The Last Farmerversary

March 12, 2012 was my first day on the farm and the start of my adventure in Western Kansas.  I've been through great crop prices and horrible ones.  I've seen droughts, floods, blizzards, hail storms and days so gorgeous it about made me cry.  I started as a worthless city boy farmhand and for the last year couple of years I managed the farm.  All good things however must come to an end, and I'm afraid now is the time for me and my family to move on.

Commodity prices have fallen to about a third of what they were when I started.  The inputs to raise crops on the other hand haven't really fallen that much.  So margins are razor thin and all it takes is a hail storm to put farmers in the red for the year.  Additionally, the state of Kansas has decided that it would like to implement a change that dramatically lowers the amount of water that we can use in order to irrigate crops.

All of which leaves me in a precarious position.  My family and I love the farm and the lifestyle it enables, but it's hard to justify the expense and risk of farming when long term success looks so uncertain.  So as hard of a decision as it is, we need to find our next adventure.

Before I end my blog I wanted to share some wisdom that I've picked up from some grumpy old farmers and from experience I've accumulated.

Sometimes you need a bigger hammer.  Coming from a electronics and computer background it was never a good idea to physically hit the equipment harder if it wasn't working.  Well, on the farm sometimes you literally just don't have the force required and you need a bigger hammer.  Figuratively, I've also taken this to mean that if you don't have the power to solve a problem yourself then you need a little more help (force or otherwise).  Problems that we all encounter in life sometimes seem impossible.  Talking to someone about our problems is sometimes all we need to solve them.  If you don't have a big enough hammer find one and use it.  See what happens!

If you don't like what you are doing wait 2 weeks.  On the farm things change all the time: seasons, jobs to do, markets, etc...  Things will change if times are bad (and unfortunately good as well) just give it some time.  Sure it might get worse but eventually things will get better.  Another way that my Grandpa Marvin put it when we were in a drought and things looked pretty bad on the farm: "Don't worry it'll rain."  He was right. 

Don't beat yourself up.  Operating a farm and managing a business in general you constantly have to make decisions.  Do I hedge my wheat price now or do I think the price will go up?  Do I invest in this piece equipment or remain liquid for a better deal?  Do I really need that 6th cup of coffee today?  My father-in-law has taught me that you make the best decision that you can at the time and you move on.  Don't spend your life looking back and beating yourself over a decision when you have all the facts later.  If you did this as a farmer, or business owner, you would be paralyzed.  In ANY decision you face in life make the best one you can with the information available to you and move forward!

It's OK, I'm going to take care of you!  I first heard this from an old rancher / veterinarian at a cattle conference.  He said that when he would wean his calves (take the calves away from their moms) he would put all the calves in a pen, give them the best feed and he would walk them all around the pen and tell them: It's OK, I'm going to take care of you now!  After I heard this I started saying it to my cows and my family.  Don't tell my wife I wrote this she does not like to be compared to a cow...  I have taught my son to say it to his kitties that he feeds every morning.  You would be amazed at how well it works with the animals and people in your life.  Of course you have to mean it but who wouldn't like to hear that someone is going to take care of them?

Did you do the best that you could?  If you did the best you could do and it doesn't work out then you can have peace about the outcome.  My wife and I are trying to instill this into our son.  There is nothing wrong with failure if you did everything you could to succeeded.  In fact, most of the time you learn way more from those failures than when everything went perfect.  So I would say my time on the farm has taught me more than any other period of time in my life. 

In closing, I want to pass on something that I shared with a friend on the cusp on his own adventure.  Adventure can be a lonely thing but it is worth it!  Going into the great unknown is exhilarating and terrifying, but we are not made to sit idle in comfort.  Opportunities for adventures are out there.  Look for them!  Yes, you might have to turn off your TV, be uncomfortable and lonely but I can tell you that it is worth it.  Please just try!

-Farmer Emeritus Ryan

P.S. - Thank you all for the love and kind words through these last six years.  You have made my adventure even better and I love you all because of it.

The Amazing Shrinking Wheat Plant

"I thought wheat was taller than this..." was a comment made to me during our wheat harvest this year.  I've actually heard this comment several times since I've been on the farm and thinking back I had the same notion when I came out here for the first time.  I think this idea is in our collective minds because of black and white photos we've seen from the 1920s and 1930s.  In my mind it's a picture of a disembodied head of a grinning farmer, his body well ensconced in a tall stand of wheat.  So what happened?

Dr. Norman Borlaug was a scientist who revolutionized the way the world produces wheat. In Mexico in the 1960's he developed a system of high volume crossbreeding, then doubled the amount of crosses he was able to produce each year by "shuttle breeding."  He would take the harvest from one location and move it to another location with a different climate and immediately plant it for the following crop season.  The amount of new wheat varieties he produced allowed him to shift the architecture of the wheat plant towards higher and higher production capability.

The successful wheat varieties that he created through his system were all shorter in height, were resistant to a fungus that attacks wheat called rust and responded to a high degree to fertilizers.  After his varieties were released to farmers in Mexico, within a few years Mexico had went from foreign aid depended to feed their citizens to completely self-sufficient.  After the success of his wheat production system in Mexico, Dr. Borlaug was asked to help with similar issues in Pakistan and several Asian countries.  So our notions of tall wheat are all outdated because scientists and farmers have focused on higher and higher yielding varieties.  Which in turn made our wheat varieties shorter and shorter.

One morning in 1970 Dr. Borlaug was working in Mexico in a remote field on his wheat crosses.  His wife received several phone calls for her husband but since he was out at work for the day she told them they'd have to call back later.  Until she was told by one caller that her husband was going to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  After hearing the news, his wife drove to a research center and rode in a farm pickup to a remote field. There Dr. Borlaug was told about the winning the Nobel Prize.  So, Dr. Borlaug was told that he was outstanding in his field while he was literally out standing in his field...

Wheat harvest for our farm this year was kind of a disappointment.  In the month of May alone we had a blizzard, hail and a late freeze.  All of which seriously hurt the yield average across our farm.  On a positive note I think I got some good harvest pics out of the deal.

-Wheat Farmer Ryan

My Grain Headaches Suggested Reading:

• The Man Who Feed the World  by Leon Hesser was a very interesting read about Norman Borlaug's life and his life's work on solving how to feed the population of the world. 

• Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity Is an article originally published in The Atlantic. 

Bulls on Parade

Every fall we separate our bulls from the cows and reunite them in the spring.  This allows us to control the timing of when we start the calving season.  The bulls spend some time in their bachelor pad mainly beefing up (pun intended) and fighting with each other all day.

We use a gestation table to determine the first day we'd like to see calves arrive and then put the bulls with the cows accordingly.  Since it was a soppy May we had to pull our bulls to a remote pasture with the mechanical front wheel drive (MFWD) engaged on our tractor to help us get through the muddy roads.

-Rancher Ryan

Blizzards and Hail and Floods - Oh May

Dear May,

I'm glad to see you go.  You arrived with a blizzard and then you proceed to rain and hail on us the whole time you were here.  Look I get it, you heard that we wanted some moisture.  This is not what we meant May.  We wanted some moisture after we planted our corn.  That way we'd actually have a corn crop to harvest.  It's hard to get a corn crop though, if you can't plant because it's too wet.  You wanted to be famous for rainfall totals, well... you are forth since we started to record rainfall.  I hope you are happy with yourself.

May.  It feels like Eastern Kansas here.  Humidity, flies, and mosquitoes.  Did you know that mosquitoes love me May?  They do.  I read they like people with O type blood, they like guys more than gals and they like fat people.  I'm the trifecta of mosquito mayhem May.  Why did you do this to me?


Sincerely,

Farmer Ryan

P.S. -  Tell your friend June to leave us alone...