Smiles From Kansas Farmers

If you met any Kansas farmers this week they were probably smiling. Last week's sumptuous warm sunny weather was followed this week by deeply satisfying piddley, puddley rains. I've dumped an inch of water out of our rain gauge so far. All of it has fallen gently, with hardly a rumble of thunder to punctuate it. No hideous winds either.

This means that our creeks and rivers aren't rising yet because the rain is mostly soaking where it falls. The wheat fields are getting more and more impossibly green, and the alfalfa is growing marvelously.

I heard today that when LaVon Bontrager's grave was dug several weeks ago, after several nice rains, the ground was moist down to about six feet. Below that, the soil was rock-hard. The cemetery is very nearly at the geographic center of our community, and is a likely indicator of subsoil moisture conditions over the wider area.

The prevailing optimism is tempered slightly by uncertainty about the safety of the far-ahead-of -usual spring growth. If severe cold should arrive now, the damage could be significant.

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There's a new Dexter calf in the barn--another reason for farmer Shane to smile.

Shane and Dorcas' baby, meanwhile, has gone with his mother to visit Dad/Grandpa Kuepfer and the aunt and uncles in Virginia--a reason for them to smile.

Life has been difficult for Mark of late. Esther died in early January, and this stage of the grieving process seems especially difficult.

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Hiromi is ever so pleased that our resident cardinal has found and fed on the safflower seed he put on the screen-bottomed tray feeder. Hiromi had stopped putting out the mixed birdseed on that feeder after flocks of red-winged blackbirds descended on it and gobbled down all the feed. The cardinal, however, usually feeds there rather than on the tube feeders or the "house" feeder, so Hiromi was afraid he felt unwelcome. Cardinals are one of the few kinds of birds that eat safflower.

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The "cute lammie" was safely ensconced inside the calf hutch tonight with its parents. The adults wouldn't bestir themselves, even to come out for grain, so Hiromi carried the feed pan to them inside the hutch. The lamb was up and about before he arrived, jumping back and forth across its mother's considerable bulk while she rested lazily on the straw in the hutch. Irresistible little thing.

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We have night school tomorrow night, after a full day of regular school. The perk happens the next day, on Friday, when we can all stay home instead of going to school.

Students are agreeing to act sensibly about their caffeine consumption. Significant intemperance last year on a variety of fronts made the need for this quite clear.

In jest, Mr. Schrock said today that the teachers will provide a meal during the night around 10:30. Groans erupted immediately. The poverty meals we served last Friday are still fresh in students' minds, and teachers' offers to provide meals are likely to be viewed with a bit of suspicion for a while.

No one will be providing a meal tomorrow night. We're all supposed to eat between 3:45 when the first day of school dismisses and the next "day" takes up at 6:30 in the evening.