Waste Not, Want Not: The Food

I don't like to waste food.  I don't like to find containers in the refrigerator with fuzz growing on the contents.  I don't like the fact that I am contributing to the statistic that says Americans throw away 20 pounds of food per person on a monthly basis.  How did Americans like myself get to the point of throwing away enough food to feed 90,000 people each day?  Is there something we can do to change our habits and keep some of that $2,500 that is going into the landfill as food waste?  Yes, there are several things we can do and I would like to share with you a few tips and resources of how we can join together to reduce food waste.  We can increase the sustainability of food production by looking at how we buy, prepare and eat our meals.

One way to cut waste is to share your food.  In the photo above, our son, Jeff,
 is sharing hissandwich with younger sister, Kim.  Steve and I have learned from
 experience some restaurant portion sizes are large enough for us to share a meal. 

Did you know that 40% of the food brought home in America goes uneaten?  In our home we are only a family of two so the issue of making sure we eat what we buy is more challenging then when we were a family of seven.  My husband, Steve, is very intentional about minimizing waste so we are careful about the amounts, sizes and perishability of the foods we buy.  Rather than buying fresh vegetables we use more frozen vegetables.  When we buy fresh food we only buy an amount we can eat.  Sometimes we buy fruit from the local FFA Chapter at Christmastime which is more than we can eat.  We will usually bake some of the apples to avoid having them rot.  Most of the time we buy items in sizes that give us the best value per serving.  We are learning an item, like milk, is better purchased in the smaller size which we can consume before spoilage.   Making food purchases that follow meal planning can also help us eliminate food waste.

This slow cooker apple and oatmeal recipe is a tasty way
to use up apples before they rot.  This is a breakfast treat
that also makes the house smell good as it bakes!

For many of us, "what's for dinner?" is a challenging question each and every day.  When we had our children all home I would often think of several meals for the week instead of going day to day.  It was also important to know the school activity schedule to accommodate for meals eaten away from home.  One of my biggest challenges was trying to avoid concession food for meals.  As a mom and a cattle farmer I had little energy left to come up with creative meal solutions.  Families today have many advantages to help with meal planning.   We can use our phones to search for recipes as we shop so we know which ingredients to buy,  some of us can receive home delivery of groceries allowing more time to think about what we need and there are meal services that will deliver meals with the ingredients and recipes right to your door.  If you can utilize services that help you with meal planning then you will find it easier to design meals you will eat rather than waste.  We can also find creative ways to use leftovers.  You can find a variety of ways to use beef leftovers here.

Jeff, the cute little boy in the first photo, is now in his 20's and his grandma
likes to make sure we all get plenty to eat at Thanksgiving.  When families
celebrate holidays we tend to make more than enough food to eat. It will help
us manage food waste if we can get creative at using up all of those left-overs.

When I was in high school I worked for a restaurant called "Bonanza".  People loved the "all-you-can-eat" salad bar that was provided with every adult entree.  Over the years buffet style eating and super-sized portions have become the norm while American waist lines continue to expand.  Conversations about what we should and shouldn't eat seem more focused on removing food groups rather than looking at serving sizes. I hear even fewer voices discussing the nutrient density per calorie of what we are eating.  If we are truly concerned about cutting food waste perhaps we need to cut portion sizes and seek to get the best nutrients in the smallest amounts needed.  I have come to appreciate the nutritional value beef has to offer.  Beef is also one of the least food items wasted at 20% versus 30-40% of other products. The beef community believes we can do better than 20% so we have done studies and have a program to help us all reduce food waste. The "30 Day Food Waste Challenge" is a great place to start if you want to cut food waste.

When I was growing up my five siblings and I were fortunate to share many suppers together with meals prepared by my mom including meat, potatoes and a vegetable.  I can recall hearing numerous times "eat everything on your plate because there are kids starving in Africa".   There was little food waste in our family because we were taught to appreciate the food we were served, we came to the table hungry and there were rarely any leftovers. There are still people in the world that don't get enough to eat.  Farmers and ranchers are ready and willing to meet the challenge of feeding an increasing population using less resources.  One way we can each help is to cut food waste in our own lives.  Are you ready to make some changes?  Do you have some great ideas on cutting food waste?  Please share in the comments below so we can help one another fight food waste!

Waste Not, Want Not: The Feed

When my husband Steve and I bought our farm we were able to store our cattle feed ingredients in structures that allowed for as little waste as possible.  Those initial structures were put into place by Steve's grandfather and uncles as they sought ways to cut down on feed waste with better storage and proper handling.  We utilized those bins, bunkers and wooden fence line bunks to continue a tradition in agriculture that seeks to responsibly use resources in a way that allows for little or no waste.

This photo shows how Steve's grandfather fed the cattle hay in the 1950's.  He did
save some feed by keeping the hay on the outside of the pen but, we've come a long
way with nutritional research, genetics and better pen design to help cattle thrive.

I was a brand new farmer in the early 1980's with much to learn.  Growing up in the middle of the heartland with cornfields all around was not enough to fully understand the spirit of the American farmer.  I was drawn to the farm to utilize my experience as a veterinary technician to help with the health care for our cattle.  However, I lacked an understanding of growing, storing and utilizing the crops we would grow.  I would like to share with you a few things I have learned in regards to reducing as much waste as possible from the corn crop we produce each year.

During the early years on our farm I learned how to be a mom, too!  Our son,
Scott, is swinging in front of the house Steve's dad grew up in.  This was our
home for many years until the structure needed to be replaced for safety reasons.

Every late April thru the month of May planting season hits northeast Nebraska. Fields are prepared using less tillage, fertilized (with our feedlot manure), and seeds are carefully chosen to thrive in their designated fields.  The soil type, climate and topography allow farmers, like Steve and I, to grow corn well as partners with Mother Nature's natural resources.  On our farm we hold all of the water from the feedlot in a holding pond so those nutrients can be used on our growing corn instead of going into streams.  The humid summers of Nebraska help those corn plants thrive as they seemingly grow overnight. When football season arrives we begin our corn harvest.

This pivot is taking water from our holding pond that has nutrients like
nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus as well as many micro-nutrients and
giving it to the corn plants to thrive on.

Some of our corn is chopped when the moisture of the corn is around 25%.  We can chop the whole plant with the ear and make corn silage.  We can also chop only the ear with the cob and leaves to make earlage.  When we choose to make earlage we are allowing more of the plant to remain in the soil to help build up organic material.  Our crop consultant helps us decide between silage and earlage by taking soil samples so we can monitor the soil health.  As the corn is chopped it is delivered to a cement bunker for storage.  The material is packed, covered with plastic and sealed down with tires.  By carefully storing the silage in this manner we are able to maintain consistent quality with very little waste.

The chopper blowing silage into a truck.

The truck dumps a load for Steve to spread and pack.

A covered silage pile eliminates spoilage by keeping the rain
and snow out.  Raccoons can tear holes so sometimes you will
see duct taped patches as winter turns to spring!

The rest of our corn is harvested with a combine.  Generally farmers wait until the moisture in the corn is under 16% so it stores well in metal bins.  We also have dryers in some of the bins if the corn needs to be dried down.  It is important to the farmers we buy corn from to prevent waste by monitoring the corn in the bins for moisture throughout the storage period.  On our farm the bins storing the corn are located near the rest of our feed storage area for efficiency and waste prevention.

We use a payloader to put different ingredients on the feed truck.  The rolled
corn is to the left, our distiller's grain are next and then ground hay is
next to that.  We keep our ingredients out of the rain and snow to manage waste.

Storing our corn and other feed ingredients properly helps us show respect for the environment by reducing waste.  Utilizing cement structures like bunkers and fence line feed bunks allow us to store, mix and deliver quality feed to our cattle so those cattle can provide quality protein for us to eat.  Those cattle also give us numerous by-products including manure that can be used to nurture future corn plants for feed.

This is a sharp contrast to the photo at the top!  We have cement bunks to provide
nutritionally balanced rations for the cattle to eat.  They also have a cement
pad on the inside of the pen to keep the eating area free from mud.  A scale on
the feed truck makes sure each pen gets an exact amount so every speck is eaten.

My experiences as a farmer continue to grow as innovative ideas help us take better care of the land, the water and the cattle.  A very important piece of that innovation is reducing waste while maintaining quality allowing us to be more sustainable in the use of resources for food.  In my next blog I will talk about reducing waste on the consumer side and how we can all participate in responsibly using our resources for food production.

This is a Peruvian roast beef recipe that our daughter, Emily, has made for us.

Emily was a missionary in Chimbote, Peru.  When we visited her we saw more
beef heart on the menu then a dish like this.  I would highly recommend the
  "Estofado de Res" (Stewed Beef) versus anticucho (beef heart).  The ability to
export products like the beef heart, tongue and stomach improve our sustainability.

 Estofado de Res (Stewed Beef)

 Ingredients:

 2.5 lbs beef (chuck roast), cut in about 2” pieces

Salt, pepper, and cumin

Vegetable or olive oil

2 onions, peeled and chopped finely

1 T. chopped garlic

3 carrots, cut in small cubes or slices

3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped

3 T. tomato paste

1 tsp. sugar

¾ c. cooking wine

1 c. peas

3-4 potatoes, peeled and cut in halves

3 bay leaves

1.     Heat oil in a pan. Season beef with salt, pepper, and cumin. Place in oil and fry over medium heat until browned. Remove from pan and set aside.

2.     In the same pan, cook onion until soft. Add garlic and carrots. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, bay leaves, and wine. Mix and bring to simmer. 

3.     Add meat. Cover and cook about 1 ½ hours.

4.     Add potatoes and peas. Simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

5.     Remove bay leaves. Serve with white rice.


Enjoy!  Let me know what you think of this recipe.   

"Peruvian food is so simple yet amazingly flavored with their traditional spices" L'Wren Scott

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Peruvian food is so simple yet amazingly flavored with their traditional spices. L'Wren Scott
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Fencing in the Dark

"You and me going fencing in the dark,

Stretching wire out and tamping in posts

Where the cool winds blow

Finishing the fence with the pickup lights

We'll be eating our supper late into the night

There's no movin' slow!"

My parody on "Fishin' in the Dark" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band could be compared to some of the parodies the Peterson Farm Brothers have created.  The fencing parody came out of a recent experience I had with Steve in getting some projects done before winter set in.  I was reminded of that experience as I started thinking about all the hard working cattlemen and women I will see this week in Nashville for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Convention.

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This post, no pun intended, is a salute to those hard working men and women that come from a variety of farms and ranches across America with the common goal of putting beef on your table.  I have enjoyed hearing numerous stories from friends I have made from Florida to Idaho and many places in between.  At one event a few of us spent about 15 minutes going up and down an elevator at Embassy Suites as we listened to stories from a friend in Oklahoma.  Even though our farms and ranches are a diverse as our personalities are we share a common love for our families, the land and for our cattle.


During the convention we will hear the winner of a contest sing the "Star Spangled Banner" with such gusto that the hair will stand up on our arms.  There is no lack of love for the United States of America among this group as we make sure to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of our board meeting and show our appreciation to all who work to defend our constitutional rights.

This is a recent photo of the flag on our farm taken
early in the morning that has become one of my favorites.

 I will spend most of my time in meetings for the CBB or the Cattlemen's Beef Board.  I join approximately one hundred other men and women from across the United States to work specifically on Beef Checkoff work.  The Beef Checkoff is a program that collects $1.00/head of every beef animal that is sold and pools that money for research, education, information and promotion about beef.   I won't give you all the nitty gritty details so if you want to learn more about the checkoff you can go here.  What I can tell you is that I get to work side by side with some very dedicated people this week that will be focusing on you, the consumer, and how we can give you the best eating experience every time you eat beef.

I met up with long time friend, Becky Kreiekemeier,
for supper right after arriving in Nashville.  We
joked about having to travel so far to see each other 
when we only live about 50 miles apart!

The dedication of farmers and ranchers at the volunteer level flows naturally from the dedication they have at home to their farms and ranches.    The saying "hard work builds character" is not one to mock.  There are numerous sources that site the value of working and how it builds virtues.  I, myself, have learned many virtues by working on the farm (I will save those for another blog).   

My dad and mom were the first models of the value of hard work.  They passed down virtues like responsibility, dedication and commitment to my five siblings and I.  Their work ethic and the virtues we were taught can be seen in my siblings, in their children and in my children.  When I met Steve I could see the same hard work ethic and similar virtues that were evident in his family.

We, as farmers and ranchers, join each one of you in the day to day struggle of working hard at jobs that feed our families and allow us to grow in virtue.  Together, we bring the virtues we gain by working into our family and communities to make the world a better place!

You and me going fencing in the dark,

Working each day at an important job

Where the virtues grow

Cattlemen and women join you in the fight

Putting supper on the table for the children each night

There's no movin' slow!"

The VFD and YOU

There’s a new sheriff in town and his name is VFD.  Do you know anything about the VFD?  I should first clarify that the VFD is not the Volunteer Fire Department.    If you google “what is the VFD” you will find the top ten responses having to do with variable frequency drive-that is not the VFD I am talking about.  How about a little quiz to familiarize yourself with what the VFD is and what it has to do with YOU?

Here is a clue.  I have something to do with the VFD and YOU!

True or False    1. The VFD stands for Veterinary Feed Directive and falls under Guidance Document

                             213.    

True or False    2. The VFD was created to make more money for veterinarians.

True or False    3. The VFD falls under the regulations of the FDA according to the ADAA requiring
                              veterinarians to issue all VFD’s in the context of a valid VCPR. 

True or False     4. The VFD was developed to make it illegal to use medically important antibiotics 
                                for production purposes, and animal producers will need to obtain authorization

                               from a licensed veterinarian to use them for prevention, control or treatment of a

                               specifically identified disease.

True or False      5. The VFD reassures consumers that veterinarians and farmers are working together

                                to make sure antibiotics are used correctly in the feed.

True or False      6. Meetings were held throughout 2016 to prepare farmers and ranchers for the 

                               January 1, 2017 implementation.

True or False      7. The VFD is just another government acronym designed to give farmers a

                                headache.

Well, let’s see how you did and then we will discuss the answers: 

1.           1. True  2. False  3. True  4. True  5. True  6. True  7. False

1. The VFD, Veterinary Feed Directive, aims to accomplish three goals with these changes: promote judicious use of antibiotics, protect public health and help limit the development of antimicrobial resistance.  Can you see where you fit into this conversation?  

2. Veterinarians are very busy people.  They now carry a paperwork burden of making sure we have the document needed for shared class antibiotics used in the feed for control, treatment and prevention of disease.  Our veterinarians had to increase personnel to make sure all of the paperwork is completed for each one of their clients.  We pay a small fee to help cover the cost of the paperwork and computerized documentation.

Dr. Dan Woodbury, one of our veterinarians, visits with my husband, Steve, about
 the VFD.  Dr. Woodbury says "The Veterinary Feed Directive has opened dialogue
among producers and their veterinarian. That is not a bad thing. In some cases, we have
been able to help producers maximize the return on investment from a health and, ultimately,
financial standpoint through timely feed grade antibiotic uses. We strive to help our clients
maintain long term financial stability. The Veterinary Feed Directive, in some cases, has helped
strengthen the producer and veterinarian relationship; which helps to secure our agricultural community.”

3 & 4. Yes, the VFD is about increasing veterinarian-client-patient-relationships (VCPR) so that you and I, the consumers, can be reassured about how antibiotics are used in food animals.  For most of us the VCPR has already been an important part of how we take care of our cattle.  We spend time with our veterinarians developing vaccination protocols as well as treatment protocols.   The FDA, Food and Drug Administration, regulates antibiotic use in food animals. The ADAA,  Animal Drug Availability Act, provides flexibility to the way FDA regulates new animal drugs and medicated feeds.

5. The VFD provides the documentation for cattle farmers like my husband and I to makes sure we are using antibiotics responsibly.  I am a veterinary technician responsible for administering antibiotics when our cattle get sick.   I am also a consumer and I have children and grandchildren that purchase beef in the grocery store.  The VFD further strengthens the commitment of people like my husband and I to provide the safest and healthiest beef we can.  

We live in Nebraska where we experience all four seasons.  When we have wet
spells in the form of snow or rain we utilize our cement pads and bedding to provide
the cattle a comfortable place to lay down.  Our dedication to animal welfare and the
guidance from our nutritionist and veterinarians help us to provide optimal care.  That
commitment to care leads to a lower incidence of disease and reduced use of antibiotics.

6.  My husband and I attended two meetings about the VFD in addition to one-on-one conversations with our veterinarians and reading numerous articles in farm magazines about the implementation of the VFD.

7.  Farmers are used to acronyms like the FSA, NRD, NRCS, CRP, LDP, BQA, LRP and everyone’s favorite, the IRS.  What’s one more acronym to remember?  If you’d like to see a list of acronyms from the USDA you can go here. 

There is a new sheriff in town and he’s making sure things run smoothly from the farm to the fork so consumers, like you, can have confidence in the beef you eat.  The presence of the VFD reassures farmers like us that we are continually monitoring antibiotic usage so that your family and mine will eat well and live well.  Our goal is for our cattle to thrive so you can thrive and we’ll do that through the VCPR from the VFD thanks to the FDA and USDA in the hope to make the CDC and YOU smile!  

A Few of my Favorite Things

If you've ever watched "The Sound of Music" then you know there is a suggested technique of thinking of your favorite things to chase away fear.  The technique was mentioned by Fraulein Maria in the song "My Favorite Things" as she consoled the von Trapp children during a thunderstorm.  I believe Fraulein Maria was onto something by teaching the children to focus on good things so they would replace their fear with joy.

I have learned that focusing on my favorite things can fill me with gratitude.  Looking at a drawing that our daughter, Emily, drew of our family when she was in kindergarten makes me smile as I think back to a time when our five children were all under the age of ten.   The smell of chili powder takes me to a pantry in my aunt's house that I loved to visit when I was a child. Watching the sun come up fills me with awe as I think about God's love and power.

We are blessed with wide open spaces and the ability to see the sunrise and the
sunset.  The colors in this sunrise seem to add warmth to the cold winter day.

When the toil of farm work starts to get me I can be quickly changed as I drive by a pen of cattle and observe one steer licking himself, another steer rubbing his head on the water tank and another steer chewing contently.  Yes, one of my favorite things is seeing our cattle content with their life here.

This is a view of part of our feedlot looking towards the northeast.  You can
see one steer licking his hip and many others laying around.  We strive to
provide pen conditions like this so cattle always have a place to lay down.

Smelling an alfalfa field after it has been cut or the feedtruck as it drives by are more of my favorite things.  There are definitely farm smells that are not my favorite things, too! 

Listening to the birds sing is another one of my favorite things.  We are blessed to have a variety of bird sounds including the migration of geese in the spring and fall.  When I am walking pens in the summer I get to listen to Meadowlarks and Cardinals that seem to move around with me so I can hear them singing all over the farm.

Eating a juicy hamburger, steak or slice of eye of round hot off the grill is definitely one of my favorite things.  The taste of beef has always been a favorite of mine and I am blessed to have a husband that loves to grill.  Sharing beef meals with family and friends continues to be a favorite activity of mine.

Steve has a tray of hamburgers ready to be eaten.  Our
granddaughter is waiting to have one placed on her plate.

Memories of my dad have become another one of my favorite things.  I did not appreciate the value memories can bring to a relationship until Alzheimer's hit my dad.  I have many favorite memories of my dad including a childhood Christmas many years ago. 

It was Christmas Eve and my dad came home carrying several wrapped gifts with no name tags.  My five siblings and I could barely contain our excitement as we discussed who the presents were for.  On Christmas morning my mom was handed each of the gifts one by one. I can only remember two of the gifts.  One gift was a large, fuzzy, orange rug and the other was a ceramic canister set.  I remember sharing in the joy as mom opened them one by one.  Somehow the gifts were even more special because they were all for mom.  That Christmas is a favorite memory of mine.

This is the Merry Mushroom Canister set that dad bought for
mom! She used those in her kitchen counter for many years.

Did you notice that many of my favorite things include all of the senses and are more than just things?  Maybe thinking of our favorite things lifts us up because they tap into our senses of taste, sight, smell, touch and hearing as well as our emotions.   What are some of your favorite things?  Try naming them and see if they lift your spirits, especially in times of trial. Remember what Frauline Maria said, "I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad"!

When it Rains it Pours

The old adage, “When it rains, it pours,” often applies more to life experiences than the weather. In our area, it’s both.  Rain has almost become one of the forbidden “four-letter-words.”  Normally we are praying for rain this time of year to finish filling out the corn kernels and soybean pods. Rarely, though, does rain fall in the exact amount that the soil can handle. Tillage methods and terracing can help, but don’t stop all the water flow. So what happens to the extra rain?

On our farm we control water flow with narrow based terraces and two ponds.  Our west pond is a freshwater pond that pond keeps water from entering the feedlot.  We’ve made the fresh water pond a benefit to man and nature by stocking it with fish, building a dock, a bridge and an island, planting trees and creating a space to BBQ.  

Our fresh waster pond reached an all time high during the spring
of 2010 when the water nearly covered the dock.  The high level
didn't stop family members from enjoying time to fish. 

Our east pond is a holding pond for our feedlot.  The pond is about six acres in size which is close to the size of six football fields.  That pond was built with a clay liner to prevent any leakage.  We inspect the pond to make sure no trees or shrubs are growing along the sides.  We have monitoring wells above and below the pond that are tested twice a year for nutrient levels to make sure we are protecting the quality of water to the best of our ability.

This is our farm with the fresh water pond on the bottom of the photo or west
side of our farm.  The feedlot is in the middle and the holding pond is at the
top of the photo on the east end of our feedlot and farm.  We hold water that
falls on our farm and water that runs into our farm from the north and west.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issue regulations for us to follow.  Thorough records have to be kept that include daily rainfall and how we use the water in the holding pond.   We have consultants that keep up with regulation changes and help us manage the nutrients in the pond for use on crop ground as fertilizer.   

It is often a challenge for farmers to make sure that common sense prevails in the development of these regulations, as regulations made with good intentions don’t always turn out to be so. Many farmers do not end up holding the EPA in positive regard.  Farmers are often held to standards that municipalities as recently seen in Baltimore.    I will share some of our experience with regulations to give you a better understanding of the farmer perspective.

In the early 1990’s we built a sediment basin to keep soil and manure from leaving our farm.  A large perforated thick plastic tube allowed water to slowly trickle out, leaving us the sediment to use on crop ground.  The regulations about holding all the water were going through continual changes and by the early 2000’s they were getting closer to being finalized.  We hired a consultant to help us design of what we would need to hold our water and trusted that the design had been completed and submitted to the Nebraska DEQ by the deadline. 

A few days before Christmas that same year we received two letters.  The first letter was to let us know of attorney help if needed.  The second letter was from the EPA telling us we had an illegal discharge and were being fined.  Our hearts were not as joy-filled as they normally are for Christmas knowing we had quite a situation on our hands.

We slowly learned what exactly had gone wrong. The design was submitted without the stamp of an engineer, was sent to an engineer for that stamp and was lost on the desk of the engineer.  A deadline was missed and we were considered the responsible party.  Hard to believe, since we thought we had done everything we were supposed to.   One comparison would be that of hiring an accountant to do your taxes.  Let’s say you turned everything in, signed what needed to be signed, paid your bill and then received a notice from the IRS saying your tax return was never filed and you owed a huge fine because of it.

Our discussions with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) and Region 7 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed us to meet people with and without an understanding of agriculture.  We were told we needed to immediately stop the flow of water from the sediment basin, so my husband and an employee wrapped the tube with thick black plastic.  It was winter so they were able to work on the mostly frozen sediment to get that plastic around the tube and down as low as they could.

As spring came with rains the sediment basin started to fill up with water.  During the last week of June something happened to the plastic causing it to allow water to leave the sediment basin.  Calls were made to the NDEQ and the EPA.  Engineers came out with their suggestions and a variety of ideas were tried.  Eventually, my husband had to crawl out above the water on 2 x 4’s bolted together to drop sandbags down the middle of the tube and the outside of the tube to stop the water.  The danger he put himself in was at that time irrelevant to those telling us we needed to stop the flow of water.   
 

This photo was taken after a recent rain that dumped 3.5" in a very short time.  The amount of water that goes into the holding pond varies.  When we receive large amounts of rain in a short time the ratio is 8:1 of
inches added/inch of rainfall.  If the ground is dry in the fields that will ratio will drop due to less runoff entering our farm.   We will remove the sediment when it dries and apply it to area crop ground.

The holding pond was built later in the summer with as much regard to public notice, zoning laws and regulations as we knew of and what we trusted our paid consultant to make sure was done correctly.  In the end we did have to pay a fine and were asked to share our story with the Region 7 EPA employees.  The EPA paid our expenses to make a trip to Kansas City for that presentation.  Ironically, months later while still waiting for reimbursement we learned that the check issued for our expenses had gotten lost on someone’s desk at the EPA.

It is important to us that we do what is right for the environment and our neighbors.  We are able to protect the rivers and streams from receiving any unwanted nutrients.  We are able to control water and sediment from wreaking havoc on fields and homes downstream.   We strive to be responsible stewards and considerate neighbors by minimizing the smell of the pond and working with consultants to apply the nutrients to our crops using best management practices.  We rely on our consulting service to give us that extra layer of expertise to make sure we are complying with changing regulations.

When we use the holding pond water to irrigate  we are required to keep
records that show the start and stop times, the high and low temperatures of the
day before, day of and day after we apply as well as the wind speed and direction.

Normally we have our holding pond at three- to five-foot levels this time of year.  We have used the pond for irrigating corn throughout the summer and came very close to a five feet level about three weeks ago.  Since then we have had small rains and two large rain events that have added at least five feet to our holding pond. We are obligated by regulation to have our pond under five feet by winter and that is not going to be an easy task.

When it rains my husband gets uneasy now.  The forecast for a quarter inch has often been turned into three to six inches and even nine inches in nearby areas. Sometimes when it rains, it pours!  Do you think we are ready for a dry spell?  Ouch, a dry spell is not something any farmer dares to pray for as it often leads to prayers for more rain!

Steve always dreamed of having his own fish pond near his
home and now he does!  Here is showing a Catfish he caught
in the pond while our dog hopes he will drop it right in her mouth!

It would be insensitive of me not to acknowledge the suffering many people go through each year due to flooding from storms.  Nothing compares to the loss of life and property people have endured over the centuries due to acts of nature.  Even with the weather forecast capabilities we have now we know the amount of rainfall in any given storm can vary greatly.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to those suffering from the recent flooding in Louisiana and those going through Hurricane Matthew.