prairie fires

A week or so ago Tom took this picture while he was filling this old water truck. He was filling it in anticipation of hauling it to the fire you can see (over the hood) in the background. It doesn't look like much from here because it was a ways off. Mom and I were on our way home from town and watching the smoke billow ominously as we got closer to home. When we got home we found out my dad had already headed over to fight it with his spray truck.

The fire had started from a hot bearing in a baler. The dry conditions meant it spread quickly. Fortunately it wasn't a windy day or it could have been much worse. Farmers in the area always keep an eye out for smoke and leave whatever they are doing to come to the rescue. No one wants to lose equipment, or worse, a full crop! Our spray truck (used for spraying fertilizer and weed chemicals) is also equipped with a fire hose, and we keep it handy whenever we work in the fields. My dad joined many other farmers, the city fire trucks, and even a helicopter in fighting this fire. It blazed about 1000 acres before they got it under control. It was the 2nd significant farm fire in our area this summer. 

A couple of years ago, we returned from a bible study in town to find out a fire had started from a lightning strike in one of our fields only about a mile from our house. Several neighbors came to fight it and were of course trying to find out where we were. Fortunately rain followed close behind and helped put it out quickly before it burned any unharvested crops. We were lucky. We are also lucky to have great neighbors who look out for each other!

Hey, let's talk about hay!

I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to write this post and pretend that I'm Tom. You can probably tell the difference in our writing voices anyway. But I'm over on his section of the website today to share what he has been up to because—let's face it—his last post was in January. Clearly he has not been holding up his end of the bargain here on His Tales and needs a little help. :)

Many of the farmers in our area have started seeding, but the dry soil makes for less-than-ideal conditions. My dad has been working on the tractor and seeder to get them ready to roll, but he is holding off and waiting for some much-needed rain. 

The drought that is affecting most of the country has impacted us as well, though not as bad (knock on wood) as it could. We had very little winter moisture, but we had a couple of significant spring storms that dropped unusual amounts of rain in our area. Unfortunately, those storms also brought hail. So what the drought didn't hurt, the hail did. We did have an okay crop this year though, and with the help of crop insurance we will weather this year of drought and hope the upcoming year doesn't bring worse conditions. 

We have some low waterways throughout the farm that don't grow crops well because the soil is too alkaline. We have grass and alfalfa in those areas, and we are participating in a test to see if growing alfalfa helps improve the alkali levels. (Test wells in the area are measured periodically to measure results.) It is these grass/alfalfa areas that we cut for hay, along with a few road ditches and grass areas. It isn't a high-profit operation for us by any means. It is at best a little hobby/side business. By the time we pay for expenses, the guys are working for pretty cheap considering the number of hours it takes. But we are gradually learning a little more each year how to make it more efficient.

After harvest Tom ran an ad or two to market the hay. This year he didn't have to put a lot of effort into marketing. Our phone rang off the hook for several days because there is a hay shortage in many parts of the country (due to drought). Tom has been spending his time fielding those phone calls, loading and (sometimes) delivering hay, and handling the billing. Last year we did all our bales in large 1/2 ton round bales. These are easier to deal with as they are stacked by tractor, though more difficult to haul by truck, which limits our customer base to a smaller area. Last year we had nearly 3 times as much hay, so simplifying the process was a necessity. This year we baled our best hay in small squares. They bring a better price, and even though we had less hay this year, the small bales partnered with the hay shortage meant we could sell our hay for more and maintain about the same income. The downside—the small bales are mostly hand stacked and loaded, and many people buy small bales in small quantities.  Equipment exists to make the job easier, but we won't invest a lot of money into equipment for a marginally profitable side business.

In any case, Tom is getting some management experience on this portion of the farming business, and now you know how we are spending the lull between harvest and seeding. One more thing:

(This is Tom Clark, and I approved this message.)

Socially Speaking

Sooooo,  Joellyn and I went to a conference last week about farming and ranching.  One of the topics covered was Social Media.  What on earth does a farmer need to know about social media you ask?  Apparantly there are lots and lots of reasons.  Now I've got a facebook account and am pretty good at getting around the farm on farmville. That handy little app is what taught me all I needed to know about my new life.  It also allows me to check in on all my friends and aquantances who had the misfortune of "confirming" my friend request.  I mean really, do you have to ask your friends to be your friends? So I thought I was at the cutting edge of Social Media.  Not true.

I guess there are many ways that the generation behind me gets their information.  For me and most of my peers, we might log into a news website and search through the days stories, which is a far cry better than what our parents do.  You know, actually read a newspaper.  This new generation likes things now, when they happen.  So they are hooked up to applications like Twitter, Instagram, and Google+.  These "apps" send real time information right to their smartphone and computers and they don't even have to spend the time looking it up.

What does that have to do with farming and ranching?  Well it has to do with education, information, and unfortunately mis-information.  There are alot of things being said and written about Agriculture that aren't necessarily true, or are half truths.  There are also alot of things that are 100% correct. Using social media I can tell you my story as I learn the ropes of being a farmer.  I will talk about our farm here in North Central Montana and what we grow and how we grow it.  I will pass along our thoughts on weather, politics, family and community not necessarily in that order.  With the information I give, which will be all facts, you can start making conclusions about my type of farming and ask questions about any and all agriculture topics.  I might not have all the answers but I do have alot of friends and resources that I can draw from to get you the best answer possible.  I encourage all of you that come in contact with my blog, facebook, twitter(@farmer_clark), or instagram to feel free to ask me as many questions as possible so we can have a healthy dialog.  

What is it you would like to hear about us and our farm.  I look forward to hearing from you all.  

Crop dusting

Tom called me from the field recently and asked me to take these photos for him. I obliged and decided to hijack his blog to share them since his page has been a little lonely . . . and since he hardly has time to share them himself.

Crops face a myriad of potential calamities—even on a good year. The wet spring we had (evidenced by the standing water in the photo above) caused a problem we are usually unfamiliar with in this dry country—rust. Rust is a fungus that can be sprayed to slow the growth of if caught early on, but unfortunately it doesn't usually show its ugly head until the wheat is already tall and lush. Farmers hate to make tracks in that lovely wheat with their sprayers. They also hate to get stuck in the mud. 

Thus, this predicament caused many farmers to turn to air spraying (crop dusting) this year.  

On this sunny morning we enjoyed watching the spray plane as he sprayed my uncle's neighboring field.

They came unbelievably close to the house as they made their turns back and forth, and unbelievably close to the ground as they passed over the field. Lets just say that you couldn't pay me to ride with one of those pilots. And Tom would probably do it for a living if he could. If his wife would stop freaking out about the possibility of him crashing in a small-engine plane.

Will They Eat It??

This afternoon, the regular Sunday afternoon question came up.  Whats for dinner?  I usually prepare the evening meal so I should have been ready for it.  I wasn't.  I hate when I'm not prepared.  I looked through all the cupboards, the fridge and the freezer.  Nothing was jumping out at me to be consumed. Hmm lets go to the computer and see if I can find a website that will help.  I Googled "food i have what recipes can i make"  I've been wanting to do that Google search for years.  This led me to an awesome website www.supercook.com .  This website lets you enter in all the ingredients you have on hand in your house and then uses some sort of database that directs you to recipe sites all over the internet for the foods you have on hand. I registered and started putting in a bunch of the ingredients from my fridge and cupboards.  One of the first recipes that came up was Stuffed Green Peppers.  We have never eaten stuffed peppers. It sounded great to me but will the kids eat it?  Since it was relatively easy to prepare and we had all the stuff on hand I decided to go for it.  The real draw to me was the bacon :) I'll let you know how it went.