair of boots before the hall closed. Met Heather and Jamie there and chatted a little bit. We headed back downtown to our hotel and the honky tonks. A funny thing happened on the way. William’s phone rang. I answered it for him. it was the ladies at the Beef Magazine booth calling to say his name was drawn for the boots. Yeah.  William picked out this pair of ostrich Setsons from Roper. Thank you very much Beef Magazine and Roper.

The next day we were signing up for everything; gators, ipads, guitars. Hey, we were on a roll. We stopped at a ton of booths to talk about feed, bulls, fly control, ag colleges ect. William went to a few meetings while I walked around a little and edited some of the pictures I had taken on my phone. Before dinner we went to the MBA reception. There we sat with a couple from Kentucky. Then we met Whitney and Kaity from Missouri Beef Council. That night NCBA had a couple of bands playing. The band on the main stage didn’t play any two step music so quite a few dancers were disappointed. The action was at the karaoke dj. That was fun. Tried to bribe Ryan Goodman to sing a tune but he didn’t want anything to do with that. Guess tweeting his picture wasn’t enough of an incentive.

this guy nailed it

Again we headed down town for better music and found it at Second Fiddle. Excellent band. William and I even met a group from our state there. Had a good time talking to them when we could hear each other. That was our last night. We drove home the next day. We had to get back for 4H steer weigh in. I did miss getting grits at Puckett’s. I can get them next time we’re back in town or when NCBA is back to Nashville in 2014. We’ll definitely be there.

Agriculture Degrees Are Not Useless

It’s all the buzz in the social media ag circles. In Yahoo’s Education section, Terrance Loose wrote an article “College Majors That Are Useless“.  He lists top 5 degrees that should be avoided. Three of which are in the agriculture industry. Mr. Loose could have done a little more digging for more accurate information before condemning a whole industry. Is a survey of “almost” 1000 employers going to give you complete enough facts about career opportunities across the country.

Mr. Loose brings up the school in Idaho that is cutting ag programs. My alma mater, Illinois State University, is adding programs and degrees to the agriculture department. The ag student enrollment is up with an increase for next year. ISU is hiring more professors (=more jobs) because of the influx of students. Their Dept. of Ag has continually had the highest job placement for graduates in the university.

Which brings me to the next point. The article states “don’t expect farms and ranches to be calling you”. If Mr. Loose would simply ask a farmer he would know that farms raise their own workers, send them to college and bring them back to the family farm. But farms and ranches do call crop specialists, large animal vets, elevator managers, seed dealers, custom applicators, machinery dealers, fertilizer plants, specialty food contractors, even USDA’s county managers, extension specialists, ect. All of which are highly likely to have degrees in agriculture.

Finally, the point “U.S. Department of Labor projects 64,000 fewer jobs in this field over the next seven years”. I would suspect that these jobs mentioned are low skilled jobs that don’t require a college degree. All I can compare this to is the ag climate here in Illinois where we have the 2000 lb wind-bag gorilla on our shoulder known as Chicago. (It’s not a monkey. It’s a big, stinky, resource sucking, arrogant, felonious gorilla.) One would think the behemoth would dominate the state. With 76,000 farms, Illinois biggest employer is the agriculture industry at 25%. 68% job growth in the state is ag related and 9% growth expected over the next 10 years (2008 stats).

So if the saying holds “How’s it play in Peoria, IL ?”, the ag industry for the country is likely to be similar.

Yahoo is doing a huge disservice to its readers and those looking for factual information on career decisions.  It makes one doubt the accuracy of the rest of the articles in the “College Majors” series.

A career in agriculture is an excellent choice. It’s a noble profession to earn a degree that can take you anywhere in the world or back to the family farm. My kids are discussing which ag major they would like to study and what ag college to attend. I couldn’t be happier for them.

Every year we haul corn out of the grain bins in December or January to the elevator. The kids are always giddy about pushing their favorite shovel to move corn, as you will see in the video. Usually the weather is bitterly cold but emptying the last bin the beginning of this Jan. was unusually warm.

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Here is the video from last year. You can see the difference in the kids’ sizes in just one year. They eat lots of beef.

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My super simple but not-so-secret recipe for Corn Casserole. I get requests to supply this dish at every gathering.

Corn Casserole

1 pkg jiffy corn bread/muffin mix
8oz sour cream
1 can cream style corn
1 can whole kernel corn (drained)
2 eggs slightly beaten
1 stick softened butter
1 C cooked wild brown rice (optional but worth the effort)

Mix all together pour into a 1 ½  qt casserole dish. Bake at 350 ‘til golden brown. 55 to 60 min. Depending on how deep the dish is. Cake tester should come out clean.

I cook a big batch of rice ahead of time because wild brown rice takes 50 minutes to cook. Then freeze the rest to use later.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Be sure to share with your friends

Some would think that when a husband asks this question to his wife over the phone, he’s being frisky and hoping to get lucky later. Nope. During harvest when a farmer asks his wife that question it means: How fast can you come out to the field to run the combine while he runs to do ______. (fill in the blank) Farmer is thinking: How long will it take her to change into her jeans & tshirt? not I wonder if she is wearing something slinky and see-through.

That is the call I got tonight. When he asked What are you wearing, I smiled and said “Why do you want to know?” William said, “Because I want you to come out while I run the truck back to the bins.” Smile gone.

So goes the farm life of a frustrated farm wife.

Blowing the dust off he combine helps prevent fires.

William’s calculations must have been off. We finished corn on Wednesday. The yields were nothing to get excited about. I would say 150 would hit the average. We have since switched the combine over to beans. So far nothing too exciting there either. 40-45 bu/acre. Of course these are decent numbers for the drought we’ve been in.

This picture is of Z using the leaf blower on the combine before we put the bean head on. He seems to be the only one who can get the blasted thing going. When he’s done William uses it on him.

The combine has been running none stop (knock on wood) for 3 weeks. Since we haven’t had any rain. That’s good that we are getting through a bunch of acres. But it would be nice to get a few other things done.

We had another well dug. This one is by our house where the cattle are. It’s a shallow surface water well. Not near the volume as the well over the aquifer. But better than the well we are currently using. Plus it’s got 2000 gallon holding capacity that older wells don’t have.

drilling a well by our house

Ron our plumber/electrician is coming out this week to start ditching in the new lines and put in the pump. Man will it be nice not to have to haul water every day. The kids have a cattle show in Kansas City the end of the month. Hopefully we’ll get the new well going so they can get their bull and heifers cleaned up.

The drillers came and did what they do best and put a 140′ hole in the ground for our new well. They said it was good for 90 gallons/minute. William is just giddy about having water.

William is holding sand that came up like it's gold. He's going to bottle it. (not kidding)

The picture above was early in the morning. The picture below was what was left after they did their magic. They were pumping air down the hole to bring up water ’til it ran clear. So we had a 6ft fountain in our hay field.

Next time you see William congratulate him on his new well. I think he would pass out cigars if he had any. Below is the video we made for his blog.

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Dichotomy of farming:

Nothing: Harvest is at a stand still. We did get enough rain to knock us out of the field for two half days. And our truck is still at the shop. They are waiting on a part that was supposed to be overnighted Friday but still hasn’t shown up today (Tuesday). Enough said.

All: The well drillers called today. They will be here in the morning 7am. They want to know if we can get them 3600 gallons of water to cool their drill bit. Hello. There is a reason we are having them drill a well. We are in a drought. But no problem. The electrician showed up to check the furnace. He also will wire up the well. Ron give us a list of things he will need and comply with the electric company’s specs. William also has a meeting tomorrow with lawyers for the county planning commission. And the &%@# truck better be fixed and ready to be picked up by mid-afternoon.

So much of farming is All or Nothing, Feast or Famine, Drought or Flood. Very few times is it ever the middle of the road.

 Ag-Business 201

Every fall there is at least on obstacle/problem/issue/hair pulling event that keeps us on our toes during harvest. In the past the drying bins have been a hassle to keep running properly with their motors, heaters, stirators. Last year the combine had to be hauled to the dealership to be worked on. There are certain size service trucks you don’t want to see in your field. I won’t even mention the harvest of ’09. You can read summary post titled I Almost Cried.

To get to this year’s current set back; our truck hauling situation is causing us to make decisions that would have Dr. Winter’s farm management class weeping in their textbooks. (I took Dr. Winter’s class. I know he doesn’t teach it any more. Come on, let me be a little dramatic.) I don’t think I’ll get into the details of the events that led up to now. I’ll just state what the situation is as it stands. We will be picking up the semi that is at the shop right now and bringing it home. The semi we just bought will be fixed and sold with our flatbed truck as trade-in on another truck yet to be determined. William gets to do his wheelin-n-dealin trading trucks which he is pretty good at.

This all comes into perfect timing since the bins are just about full. We will be hauling to the elevators for the duration of harvest. Having two semis should speed up the hauling process tremendously. Just praying that we can keep them running.

We’ve been lied to. People who say “There’s not such thing as a free lunch” have been trying to keep it all for themselves. We not only found a free lunch, it came to us. With pie, no less. Strawberry-Rhubarb to be exact (my favorite).

You are wondering how this heretofore elusive meal come to be? William, in his quest for freebies (he even tries to win the prizes on M&M wrappers) signed up for Meals in the Field through Farm Credit‘s email list. To put it simply, he won. There were 5 winners. The local Farm Credit office called last week to find out which day was best for us. We chose this Tuesday. They brought everything; even the tables. Wow! was it good!

What does a Free Lunch look like?

I almost couldn’t pull myself up into the combine after eating so much. Farm Credit also gave us a real nice safety kit that is hanging in the combine cab. It was a very nice change of pace from the chips and cold cuts we usually have for lunch. Thank you, John, Alicia, Larry, John & Rod for delivering it.