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Family works long hours together
Published 6/27/2009 in Local News
By STEPHANIE FARLEY
KEARNY COUNTY — It usually takes about two weeks from the time Kearny County farmer Gary Millershaski starts seeing coloring in the fields to the time the wheat is ripe and ready to cut.
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Stephanie Farley/Telegram — Harvesters come in for a meal Friday at Judy and Earl Kleeman’s home, about 11 miles north of Lakin. The Kleemans farm with their son-in-law, Gary Millershaski.
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Stephanie Farley/Telegram — Kearny County farmer Gary Millershaski has about 3,850 acres of wheat to get out of the field for the 2009 harvest. He had four combines running Friday afternoon.
This year, the timing was about three days short of that. On top of that, hail took the leaves off some of Millershaski's wheat, which sped up the maturing process. Plus, when rain comes, things tend to ripen quicker. And then the hot, dry and windy weather that came after rain brought on harvest, he said.
His custom cutter made it to the farm, about 11 miles north of Lakin, on Wednesday and started cutting Thursday.
Millershaski said his and others' fields went from nothing being ready to cut to everything being ready at the same time.
The farmer also was short this year on trucks to haul the grain, but the yields haven't been near what they could've been in some fields from hail and wind damage, so being short hasn't been a big problem this year.
On Friday evening, as the sun started to lower in the horizon, four combines ran in one of Millershaski's fields. He farms with his family, including his in-laws, Judy and Earl Kleeman.
He ran through the list of issues and events that have, so far, made up the 2009 harvest. But, he said, it's one of those things where regardless of how good or bad a field is, harvest is the result of your labor.
And seeing a really good field that Millershaski's had a hand in making, "That's a feeling I don't know how to explain," he said, standing next to one of his fields.
The grind
Millershaski has about 3,850 acres of wheat to get out of the field. He figures he'll cut all but about 80 acres that were too badly damaged from storms and hail.
On Friday, Millershaski was cutting some of his damaged wheat. He estimates before the hail, the wheat would've yielded 40 to 45 bushels an acre, and now it's yielding 15 to 20 bushels an acre.
Millershaski held a wheat head in his hand, breaking up the head so the kernels popped out. Two or three popped out when, if it weren't for hail, the head should've had about 30 kernels. There also was quite a bit of grain on the ground where Millershaski stood in the field.
"I hate to be one to complain," he said, explaining storm damage comes with farming. "That's just part of it."
Millershaski was out cutting with his sons, Jeremy, 19, and Kyler, 17, father-in-law, Earl, and brother-in-law, Larry Kleeman.
"He actually wants to come back and farm," Millershaski said of Jeremy, explaining he told him he couldn't farm until he goes to college and takes some economics classes. Jeremy plans to attend Kansas State University this fall.
The group was nearing dinner time as Millershaski started gathering his family up to travel back to the Kleeman home for the meal.
"We go until we're done," Millershaski said of harvest, estimating they'd be about halfway done by today, cutting 400 to 500 acres a day.
Millershaski usually leaves the home by 6:30 a.m. to start servicing machines. They're rolling by 9:30 a.m. and cut about 12 hours.
"We respect the crop enough" to work the long hours, but "it'll just eat ya up inside" working and working, he said.
So they typically break for dinner, either with the crew traveling to the food or it being brought to them.
The hours will make you a old man quick, he said, "if you don't take the time to smell the roses."
A warm meal
Judy Kleeman was surrounded by her family Friday night as the group went through the dinner line in the backyard of she and Earl's home.
It's a special time, Kleeman said of family and "having the fourth generation roaming around in the backyard here." Kleeman sat in a lawn chair with her 1-year-old granddaughter, Jordan, leaning on her lap.
"Usually we deliver," Kleeman said of the meal to the field, but if things are going well and the crew's close, they'll come in, giving Kleeman and her daughter, Gary's wife, Jana, a break from hauling the food. Friday's meal included fruit, Pittsburgh potatoes, peas, cake (Kleeman's favorite with toffee bits on top), meatloaf and iced tea.
"We may not stop long," she said of the meal, and they may eat in shifts, not all together.
But "it's tradition," Kleeman said of the meal.
They provide the meal for the 10 to 12 days harvest lasts, then, Kleeman joked, "we can think we're on 'easy street' for the rest of the year."
Harvest can get a little crazy, at times, and fast-paced, but if it lasted forever, Kleeman said, "we wouldn't be so excited about it."
Moving on
As they polished off their meals and the last bit of tea from Mason jars, the group hopped into the truck and headed off down blacktop, then dirt roads to return to the field, where the combines sat waiting.
"It's always fun to get back," Larry Kleeman, who lives in Wichita with his family, said of coming home for harvest.
Kleeman's son, Jackson, 4, sat in his father's lap. Jackson occasionally would steer the combine with his father's help, talk on the CB radio and giggle as he honked the horn.
As the pair headed off into the sunset — the combine droning on — the silhouette of Earl Kleeman could be seen waving to his grandson.
Jackson smiled, giving a wave back.
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