Although forced by rain to wait a little longer than planned, Richard Sanders made a successful harvest last weekend. Sanders' 17-acre wheat yield yielded 38 bushels an acre.
Staff photos by DON PIERCE
A well-worn hat shades Sanders from the June sun and the 90 degree heat.
Unlike large wheat farmers in the western part of the state, most eastern Kansas farmers own their own harvesting equipment.
By THERESE MENDENHALL
Konrad S.W.L.900716
On a hot, muggy Kansas afternoon at the end of a cold wet spring, the brothers-in-law began harvesting their wheat. The weatherman bet 70-30 against rain, but the grain felt better than it should have been.
"It's wonderful corn weather—lots of rain, high humidity," said Alvin McKinney last week. "But what's good for the corn is bad for the wheat."
McKinney was harvesting a field he rented from his brother-in-law, Richard Sanders. Sanders waited with his truck to grain to the Farmers Co-ep elevator.
Later, at the elevator, the grain was analyzed and found to have a moisture content of 14.9 per cent. That was too much and McKinney and Sanders lost six cents a bushel for their grain that day.
"See how tough the straw is?" McKinney said, bending a piece in his
hand and gouging the soft ground with his heel to show that it was wet, too.
"When it gets tough the combine won't knock the grain out of the head," he said.
A suggestion of leaving the crop in the field a few more days wasn't a good idea.
"It might not get any drier," he said, scrutinizing the cloudy sky over the field he's farmed for 55 years.
The loss Sanders and McKinney faced was so bad as it might have been. McKinney guessed he'd bring in 35 bushels an acre. Some Lawrence and other farmers 15 bushels an acre, which barely paid the cost of planting and harvesting.
Outguzzing the weather solves only half the farmers' puzzle. The other half is the market. They can sell the grain at the current price, or they can pay 14% a cent month to store it at the Co-op, and sell it later.
McKinney didn't expect the price to rise. But he said he couldn't afford to sell more than half the crop before the end of the year because doing that would damage his social security status.
Storing was the primary choice for several other area farmers, too. None expected the price to rise. But selling the grain now would subject them to higher taxes than waiting until after the beginning of 1976.
"You can't sell two crops in one year," said Harold Lutz, who finished, harvesting his 55 acres Saturday.
But McKinney couldn't afford to save all his wet wheat. either.
"I need a little money once in a while," he said.
Sanders and McKinney discuss the quality of the day's harvest (left). The yield was good but the wheat was not as dry as usual.
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