Wheat Harvest 2018

Sunny, 86 degrees
Humidity 44%
Dew Point: 61 degrees
Wind: SSE @ 11 mph
Forecast: Sunny

Bella is new to the farm. New to the family.
I got confused. Thought she had lived with John and Jan for years. Ten. Eleven. Maybe 12 years.  I was way off base.
Oso had been around for years. But that was years ago.
Bella joined John & Jan just a year ago. She came from over near Scott City, Kansas. Bit of an aristocrat. At least as aristocratic as we get in our part of the country.
Bella is certainly very good looking. So was her mother. And grandmother. Her father was a pure blueblood who can trace his side of the family back to the Southern highlands of the Basque Country in Spain.
Bella’s children are all ‘lookers’. But there is just not enough of them. At least according to the Australian Shepard breeder. Bella has a different take. Seven, Eight, 10, 12 pups in a litter may be something to talk about but two or three is just fine if you’re the one having the puppies.
So, Bella was sold. Four years old and her brood career was over. Probably a good thing. Spending a life in a pen producing puppies can be hard on a girl. Coming to Lone Tree Farm was a definite improvement.
So why did she run away?
Wouldn’t think it was memory of the Lyme Disease. She had it a year ago. Almost died. Took almost two months of care, antibiotics and steroids. For several weeks John and Jan had to carry Bella outside so she could pee and poop. Didn’t really do much of either. Of course, she just wasn’t eating or drinking. During the worst couple of weeks Bella was getting water a spoonful at a time. Food was little pieces of hotdog. It was the only thing she would eat. The irony was never discussed.
When Jan and John went to visit the kids in Colorado, Bruce and Joyce came over to Lone Tree Farm to nurse Bella.

Eventually Bella got better. And somewhere in there she slipped from ‘dog’ to ‘family’.
But Bella does like to run. At least during Thunder storms.
I’ve known a few dogs who really hated thunder. Some would howl. Some would hide. Some would do both. Knew a dog who would climb into the nearest lap at the first clap of thunder. Not his normal behavior. Which was good. He weighed a little over 90 pounds.
The first time Bella ran before the storm was this Summer. Carolyn had been by J&Js and had seen Bella looking in the East door. She hadn’t looked particularly worried. And the storm was still miles away. Just a little wind and thunder. A short time later Carolyn headed back to ‘The Farm’. Never saw Bella again. Never even thought of Bella. Did think about the rain. And hail. And that we couldn’t get into the fields because they were too wet.
When the rain hit Lone Tree Farm John and Jan went looking for Bella. Couldn’t find her.
She didn’t come home that night or the next morning.  So, word went out.
Now Western Kansas is kind of wide open. Houses are often a mile or two (or three) apart. But word spreads pretty fast. We went in to Mike’s Place for dinner (best hamburgers in America) and folks were asking about the missing dog. Folks who don’t live anywhere near John and Jan’s. During the conversations someone said that someone else had seen a ‘strange’ dog out by somebody else’s farm. A couple of phone calls determined that there was a fairly good chance that the unknown dog was Bella.
John went over to see the dog and brought Bella home.
Grandma always said that word spread fast in a farm community. Faster once party lines became the norm. With cellphones the lost-dog-watch was activated all over Trego county….and parts of Gove, Ellis, Lane and Ness by the time the rain stopped falling.
It worked well.  Very well.
There have been several thunderstorms since. One of the reasons the 2018 wheat harvest is one for the records….longest, most combines stuck in fields, most wheat left in the field (because the ground was too wet to drive on), most weeds cut (because they love all the rain), wettest (almost a year’s worth of rain in one month), most county roads washed out….the list is heartbreakingly long. So long that people start laughing.
What else is there to do?
Just bring Bella inside when the rain starts falling.
Pat her on the head.
Put on some REO Speedwagon and ride it out.

 

 

Cloudy, 64 degrees
Humidity 85%
Dew Point: 60 degrees
Wind: E @ 13 mph
Forecast: Decreasing clouds

John and Jan’s place, Lone Tree Farm, started out life as a milk barn. A long-lost member of the Deines clan got the land from The Government, who got the land from the Kansa, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa and several other nations ‘to be named and provided for at a future date’. Eventually the land came to Herbert Deines who passed it along to his son LeRoy who passed it to his brother Merlin, who sold it to Bruce, who traded it to John. Word around here is that after all of the buying and selling and trading is added up The Government got the best deal. The Kansa, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa and several other nations ‘to be named and provided for at a future date’, the worst.
John and Jan, with occasional help from family and friends, have taken a 1400 square foot milk barn and turned it into a remarkably comfortable two-bedroom, two-bath farm house. With a great Southern exposure.

While John and Jan worked on the house they lived in their camping trailer. As the milk barn was being transformed they also worked on some of the out buildings. A chicken coop rose on the site of an old work shed.  The old garage slowly became a work shed.  Today Lone Tree Farm also has a new garage and a new mule barn. The latter for Jack and Dolly, who, conveniently, are mules. Jack and Dolly also have a nice new split rail style paddock made from long skinny trees found in the pasture.
A cat named Boo, from over at the ‘family farm’ (Trego Center Dairy), became the first animal brought to the farm. Bella was brought to the farm a little while later to serve as guard dog. Chickens have the honor of being the first livestock at the farm.
Originally John and Jan got 10 chicks in town.  All hens.  But as the fledgling flock grew it became apparent that the ten hens were seven hens and three roosters. Gallus gallus domesticus (domestic chicken) husbandry has a learning curve….even for the town breeders. The same husbandry has also demonstrated over years beyond count that roosters are not necessary to get chickens to lay eggs.  Roosters are necessary if you want to increase your flock through local means. So, the roosters stayed. Chicken knowledge has also demonstrated that roosters like to fight. They like to fight with each other. Or the cat. Or the dog. Or the hens. Or the hand that feeds them.
The three roosters became two, Bob and Chippy, and a nice chicken dinner. The chicken dinner left Bob and Chippy with the understanding that although they are vital for breeding new chickens, chicken breeders are only a town away. And roosters are at the bottom of the pecking order at Lone Tree Farm.
John and Jan’s farm is part of the ‘Great American Crop Land’. One of Jason Aldean’s ‘Fly Over States’. Back when the Kansa, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa and ‘others to be named later’, made their deal with The Government it might take weeks of riding to reach the a place where chickens could be acquired. Now chicken breeders are only forty miles away. Still a good day of riding but less than an hour in a pickup.
John and Jan added a few more city birds to the flock.
Seemed like the easiest thing to do.
As the rooster fighting continued Bob and Chippy became Bob and another memorable chicken dinner.
Bob-the-bird out lasted Chippy because Bob-the-bird got his name from me. A tribute of sorts. i was deeply touched. Bob was a handsome bird who enjoyed a bit of strutting when he wasn’t fighting. Bob was just a little bit cocky and had a thing for the hens. At least in his youth. In maturity he could still hold his own in a scrap and could tell a good story. Especially about the ones who got away. Seems there were other similarities between Bob-the-grain-cart-driver and Bob-the-bird. Similarities that are only discussed when neither Bob is around. At least both Bobs noted the ‘knowing’ smiles pass between family in the know.
The fighting continued.
Even with a flock of his own Bob-the-bird needed to show his spurs. Of course, now the fighting was between Bob and the hens. And Bob certainly had the upper hand….he was a trained fighter.
Because of the similarities between Bob and Bob-the-bird, Bob-the-bird held onto his position of ‘cock of the walk’ for quite a while. But eventually his pugnacious nature got the best of John and Jan.  The chickens had been petitioning for a change in leadership for several months.
Bob-the-bird entered immortality this Spring. His parting gift was a very fine chicken parmesan dinner.