The Final Chapter

I returned from Kansas on Friday night, but that is by no means indicative that the experience ended Friday night. The way I see it, now that I’m back this is just the beginning. Plus, nothing can be really be official until I document it in my blog, can it?

The last few days I was in Kansas were so busy I didn’t have time to blog about the four places I visited. Do bear in mind, four places is a lot to document in detail and I’m already missing some assemblies at school to tie the final knots in the blog, so my usual thourality may be reined in a bit today.

The best place to start is usually the beginning, but if I started from the beginning of the trip it may be a bit redundant to those other 7 blog posts documenting the beginning of the trip, so for our purposes today, we will start with…

Wednesday:

Wednesday was exciting, not only because it was another day in the go, go, go, of densely populated Quinter, Kansas, but also because on Wednesday they began scheduling not one, but two off-campus trips for me each day so as to squeeze every last drop out of my trip. The lovely Ms. Sandii Ostmeyer drove me that morning to a seed cleaning company. This was especially intriguing to me, as I had never heard of a seed cleaning company.

Paramount Seed:

It turns out Paramount seed is a lot less eccentric than I expected. “Seed Cleaning” apparently does not mean they spray their grains with Windex or anything like that, which, at first, left me a bit crestfallen.

My mood picked up, however, right around the time I met Garfield. Garfield is a large orange kitty who served as co-tour guide with Tim, (rest assured Tim is a human being).

Paramount seed, similar to just about everywhere else I went in Kansas, including my host family’s house, was packed with an obsessive number of cats. I was in absolute heaven.

Paramount Seed is primarily a seed business. This means they handle mostly seeds, and a few grains that don’t fall under the seed category. They grow all their grain, they harvest all their grain, and they store all their grain. But what earned them the title of “seed cleaners” is that they have a huge warehouse filled with giant machines that separate the grains out from each other right when they’re harvested. Their machines get the weeds out as well as any low-quality grains. (I’ll explain how they determine that later.)

Even getting their seeds in the ground requires a lot of work and attention to detail. To plant a commercial crop using seeds you can only plant seeds that have been certified or registered for their purity. This is a super long process. You have to take multiple samples of the grain you wish to plant your crop with, then you have to send it to a test laboratory (Paramount’s test lab is usually in K-State.) Then the lab goes through a long process to check it as well.

Less than 15% of the different types of wheat and barley grown in the country. 

As you can see in this picture, I was wrong about my assumptions of wheat and barely. I thought there was one variety of wheat, called “wheat” and there was one variety of barley called “barley.” Wrong, wrong, and wrong. There are tons of different types of wheat and barley. In fact, there is a region in Somalia where over 100 different types of heirloom wheat is grown.

You may notice in the picture, especially if you’re from the East Coast, that some of the wheat and barley has giant hairy spines sticking out of it’s top. That’s called a “beard.” Typically the wheat in the Northern part of the country doesn’t have beards, however, most all the wheat in Kansas yields beards. Not just Kansas, but all the wheat in the mid-west grow their very own beards.

Notice: There is only one non-bearded grain stalk in the picture. That's the kind you find in the East Coast.

They have to remove the beards from all their stalks, especially from barley. Sometimes straight barley is fed to or is mixed in with the feed for livestock, particularly for cattle. Their mouths are incapable of chewing up the beards, so it’s essentially like eating needles for breakfast. The spines of the beard go into their gums and cheeks, causing infection, and sometimes even death. So it’s a pretty high priority to shave the beards off all the product.

They get the beards off with a machine oh so creatively named “The Debearder.” It beats the grain through huge metal fingers, which remove the beards.

I learned all this while standing in the pleasant, wheat-smelling, heated business office of Paramount Seed. The Paramount Seed office is home to impeccable customer service, accounts, and record keepers.

But unfortunately for me, we left the secure warmth of the business office (I definitely feel most at home in business offices) for the rough, gruff outdoors, which is where most of the operations of Paramount Seed take place.

First Tim took me through the largest barn at Paramount Seed (Tim is the manager of the operation.) The largest barn is just for storage. I saw more overwhelmingly large farm machinery, as well as a lot of cats.

Next we went outside, where I began to have déjà vu of the grain elevators. To be clear, here’s what sets Paramount Seeds apart from the grain elevator I visited:

-The grain elevator buys seed from farmers, stores the seed, and then sells it to larger corporations.

-The grain elevator doesn’t own any of the machines Paramount does, as the grain elevator doesn’t grow it’s own grains/seeds or clean it’s own grains/seeds. The grain elevator is pretty much a middleman.

-Most farmers don’t have the crazy cleaning machines that Paramount has either. So the grain elevator is actually a vital resource to them, as they way they have a local and reliable place to sell their product to, who can handle the business end and the cleaning/health standards/grain registration end for them.

That’s the difference.

Grain Storage Bins at Paramount Seed

Paramount Seed has only a quarter the storage capacity of the grain elevators. They have 10 to 12 storage tubes for their grains, whereas the grain elevator has 45. But the Paramount bins look different from the grain elevator bins. They aren’t nearly as tall, but are twice as wide. They are also made out of a totally different substance than the grain elevator’s tubes. Tim said this is just random, as well as the fact that the grain elevator stores more seed than they do, (the grain elevator is storing grains from dozens of different farmers at a time, Paramount Seed only has to store grains from their farm.)

All the Paramount grain storage bins.

Paramount gets their seed into the bins using a grain vac, or if it makes more sense, an auger. The grain vac is basically a giant vacuum with an air lock that sucks grain out in mass quantities of wherever it’s being stored, and then blows it out into the grain tube, or the truck carrying it, or wherever it needs to go. The grain vac is the preferred method of transportation as it’s easier on the grain than the auger, which has sharp metal teeth. The grain vac helps to preserve the quality of the grain as well.

It’s not just the planting process that has lots of rules, regulations, and inspections. Every step of the way Paramount has to be on top of certifications (for the machines, for the people running the machines, for the harvested product, for the drivers of the trucks, etc.)

They cut their fields with a massive combine. (You’ll see me sitting in one a little later.) But since they cut with a combine, they aren’t exactly hand picking each kernel of corn and each grain of wheat. Because of this, it’s very easy for other things to find their way into the mix, such as bugs, weeds, or other grains.

Combine!! (Small one from the 50's)

Tim explained to me that although it’s always a big deal if the grains cross-contaminate, it’s never been life threatening, it’s only damaging to the quality of the product, and the reputation of the company, as well as their eligibility to obtain certain licenses and certifications in the future. But that is no longer the case. With the recent boom in Celiac Disease, they have tightened security everywhere to be sure the grains are kept separate. It is a top priority now more than ever, and the boards in charge of the grain industry have responded to the Celiac boom with the utmost diligence and caution, so that even farmers who take the initiative to be extra cautious already have new laws and regulations in place to keep their grains separate and pure.

The most risky step of the process in regards to cross-contamination is when they are cleaning the machines out. They process the wheat harvest entirely--harvest it, put it through the machines, store it, etc.--at a completely different time than the milo or barley to ensure there is no possibility for cross-contamination. But between harvests, when the machines are being cleaned out, even one grain of a foreign seed could compromise the purity of the harvest. They have many rules and regulations in regards to cleaning their machines and facilities. This is key in the prevention of cross-contamination.

There is currently a drought in Kansas, and most of the mid-west. Farmers have been feeling the heat, literally and figuratively, for the past couple years. Tim pointed out to me that their wheat crop is several inches shorter than usual, as did most any farmers who had wheat crops that I visited. 

Yep that's one short wheat field.

Tim is concerned for what will happen to his wheat crop if they don’t have rain in the spring. Already he speculates that it will not be an especially profitable year, and that their grain won’t be of the highest possible quality, due to this drought. But they continue to persevere at Paramount and all across the mid-west.

Now for a crash course on combines.

Tim giving me a crash course on combines

-The cycle bar in the front of the combine cuts the grains. The grains get sucked up and spit out into a bin in the back of the combine.

Cycle Bars

-It is called a combine because it combines the act of cutting the grain and threshing the grain. These two processes used to be separate, and extremely time-consuming.

-The combine was first introduced to the common farm population in the 1930’s.

-The model of the combine Paramount has (the one in the picture) is a John Deer model from the 50’s-70’s.

Tim showed me a combine, and had me stick my head underneath the giant thresher in which metal teeth that can rip apart a polar bear were staring down at me inches away from my head. This was definitely a new experience for me.

I wouldn't put my hand far enough inside it to have the camera pick up the spikes, but they're there.

Besides the cats, Paramount also has a horse named Twister.

This giant metal sheet on the floor is a scale they use, similar to the one the grain elevator. Sometimes, however, they use the grain elevator’s scale anyways, as the Paramount scale isn’t a certified scale, but the grain elevator’s scale is.

Their unofficial scale

They have lots of very loud very shiny machines at Paramount seed. In the words of Tim, “It’s all state of the art equipment--from 50 years ago.”

Tour Guide Tim

Norman

We talked a little bit more about the specifics of the machines, which ones break easily, which ones don’t, why, etc. Then I got to meet Norman. Norman is a truck driver for Paramount Seed, and Norman has never been East of St. Louis. Tim says he, “May have gone through Rhode Island once, on a bus or something.” But that was about it between the two of them.

These giant metal cones are for collecting dust that gathers on the stored grains. The dust falls into the blue bucket, which is emptied out about twice a day.

This is a giant metal dust cone.

There were so many different machines that I could spend the next ten pages telling you about them, but I’m going to keep this short and sweet and just talk about my favorite machine, the seed cleaner. The seed cleaner is the machine that separates out the seed. It’s a process that involves three screens and lots of high-powered fans.

Screen 1: Cleans out things that are too big or heavy. Often Paramount keeps this, as the heaviest grains are the ones of the highest quality. But heavy things may also be indicative of foreign objects or insects, so the big pieces are separated out and then screened again.

Screen 2: Cleans out stuff that’s too small. This is also processed again, but that’s just Paramount being extra thorough. Not much is usually kept from this selection as a light grain suggests it may be low quality. The grain has to weigh a certain amount to qualify for being sold for human consumption.

Screen 3: Separates the “fines” the small and the cracked grains and seeds. This can be fed to livestock as feed. In fact, grains have to be cracked in some way or another for the cows to be able to eat them. They can’t rip apart the solid grains with their teeth (think back to the last time you chomped down on an unpopped popcorn kernel.) So the grains have to be cracked in some way for the cows to absorb the nutrients of the feed and digest it properly.

Finals Fans: There are fans across the entire machine blowing stuff through the screens, but the final fan blows out the “chaff” which is like the saw dust left behind from broken seeds, as well as any severely light-weight seeds. The lightest seeds are definitely poor quality and can’t be salvaged even for cattle feed. They use the chaff as sawdust, so it doesn’t go to waste.

Oh wait! I’m going to tell you about one more machine because it reminds me of a movie I like. The gravity table, according to Tim, “Is a very strange machine.” The gravity table continues the job of the seed cleaner in a way. Now that the seed cleaner has separated out the unusable things taken in during the harvest, the gravity tables refines the selection by separating them by weight even further. Fans blow underneath it and the table tilts around, causing the lightweight stuff to float downward, separate from the heavier, higher quality grain. It’s essentially the squirrels from the Willy Wonka movie. They pick up the nuts and knock on them and test to see if there’s anything good inside. The grain industry managed to mechanize those squirrels, into what is known as the “gravity table.”

Gravity Table in action.

The reason the gravity table comes after the seed cleaner is because seed cleaner does things by physical size of the grain, while the gravity table does it by weight.

Barley sprouts are considered to be the best feed for animals. Barley sprouts look similar to the Cat Grass you buy for $50 at Petco, guess what, you’re buying barley sprouts and it costs $3 to grow, maintain, and ship them. Barley sprouts is what was being grown at Simon’s sheep farm in the giant hydroponic cube (see previous post about the sheep farm). It is considered the most nutritious for animals, and also best for their teeth.

Uber deluxe cat grass 

The giant seed pictured below is called Goat Grass. It’s a noxious weed, toxic to animals and humans. If there is even one grain of it found, the entire batch has to be thrown out.

Encircled is a grain of goat grass in freshly harvested seed.

While I was touring the giant empty barn with just Tim country music started playing. But there was no one else in the barn. Tour is going on as normally as ever with creepy country music turned on by ghosts playing in the background. Whatever. 

Now ladies and gentlemen prepare for a symphony of grain machinery. I managed to get on tape Tim’s turning on the grain machines one at a time. It sounds particularly cool, because you start the machines running with the quietest to the loudest. You do this because you need to listen to each machine for a few seconds to make sure everything is running right and there are no extraneous noises, thumps, sounds of blazing inferno devouring your business as you know it, etc.

Barley is the least common grain grown in the mid-west, next to canola. I did not know canola was a grain I thought it was a brand of vegetable oil.

Paramount Seed has a huge warehouse to store their packaged bags of seed. Each bag is stamped with an identifying number in case it needs to be removed from storage at a later time. The warehouse wasn’t particularly full when I arrived. But it’s not exactly the height of the season so this was to be expected.

They’re trying something new for storage this time of year. For the first time they’re stacking the bags with space between them, because this makes it more difficult for rodents to attempt to get inside the grain bags and build nests. Believe it or not, they have more of a rodent problem because of all their cats! The cats eat some of the mice, but the mice can get to small crevices that cats can’t. If they didn’t have all the cats they would just lay down poison (poison in a warehouse where they’re storing my food? Grrrrreaaatt.)

It was about this point in time when my fingers stopped being able to move. I was taking frantic notes on my phone of everything he was saying (so far I’ve only included about an eight of what was said). Usually I wore a coat with pockets. Today for some reason I decided to be arrogant and assume I didn’t need pockets. My coat and my pants had no pockets. I didn’t realize all of Paramount Seed was outdoors. My fingers got so cold I couldn’t move them to type on my phone. So there is a huge drop off in information for the next 15-30 minutes of my tour.

Finally we went inside a heated warehouse. Putney Sustainability Committee, guess what, Paramount Seed has a giant compost! Yay!

The warehouse was attached to a small retail store on site at Paramount Seed. They have a store because in the past four years they’ve begun to expand their business. Originally Paramount Seed was erected for the sole purpose of producing feed for livestock. Within the past four years Paramount has hired a peppy business consultant who suggested they branch out into human consumption on the angle that they can produce fresh whole grains from a reliable small operation in the heart of wheat country, Kansas.

Paramount Product

It hasn’t been going as well as her pep suggested it would. The peppy consultant suggested when selling their own products for human consumption wasn’t taking off as she had envisioned that they buy product from other companies who have had success marketing people food, but apparently her pep was just a mask, as this proved to be even less profitable than trying to sell their own product.

Another issue they’re having with marketing their food is that if they’re having a slow week selling animal feed there is no need to worry because grain can sit around for months without their having to do anything to it. It doesn’t go bad, as long as you take care to keep it at the right temperature. But with their food products, the shelf life is shortened significantly because they have to grind or roll the grain to make it suitable for humans. So if they don’t sell it within a certain time, they have to throw it out and it counts as a loss of profit for them.

Paramount hasn’t given up yet on the pursuit of branching out from the feed market to the food market.

They sell corn meal, and oatmeal that’s taking a revolutionary turn. Instead of using oats, the oatmeal is made of rolled hulless barley (barley that doesn’t have a hull). They roll it and make it into granola and hot cereal. The peppy consultant is insisting everything be all whole grain, since that’s their marketing angle.

Soybeans sell for the most in terms of grains in Kansas, although wheat is the most common crop grown. In Iowa the most profitable crop is corn. Almost all corn and soybeans sold today are genetically modified, which means they’ve taken a step beyond being a hybrid. Instead of being a combination of two already existing plants that nature created, they’re a concept configured in a laboratory. The genetic traits are planned out and selected to a T. They have qualities that can kill bugs, they can put more nutrients in the grain that nature just couldn’t manage to squeeze in there, and all sorts of exciting new stuff. Wheat and barely are much less genetically modified, although many hybrids do exist.

Now let’s talk a little bit about Tim.

Tim came to Quinter, Kansas, in 2008. He used to live in Lamar, Colorado on the plains. The landscape is similar to Kansas there as you can’t see the Rocky Mountains, and it is also a pretty small town. He stated the biggest difference between Quinter and Lamar is the time change.

Tim is a pretty serious Dunkard Brethren.

He just returned from doing missionary work in Kenya, handing out schoolbooks and medical supplies. His family accompanied him, and they were on this mission trip for three months. He said he did this more just to help people, not anything directly corresponding to his religion.

That's where Kenya is

Tim’s wife had been trying to convince him to move to Kansas for years before they actually did. She wanted to move, not only because she knew a lot of people in Quinter, but also because it is the town where both their sons found work and came to start families.

Tim did not want to move. He had a great job in Colorado, he was very involved in a community band in which he played the trombone, and felt as though he was living the dream. He didn’t want to disturb his peaceful life on the Colorado plains. For years he had for his wife a long, seemingly inexhaustible list of reasons as to why it was impossible for them to move to Quinter.

 In 2008 they were down in Quinter for New Year’s Day. He usually tried to avoid coming down because then his wife would be even more certain she wanted to move to Quinter, but he wasn’t worried about it this time because he knew he couldn’t find a house his wife would agree on that he could afford, as well as the fact that he couldn’t find a job that paid half as well as his current one.

At the New Year’s Party a man from a local Quinter company known as Paramount Seeds approached Tim and said he had heard his family was planning a move to Quinter, and that he was looking for someone to manage his seed company. Tim hastily, albeit respectfully, declined, hoping his wife hadn’t caught wind of the offer.

The next day he learned it was his son’s employer that had put him up for the job. So Paramount wasn’t going to give up without a fight. The owner of the company called Tim at his home. And already savvy to the fact Tim had a list of reasons tying him to Colorado, successfully and systematically shot down every single reason, including finding an affordable yet spacious place to live.

Tim took this as a sign God wanted him to move to Quinter and didn’t waste a single second selling his house and moving his family.

As far as whether or not Tim is happy with the decision he made, it remains to be seen. It was impossible for me to get a read on it. I asked how he liked Quinter and with a note of hesitation he responded, carefully, “It’s a nice town, the people are friendly—“ Then trailed off. In response to my question as to whether he wished he had never come down here for New Year’s and just stayed put in Colorado he replied haltingly, obviously deep in thought… “I really did like it in Colorado. I had such a good job, and I can’t tell you how much I miss that community band. There’s just not much opportunity for that kind of thing down here. No point in second guessing it I suppose. What’s done is done.”

He said this just as he pulled his white Ford pickup truck up to the door of the high school (everyone has a white Ford pickup truck in Kansas. It’s like a requirement for citizenship down here or something.)

The Quinter Museum Of History:

The first ever residents of Quinter.

There isn’t a whole ton to discuss about the Quinter Museum of History, so I’ll begin with a brief summary and then sprinkle in some more interesting details. The reason I’m only brushing on the topic of the actual location is because the person with whom I visited the museum is much more word-worthy than the museum itself.

The Quinter Museum of History is a museum that documents the history of Quinter. It is in one of the original two buildings of the town of Quinter (formally known as the Melote Switching Yard, then known as the town of Familton when the railroad closed down, but Kansas changed it to Quinter because Familton sounded too similar to some other town and they were having problems with getting the two confused.) The museum is run and supported by only a few people, from what I could tell it wasn’t more than five or six. They operate solely off donations, which they collect in a tin can in the museum.

It’s a small room, but there’s a lot packed into it. Essentially it’s a mishmash of donated items and items they’ve managed to purchase or barter for that are relevant to Quinter history, or Gove County history. They had some very interesting things within. There was a telephone with the big circular thing you talk into, 

they had the old rules for schoolteachers working in Kansas’ one room schoolhouses, they had a quilt from the 1800’s, and most importantly they had my tour guide Marcia who was just bursting with information and enthusiasm for the history of Gove County and Western Kansas. Here is just a brief sampling of what Marcia had to say in regards to Kansas facts…

-Marcia used to write for the Gove County Advocate.

Article Marcia wrote about the erosion of Castle Rock.

-Marcia followed in great detail in the paper the crumbing of castle rock, when its size was cut in half by erosion.

-Kansas came to be shortly after settlers decided to move West. Most settlers stopped before they hit Iowa, but the frontiersmen wanted to keep going. Frontiersmen were the rugged cowboy type, and they weren’t satisfied with the amount of land allotted to them with all the other settlers so they kept forging ahead to stake their claim to a bigger more fertile chunk of land to raise livestock and grow crops. Most Frontiersmen worked 14-hour days.

-Quinter is one of only a small handful of Kansas towns that still have the same windmills that were put up back in the time of the settlers. They have more vintage windmills than most towns their size, with a respectable six windmills.

The second oldest windmill in Quinter.

-Kansas has 105 counties and all the counties are nearly perfect squares.

-Gove County is the third from the top of Kansas and the third county over from Nebraska and Colorado.

-All the little, sparsely populated towns such as Quinter and Collyer, were built along the railroad in 1885. Quinter was originally a switching yard.

-The small towns built along the railway are all exactly 8 miles apart, as it was required in the stare of Kansas to have a switching yard every 8 miles.

-The reason towns like Collyer are so impoverished now is because their economy revolved around the railroad. When they shut down the railroads that ran by these towns the jobs began to dry up and all the small towns of Gove fell on hard times.

-Most people moved to the small towns via the railroad, looking for work or land.

-Settlers also found these towns via Smoky Hill River, and the Smoky Hill Trail, which is a famous cattle trail.

-Smoky Hill trail has gone by several names in its rich history. At first it went by the Old Denver Trail, because the only time people used it was when they were on their way to Denver to look for gold. For the majority of its life, however, it was called The Smoky Hill Trail. This name was given to it by the Native Americans indigenous to Western Kansas because the Smoky Hill Trail has many hills, and when they woke up in the mornings there would often be haze and mist over the hills, which earned it the name Smoky Hill Trail. (Why is there a random group of hills along a certain trail in the middle of totally flat Western Kansas, who knows? Not me.) Now the official name for Smoky Hill Trail is the Butterfield Overland Dispatch. It’s called this because a man by the name of Butterfield used to run a popular stagecoach tour of the trail, which is what it was most known for during that time.

-The pioneers nearly starved to death during the winters when things wouldn’t grow. They had no where to find food and because so many people came to these small towns in search of work they were a bit overcrowded which resulted in overhunting. This overhunting significantly harmed the wildlife population, leaving this area almost completely barren of game meat and in turn leaving many settlers to starve to death.

-In response to the food shortage crisis, many people would catch and eat jackrabbits. The tradition stuck and even in Marcia’s day and age, families going through a tough time would catch and eat jackrabbits, as they’re plentiful in Western Kansas.

-Sod houses (otherwise known as Soddies) were popular in Western Kansas during the time of the settlers. Sod houses were houses which had a foundation made primarily of sod, though it could be lined with rocks or wood. On other occasions the houses were built into the sides of caves or mountains, or in some instances even dug out of the ground.

The people of Quinter managed to preserve a sod house in the town until the late 1950’s, after which Mother Nature finally caused it to crumble. There is still one standing in nearby Collyer, however, and it is a popular tourist attraction.

-The communities people settled in were often determined by ethnic heritage. It wasn’t like, “I think I’ll move to Collyer because I think they have pretty sunsets there.” No it was, “I have to move to Quinter because that’s where all the other German people are living.” They would have a community of Swedish people, Russian people, German, people, and the towns were all split up like this for a long time in the beginning of the settlements.

-In the early 1960’s when Marcia was growing up in Quinter, German was the common second language, like Spanish is today. Most people spoke German, even if it was only a few broken phrases, and important notices and road signs were posted in both English and German. There is still a large German population in Quinter, Kansas today.

-The town is 128 years old.

-The museum was erected 109 years ago. There have only been 10 businesses in that building, including the museum.

-Quilting was huge in Kansas. All the women quilted. They went to quilting clubs and had quilting bees--quilting was the big thing for women settling in Kansas.

Quilt from the 1800's made in Quinter.

-Quinter had between 12 and 20 schools back in the time of settlers. They had to have a schoolhouse every 4 miles or so because the kids had no way to get to school but to walk.

-Kansas is named after the Kanzas Tribe, which was a tribe of Native Americans.

-There used to be many more towns like Quinter in Western Kansas, but during WWII it wasn’t uncommon for the government to displace entire towns in the flat states if they had a small enough population. They kicked out all the people then used the land to have their planes practice shooting on.

-Quinter was home to a man who lived to be 106, and worked every day of his adult life right up until he died, as a beekeeper. He brought the town minor publicity when he took the world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for oldest working man. His name was Waldo Mcburney.

Waldo McBurney With his copy of the Guinness Book of World Records

Like I said, that was just a few of the more interesting bullet points I took down that day. I don’t think I’ve ever typed so much so fast in my entire life. The Quinter museum was nothing if not informative.

Maria:

Maria is from Joyabaj El Quiche, Guatemala.

Maria is an ESL student, which is why she was with Marcia during the middle of the school day. Maria is the child of migrant agricultural workers, and has moved with some level of frequency. She is 14, but due to her not spending a whole lot of time in one place coupled with the fact she is still mastering the language, she is in 7^th grade.

Maria and Marcia

Her family came to the United States because the economy in her hometown was so poor neither of her parents could find work. In Kansas it is very uncommon for women to be homemakers. Even if they have kids, either they have a career or they live and work on a farm. Maria’s mother is a homemaker, and Marcia explained to me how uncommon this is in Kansas.

Maria’s father has held a couple positions with National Beef, which is a large producer of choice cut meats. He worked in several different slaughterhouses. Currently her father works for a sheep rancher. Maria’s mother isn’t working a paying job, but she is working harder than most people with a paycheck. She has several children, a house to keep clean, and three meals to cook a day. Also, Maria has extended family who live with her on and off, and whom her mother is left to care for on these occasions.

Maria moved to the US at a fairly young age, but still has vivid memories of Guatemala. She does like America, but she thought it was hard to choose whether or not she would rather be here or be back in her hometown of Joyabaj El Quiche. Although she spent the majority of her life in America and has many memories and friends here, she feels it’s too developed. She doesn’t like how many cars and buildings there are, she yearns for the rain forests and wildlife she left behind.

Marcia was key in Maria’s transition to Quinter Middle School, because when Maria first arrived, despite the fact she communicated very clearly she was from Guatemala, students and teachers alike kept hounding her with questions about “Life in Mexico.” Many people assumed Guatemala was a town in Mexico. Even many of Maria’s teachers didn’t fully understand that Guatemala is completely separate from Mexico and Marcia had to take them aside and explain.

Now for some fun facts about Marcia’s car.

I was trying really hard to be sure I was representing Putney in the most positive ways I could. I didn’t want my own personal eccentricities to be seen as a reflection of all the Putney students who may venture here in the future. Because of this, I went out of my way to be extra gracious and courteous, especially when on these off-campus trips with the locals. So when Maria and I got to Marcia’s car, right away I made a move for the back seat so that Maria could have the front. It took 15 minutes to get the back door to her car open. I climbed inside. After wrestling with the seatbelt for another 5 or 6 minutes I managed to get that to work as well. I was already highly enjoying my experience with Marcia and her beloved old car (just wait until you hear about my experience with Robert the cattle rancher’s awesome car, this will seem like nothing.)

When I thought it just couldn’t get any better, we arrived at the museum. We discovered there that the door wasn’t playing Mr. Nice Guy anymore, and wasn’t going to open a second time. Marcia’s car was very similar to our family’s Smart Car (at least when it’s in my father’s possession). Super duper cluttered. Which made climbing from her back seat into her front seat so I could exit the car (the driver’s side door was the only one of the four doors that we could get open) like Indiana Jones rock climbing with a pick axe and on harness style adventure.

So yes, Marcia’s car was really fun.

Herl's Take One:

Wednesday night Terra very kindly forced her kids to accompany me to Castle Rock and Herl’s cattle ranch. I know to Collin and Caitlyn this wasn’t nearly as exciting as it was for me… It’s probably for them like someone dragging me away from my homework and the things I have going on in my life to go look at the John Brown House. But it was nice they came anyways.

We started at Herl’s Cattle farm, a farm run by two brothers. The ranch was huge, but I didn’t get to see too much of it. One of the brothers, Robert, has a daughter at QHS who read in the poetry out loud contest on Thursday and did a really awesome job. I saw their crazy dog Gracie, who kept jumping up on me and scaring the life out of me and Caitlyn’s dad had to keep the dog from murdering my face. Collin kept trying to play with their cat and the cat kept scratching him but didn’t take the hint and kept trying to touch him anyways.

I saw a baby calf that had been born that day, which was exciting. Then that was pretty much it. We packed up and we left.

I assumed we were leaving and going to the pizza station because that’s where we were going for dinner. I was spaced out watching Collin text his girlfriend on my phone

(Collin has this app called Voxer, and he uses it talk to his girlfriend. Collin is 11 and is already in this crazy serious relationship with an older woman, a *12 year old, gasp!* and they text each other constantly. Since Collin doesn’t have a phone and his mother needs her phone for her work (plus also who wants to text their significant other on their mother’s cell phone??) he used my phone the entire time I was in Kansas. So I would get these nauseating text messages and see the ones they exchanged between themselves. It was like every conversation started and ended with the type of nauseating over affection of “You hang up first, no you! You hang up first, I’m not gonna hang up first I could never hang up on you. No, no, no, you have up first.” Those conversations. This girl, her name is Tamika, would send him messages like “I love you soooo much. You need to promise we’re gonna stay together for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, ok?” I wanted to write her back and be like “Bitch, he needs to promise that?!” (Because Tamika has broken their relationship off more than once.)

But I digress. I was staring blankly as Collin texted Tamika, waiting for whatever was going to happen next to happen. I realized about five minutes later, that we were no longer driving on a road. Ford pickup trucks were designed to drive on things that aren’t the road I guess. We were driving over a crazy hill of rocks and boulders that were at an almost totally complete right angle. It was highly enjoyable for me, but the average person may have freaked out a little bit. Because think about it, what’s the number one reason someone drives off the road?

To dump a body. Obviously.

Just to show you have out of it I was at this point, I didn’t even ask why we had left the road and were now driving down a broken mountain or whatever we were driving on. I would later learn that this was the short cut to…

Castle Rock:

Castle Rock in the 1800's

Castle rock is gorgeous. There’s not really much to be said about it besides that. It’s a rock formation that is in the shape of a castle, it has deteriorated due to erosion over the past 100 years or so, but it’s still gorgeous. Collin tried to climb it, got 4 feet off the ground and got stuck, not knowing how to get down (I wish Tamika had been there to see that)! Eventually someone lifted him off. I took a lot of pictures of not only of Castle Rock but of the amazing sunset that surrounded it. And then we went to the Pizza Station, which I will miss forever and ever with all of my heart.

Me, and Collin clinging on about two feet above me to the right.

The song “Rain” by Bruno Mars summarizes how I feel about losing the Pizza Station “Every day it’ll rain, rain, rain, ray-ay-ain.”

Sunset from Castle Rock

Thursday:

Thursday was my last day in Kansas, as my flight was early Friday morning. Despite the fact it was technically my last day in school, I didn’t actually make an appearance on campus until the end of the day.

Herl’s Take Two:

I learned Wednesday night that I was going to spend Thursday at the cattle ranch we had just left the night before. They said I was going to spend five hours there. I had absolutely no clue what I could be doing for five hours on a cattle ranch. Most of trips had lasted three hours at the most and those ones always left me completely exhausted and overwhelmed. Well, the cattle ranch trip didn’t last five hours, thank God. It lasted seven hours.

This was one of the most enjoyable trips I went on. Why? In all honesty, because I could have the entire experience from inside the car.

I didn’t have to worry about not being able to take notes due to my fingers freezing; I didn’t have to dodge crazy dogs or piles of cow excrement, it was heavenly.

It quickly became apparent that my tour guide, Robert, had no set plan for the day. As soon as I realized that, I knew it was going to be a fun day. It wasn’t going to be a run of the mill “This is my business, this is what we do here, all right thanks for coming” type of day. Robert began by telling me about the basics of the ranch.

-The ranch has been in the family for three generations. Now the ranch is owned by Robert and his brother.

-The ranch is a 400 calf/cow operation. This means they have 400 cows, and the cows are for meat. They’re not for dairy. They just want to cows to get really fat and make lots of babies so they have more cows to make more babies to make fat. The circle continues.

-Fun Fact* A heifer is a cow that hasn’t calved yet. Once a heifer has a baby, it becomes a cow. Before it has a baby it’s technically not a cow, it’s a heifer.

-The 1^st of February is when the cows begin to calve.

-They raise their own feed, they have crops of wheat, corn, and milo.

-The breeding life of your average cow is 10 years (they can make babies for ten years) and you usually get about 9 or 10 calves out of each cow.

-The ranch is 6,500 acres. They have the original farm that’s stretched back through the generations, and then they also bought a neighboring farm and rent land as well.

That’s the basics about their ranch. Robert has a daughter in 6^th grade named Abby, and a daughter in high school named Bethany--the one who read at Poetry Out Loud. His brother has two college-age kids. Robert’s wife teaches 5^th grade at WaKeeney elementary.

Robert said we would start by going around to check on all the cattle, and basically take it from there. Thankfully, because his property is so huge, we had to drive to all the cows to check them. While we were driving around cow-gazing Robert talked about some of the agriculture of Kansas. 80% of the Western Kansas community in these small towns are agriculture-based. There has been a drought for two years and everybody in that 80% has been affected by it. In most every other part of the country farmers make a concerted effort to avoid moisture around their crops and get rid of it. In the Mid-West, especially right now, all the farmers do everything they can to conserve moisture and bring it to their fields. Farmers and ranchers have a cap on how much water they can use for each of their fields, and it’s their job to use it efficiently. It’s a major fine if you go over your allotted amount, and if you go over one time too many they just shut your water off. They close your well completely down. It’s not tolerated to hog water in these parts.

Full disclosure, since the day I had with Robert was so random, so will be my recounting of it. It’s not like events can flow from one to the next with connecting sentences and one event leading into the next, because that’s not how my day happened. One moment we’re talking about sorghum crops, the next we’re debating Welfare States. So please bear with me on this, and realize my halting, jumpy style of transitioning from this point forward in the writing couldn’t be more accurate of how the events transpired.

Milo is a sorghum crop. Sorghum is a round berry that originated in Africa. It’s a cane, somewhat related to sugar cane. It produces a grain. Kansas is the number one state in the country for producing sorghum crops. It was not clear to me how this connects to milo, but milo is apparently a sorghum crop. So now you know. Milo isn’t as well known as wheat or corn because up until very recently milo was only used as animal feed. There have recently been a number of pretty aggressive campaigns urging farmers to begin cultivating it for human consumption, because milo is gluten free. If the campaigns succeed and farmers figure out a way to cultivate it for humans, it could mean a huge breakthrough for celiac patients. Milo is a hearty, tasty grain, suitable for making flour, and putting in soup, you name it, milo can do it.

Sorghum

Another reason milo doesn’t have as high a profile as corn and isn’t as widely cultivated is because it’s not nearly as profitable as corn. But if the demand goes up for milo due to its lack of gluten the price will skyrocket with it, so brace yourselves world for milo, grain of the future.

Robert’s ranch takes the cows away from their mothers after only three days of breastfeeding. The most important job of the cows is to get fat. The only skill the cows need to master is eating on their own, so farmers want them to start practicing this skill as early as possible. Calves fatten up much quicker on corn and other animal feed than on breast milk. Plus the ranchers are more able to tightly control the levels of nutrients the cow is receiving if they give the cow feed. Robert consults with a nutritionist on his feed, so that he makes sure his cows are getting everything they need to grow into big juicy hamburgers.

Once the cows know how to eat on their own he separates them into males and females. He then feeds them for an average of 120 days until they have reached their slaughter weight, an average of 1,400 pounds. Meanwhile the cows get lots of injections, including vaccinations against diseases and to give them more nutrients.

If a cow appears ill or shows signs of sickness Robert will seclude them and treat them, bringing in a vet only if he has exhausted every other option. Animal medication is wildly expensive. The bottle in the picture below treats only six cows, and costs $400. If multiple cows get sick for an undetermined reason, one of the first things Robert will do is send for a nutritionist to come reevaluate their feed.

English cattle (Angus, Herefords) produce some of the best meat, as they have high fat content and superb marbling. Black angus is a high quality meat, but Robert says it’s mostly for marketing. The only thing that sets black angus apart from any other high quality beef is that angus are good feeder cows, so they fatten up quickly and slaughter well. English breeds produce superior meet, but they tend to be more compact and small, henceforth making more sense to some farmers to raise the lower quality angus beef, as they’ve chosen quantity over quality.

Robert is trying with his cows for a cross between the English and the continental. Continental cows are ginormous, and English cows produce good meat. So essentially he is breeding for a giant lump of good meat.

He wants his heifers to start becoming cows ASAP. If you’re selling livestock, heifers will bring ten cents less per pound (if your cow is 1,400lbs which is the average slaughter weight, and you’re selling 50 head at a cattle auction, and you’re losing 10 cents per pound, you’re losing $140 per cow and $7000 all together.) So you can understand why he’s so eager to knock up his cows. The reason the heifers bring in 10 cents less is because if they haven’t calved yet they aren’t as big an animal and they’re also not as efficient to feed.

After Robert separates them by gender he separates them by color (black angus beef literally means beef from an angus cow with black fur). The fur is indicative of something, but I wasn’t completely sure what. Herefords are cows that are reddish-brown with a white head. Brown cows are… Guess what? Brown. Etc.

For whatever reason, Robert says red angus is popular right now. It’s in higher demand so the price is going up so he’s breeding for more reds. There are cattle trends just like there was that ridiculous Silly Bandz trend.

Robert doesn’t employ Artificial Insemination; he has bulls on site and breeds the cows with them. In response to why he responded, “Everybody who has heifers has a different idea on how to do things. This just works for me.” He also explained to me how it requires a lot of labor to artificially inseminate, and since he’s not trained to do that labor he would have to spend a lot of money for someone else to do it. So it just seemed simpler to have bulls. Not to mention a huge bonus for Robert having his own bulls is he can breed for personality traits. He knows whether or not he’s breeding an aggressive bull or not, a good feeder or not, etc. When you buy a bull you get a tons of information on the bull--everything from personality of the parents to marbling statistics.

“The animals are supposed to take care of you, not the other way around. If you provide proper nutrition and hygienic living conditions nature has set them up to do the rest.”

--Robert

This quote was in response to my question for Robert as to how he handles birthing the cows. He said he doesn’t check up on the cows too often or bother them, he just makes sure they’re not sick and their food bucket is full, and he feels from that point forward his job is done. As far as birthing the cows, he says he definitely does not screw around with them. Heifers often require assistance with their first calf, but after that he just walks by to be sure it’s not coming out backward or is getting stuck or anything, and then he leaves the cow to its business. Robert employs this method because he read positive things about it in a holistic healing magazine.

The entire time I had been with Robert (we were approaching the three hour mark at this point) I was operating under the assumption he was the same guy I had seen last night. Nope. I found out it was his brother whom I had met last night, not Robert. Shows just how perceptive I am :P

I’ve noticed that it’s a theme among Kansans that they don’t like to think of themselves as mid-western, despite the fact they are in the exact middle of the country. But hey, I don’t judge. You want to be Western? You do you.

This giant dam-style pit is cattle feed. The top of the pile is cane silage, there’s sedan grass, and a mix of other sorghum plants. Whenever they want feed they cut off a chunk from this giant storage dam of feed. There was a much more detailed explanation but I honestly don’t think you would be interest to hear it. It was very much a “had to be there moment.” If you’re sitting in a truck you just drove into the pit of a dam made out of ground up corn, then the explanation of how it came to be is enthralling. If you’re reading it on a blog with nothing but a poorly scaled picture to go by, it’s really not.

One of the walls of feed

If you look closely at the picture you will see the unground milo beads in the chunks of the walls.

Guess what?! Not all hay bails have hay. The “hay bails” pictured below are stalks of milo all rolled up. I don’t really know why, but I kind of thought for anything to be rolled into that bail shape it had to be hay. But apparently if you follow these simple steps of the bailing process you can bail all your hay-like products.

-You take your long string of feed stuff (hay, milo, cane stalks, etc.)

-You put it into a machine that rolls it really tightly via a binding process.

That’s it. It’s a way to bind loose feed and handle it efficiently (farmers are all about efficiency, time is literally money for them). Each bail weighs around 1,600lbs.

*Side note, there are more piles of abandoned tires in this one town than anywhere else in the world, I think.

Robert showed me their bailing machine, and all of a sudden it all came together in my mind. On The Office (it’s a television series), when Daryl is telling Michael not to play on the bailer, he was referencing this very machine! Mind=blown.

Robert’s cane feed was very high in nitrates this year, and that is a huge deal. In August in Kansas they had temperatures of 100 degrees coupled with 40mph wind, and it destroyed the plants. Then the rain came and shot up the plants with nitrogen to make them grow. But the plants had already been destroyed, and weren’t going to grow any further. So instead of using the nitrates to grow, the nitrate collected inside of the plants. Luckily Robert tests all his feed and caught this early. They blend in small amounts of the cane with other feeds, as they can’t afford to waste it. The other feed dilutes the cane’s nitrates so the cows aren’t taking in too much of it at once. Nitrates are extremely toxic to cows, and if they ingest too much of them they can get very sick, lose their calves, or even die.

You need to know everything about the types of feed going into your cows because some seemingly harmless feeds are highly toxic.

*Fun Fact: Pheasants aren’t native to America, they were imported here from China so the government could make money off hunting permits for this uncommon, gorgeous game bird.

If I learned anything from Robert, and from being in Kansas in general, it’s that agriculture, farming, and ranching are just as much a business as a brokerage firm or a restaurant chain. Robert used to work in finance, and was even working on an MBA. But he said he woke up one day and realized “You don’t meet many elderly bankers who are happy with their live choices.” So he came back to become a farmer.

What I’ve learned is, although you probably won’t strike it rich working on a farm, farmers deal with huge amounts of money. The average piece of farm machinery costs anywhere from $10,000-$250,000, depending on the model and its purpose. They deal with crazy huge amounts of money, and they bring in crazy huge amounts of money. If there’s anyone who understand the cliché “You’ve gotta spend money to make money” it’s farmers--cattle ranchers in particular. You heard me discussing the average slaughter weight of a cow and what a huge difference 0.10 cents can make, right? So that’s a lot money in and of itself, but he has 400 cows, he’s selling each cow for thousands of dollars, plus he’s harvesting and processing grains, and we haven’t even discussed his bulls yet! They’re worth like $10,000 each!!!!

Also, you need a crazy amount of land to be able to have 400 cows. You need 10 acres of grass to graze ONE calf/cow pair. ONE. If they had only 60 cows, they would need 600 acres of grass just to get through the summer.

This is why I haven’t seen huge bunches of cows hanging out by the side of the road (if you read the last post you may remember my rant about “Where are all the cows?!”). It’s because they have to be so spread out.

*Fun fact: straw hay makes the cattle’s coats a little slicker.

Because so much money is involved in farming, you’ll almost never find the “family farm” so many of us arrogant city people are pushing for. All the people who leave their office buildings and get in their cars with bumper stickers about how we “need more family farms” Guess what!? Bad News! Robert says unless you have a farm in your family already, it’s impossible to start a family farm.

If you’re starting from scratch, like you come to Kansas with no farming material, and you want to start a commercial cow/calf operation, you need to have a million dollars. That’s if you want to turn any profit at all, but chances are you would still end up living below the poverty line if you tried to start a commercial farm with only one million dollars.

*Fun fact: Most bulls don’t have horns.

Robert’s farm doesn’t hot-iron brand their cows. Instead they freeze brand, so instead of burning something into the cow, they numb the cow and freeze an image on it, the freeze turns their fur white. They only have to hot-brand if they have white cows. Freeze branding is pretty common in the mid-west but further west all cows are hot branded.

You may notice in most of my pictures from commercial ranches all of the animals have colored and numbered ear tags. I think it’s self explanatory that those are an identification tag for the animals. Well, they had me in a pen when they were putting an ear tag on the calf of a super protective giant cow. Every single bone in my body was screaming, “you don’t belong here. Run! Run down the highway until the majority of vehicles on the road aren’t pick up trucks, that is how you’ll know you’re safe!” But instead I kept calm and remembered my extensive animal handling training I received from watching the Jackass Movies and that Rodeo Clown episode of King of The Hill. Granted, there was a pretty tall locked gate separating me from the cow, but whatever it was still nerve wracking.

Cow and it's Calf, trying to lead it's small ears away from being pierced.

*Not so fun fact: I finally began to get more comfortable with their dog. I let her jump up on me and lick me all over. Five minutes after I let the dog lick me I see her chewing on some weird long red thing, I ask, “What’s Gracie eating?” He replies, “Oh that’s her favorite—that’s afterbirth.”

There is no exact “Farmers Union.” There are groups of farmers organized with political clout and stuff though. Also, there’s a conference and an association for each type of farmer. (The milo Growers Association, the Chestnut Farmers Association, the Catfish Farmers Association, etc.)

I saw all the sights I got to see in Robert’s awesome ’96 Ford that has 390,000 miles on it.

Robert, at this point in time, had run out of things to do with me so he improvised. He let me climb all over his farm machinery (see picture of me in 60-foot-tall combine.) He drove me to an oil well and gave me a crash course in what they are, what they do, and whom they do it for. Then, in keeping with the typical Kansas nice-ness, he remembered my comment about not seeing any huge groups of cows and how this disappointed me. So he drove me an hour each way to go to Lane County Feeders feed lot. I could write another 50 pages about the feedlot, but again, I will summarize.

Lane County Feeders:

-They have 48,000 head of cattle.

-They keep them and fatten them for 120 days.

-They do everything they can to make sure the cows and comfortable and happy.

-Feedlots have some of the strictest rules and regulations of any part of the cattle industry.

-They have lots of protocol for feeding time, feeding quality, and detecting and treating sick animals.

-They recently expanded.

That’s Lane County Feeders. I had an amazing time, but again, it was very much a “You needed to be there” type of moment to make what I was told interesting. When you’re standing in the middle of 48,000 cows, you want to know all about how they got here what they do here and what happens when they leave here. I began to type up the answers but then grew to realize how mundane they sounded if you aren’t standing in the midst of 48,000 head of cattle.

Photos from Lane County Feeders

Standing on the combine

Sitting in the combine

Robert took me to Dairy Queen for lunch. I had “Deep fried cheese curds.” I would tell you about them, but to do them justice I would need to spend five or six pages writing about them. Plus also, I would need several breaks while writing about them to go vomit. So it’s not worth it. I leave “deep fried cheese curds” to your imagination.

Flora’s Dairy Farm:

I went to Flora’s dairy farm as my last activity on Thursday. They sell their milk to Dairy Farmers of America, and it either goes to Omaha, Nebraska or Fort Morgan, Colorado and is made into mozzarella cheese.

Because Putney is already a dairy farm I didn’t learn much new stuff about dairy farming. I watched their cows get milked by a giant machine. The Flora’s have 100 dairy cows not including their feed cows. The most they’ve ever had at one time is 150 cows, but they decided to cut back so they could house more beef cows.

*Fun fact: More milk is used in making commodities (cheese, butter, yogurt, etc.) than in drinking milk. 

The Floras are one of the only real family farms left in Western Kansas. They have a son at Quinter High School named Cayden (I hope I’m spelling that right). I did not realize that this was Cayden’s family’s farm.

My first day at Quinter I saw Cayden and he reminded me of Pony Boy Curtis from The Outsiders. By the second day I had already planned out a whole life for Cayden in my mind, with detailed plans to move to the suburbs and have kids and dogs and a white fence and all that other cliché stuff.

So I only heard about half of what was said during my visit to Flora’s Dairy.

Basically, here are the fast facts.

-They’re an independent farm, not working for any parent company or anything like that.

-They weren’t really affected by the recession of 2008 at all. I assumed most farmers would have been hit very hard but apparently it didn’t really touch them.

-Before they milk the cow they dip the cow’s udder in an iodine solution to sterilize it.

-An average cow produces 6 gallons of milk a day.

-The milk comes out chunky because the cream hasn’t been separated out of it yet.

-If air is getting into the giant jug that the milk getting sucked out of the cow goes into, the milk gets really frothy and appears as though it’s boiling. It’s not good if air is getting into the container because it increases the risk of bacteria forming.

-The milk comes out of cows warm. The faster you cool it off the less chance you have of bacteria forming.

-Cows are super routine-oriented. They get used to what side of the barn they stand on to be milked and like being fed at exactly the same time every day. They’re very set in their ways.

-They start milking at 5:00AM and they milk a second time at 4:00PM. An average milking takes two hours.

-Feeder calves are different than dairy cows. Dairy cows get more alfalfa and less corn feed.

-The cows eat 80lbs of feed a day, and they aren’t even feeder cows.

-Their cows aren’t housed in a barn. If the weather is particularly bad they put down straw for the cows to lie on.

*Fun Fact: It’s apparently normal for horses to lie down. I thought if a horse laid down that meant they were dead or dying. Apparently that’s not what it means in Kansas.

-The farm only has one employee outside of the family. They don’t have the money to hire any more and they don’t want to hire migrant workers.

-They think the lactose intolerance boom is due to the processing of the milk you buy in the store, not the milk itself.

-Cow milk comes out of their udders at 85 degrees, and they cool it as fast as they can to 35 degrees.

-Cows have a body temperature of 101 on average.

-They leave the baby calves with their mother for only 24 hours before they separate the calves into small pens. (Pictures coming up…)

-They produce 500 to 600 galloons of milk a day.

*Amazing Fact: Linda Flora, the mother of the kids working on the dairy farm, is a miracle on earth. She had a heart condition she was unaware of and suffered a heart attack alone. It was several minutes before anyone found her and for 15 full minutes Linda was deprived of oxygen before doctors were able to revive her. She survived, although she has lost all of her short-term memory and many parts of her long-term memory. She remembers bits and pieces, such as her high school band teacher’s name and her time working as an advertising consultant. Linda had to relearn how to walk, talk, eat, read, and write. But now she is functioning as normally as one can without a short-term memory, and works daily on her family’s dairy farm.  

Friday:

Friday I flew home. I was driven to Hays airport by Terra and her mother. My house has bigger square footage than the Hays airport. You could see every part of the airport from the middle of the seating area. They had one guy who did almost all of the jobs in the airport. The same guy who checked me in for my flight was also the one who ran me through security.

Hays "International" Airport in its vast entirety. 

My father is a very stressed out traveller. Very, very, very, stressed out. So I inherited a little bit of that from him. I was making a tight connection with a terminal change in a huge airport I had only ever been in once before (Denver), and I’m standing there in Hays airport demanding to know why they had just printed my boarding pass on receipt paper, and no one can give me a God damn answer. That’s just how their boarding passes are I guess. But seriously, was that receipt paper going to help me board my connection? I was trying to board an airplane not a Walgreens. But I took it all in stride and kept pushing through. Terra and her mother very kindly stayed and waited for my plane to board. I went through security, and I sat down and I heard two very alarming things.

1.     You can only bring one carry-on with you on the airplane.

2.     No cell phone use on the airplane.

I came to realize at that moment I had read all the books I brought with me, and had nothing to do for the next hour and half plane ride but use my phone. But I would deal with that when it came up, it was the first thing on that list I found to be the most alarming. I had a back-pack carry-on and a “purse.” My purse was really just a smaller back-pack, but whatever. I asked if bringing my “purse” on the plane would be a problem and they say it would, unless I could fit it inside my carry on.

When I checked by bag at Hays it was ½ a pound over the weight limit. I had packed that thing to the gills so I had no doubt their scale was accurate. I asked if I could just pay a fee, expecting it to be $10 at the most. Nope. $100 if it’s half a pound over, and it just goes up from there. 

Who wants to argue with people working in an airport in which this sign is posted all over? 

Not me.

So I stuffed a ton of clothes and a pair of shoes (I had to have removed more than half a pound from that bag but their scale claimed I just barely made the weight limit) and was scared to even open my carry-on bag at all let alone try to stuff a whole other bag inside of it.

To you maybe it isn’t a big deal to check your bag just for the plane ride (they were going to reunite me with my carry on bag before I got off the plane). But to me this was a huge deal. I like to have everything I need on me at all times--just ask anyone who’s tried to lift my school backpack. So I was aggravated that they were separating me from my bag.

When I saw the size of the plane I understood exactly why they had taken my bag from me. It was like I was flying on a drivable lawn mower.

We all got on the plane, and the flight attendant announced over the loudspeakers that a heavier gentlemen in the back of the plane had to move up to the front or middle of the plane because he was weighing the back of the plane down. Lots of people had to get up to perfect the weight distribution. This seemed so damn tedious to me, as I had a connection to make in Denver at a totally different terminal, by myself, and I didn’t realize that Kansas and Denver had a time change. I assumed I had only 2 and ½ hours until my plane in Denver got off the ground, and my hour and a half plane from Kansas hadn’t even folded up the wheels yet. Turns out I had an extra hour I didn’t know about. I just maneuvered my jacket and my hair to hide the ear buds I had in listening to music on my trusty iPhone.

There is nothing I could have done to keep the announcement I heard next from being a reality. Even if I had been listening to the most intense Lady Gaga song or the most aggressive death metal I own, I still would have had to hear the announcement that was made next.

“Uhhhhh, ladies and gentlemen thank you for flying Great Lakes Aviation Today. We just have to fill out some paperwork before this plane is dubbed legal to fly, and then we’ll be on our way to Denver within the hour.”

The plane I flew out of Hays on

“Within the hour?!” Great. It was 11:01am. The plane was scheduled to take off at 10:26am. My connection from Denver would leave at 12:44pm with or without me.

Serenity now, serenity now.

Finally, finally, FINALLY the plane got into the air. I was in such a deep rage that I fell asleep. I woke up in Denver and my phone had switched time zones, thank God. But unfortunately, due to the fact we had to “fill out paperwork” and move people around and everything I actually really only had 45 minutes until my plane in Denver left the ground. I knew I wasn’t going to make it there on my own (thanks to my mother’s side of the family I have a tendency to get really lost really fast.)

Hays' departures and arrivals for the week

Those of you who know my father are going to know right away which side of the family I got this next move from.

When I was in Hays, the man behind the desk said he would send a Great Lakes employee to help me make my connection. Surprise, surprise that person never showed. I knew I wasn’t going to make the plane if I tried to go it alone, so I walked up to the desk at the gate where I landed. I was flying United Airlines. I knew Great Lakes Aviation was a partner of United so if a Great Lakes guy promised me a person and didn’t deliver, it’s the equivalent of him working for United and not delivering. So I Googled the name of the CEO of United Airlines. I walked up to the customer service desk, said I was a minor flying by myself and had made arrangements with top United Airlines employee at the airport I had just flown out of (Ttere was only one guy there, so he was definitely the top guy) and that if she didn’t get me someone to help me make my connection I would call a good family friend Jeff Smisek (CEO of United) and have him find someone to help me make my connection.

It actually worked.

They got me my own personal lady to help me make my connecting flight, and she was an absolute riot.

She was born on an island but she has lived in Colorado most of her life. She got in arguments with people as she led me to my gate. The first thing she told me is her name is Judy and “I retire in one week!”

Judy wouldn’t go on any escalators so it took us an extra 15 minutes to get to where we were going, but that didn’t bother me because of how hysterical our encounter with the elevators were. There was, like, 25 people waiting for the elevator and she walked over and someone said, “Don’t bother. It’s broken. We’re waiting for someone to come fix it.” Judy grinned and whispered to me, “It’s not really broken.” She scanned her ID badge or something and all of a sudden the button lit up when she pressed it. She pressed the button going up, and the button that goes down. Some disgruntled people who had been waiting awhile saw this, and apparently it pushed them over the edge. “Hey lady! Are you going up or going down, make a decision!” She rolled her eyes at them and was like, “Was the elevator even working before I got here? You’re flying United, Honey, it’s not like the plane is gonna be on times anyways. Chill out. We’ll get there when we get there.”

So she grabbed my arm and helped me to cut off several people so that we were the first on the elevator. The disgruntled people shared their two cents on this rather loudly, to which her immediate response was “You’re welcome for making the elevator work.” Then she turned to me and started talking about the other people on the elevator. If I were anyone else in the world this would probably have been an uncomfortable situation for me, but luckily I’m not anyone else in the world so I joined right in with her. She said, “I can’t believe this people complain so much. Look at them! Where are they going that’s so important?”

Another great thing about her is that because her sole purpose was to get me on my connection, and she only had to hold down her job for like six more days, so she just didn’t give a crap about anyone else. Which is why she wouldn’t let anyone push an elevator button until we got to our floor. She stood protectively in front of the buttons while people hurled insults at her. (Bear in mind we were only going two floors up. It wasn’t exactly waiting like for a package from the US Postal Service.) And my plane left the ground in 20 minutes, and we weren’t even at my terminal yet. She just pleasantly ignored everyone, until one guy got in her face. “I have an important conference lady, you need to move!” To which she replied, “Oh do you? Do you? Do you have an importance conference? Cool story bro, tell it again.” I really got along with this woman.

Next we had to make our way through the trains. She cut off a ton of people, because her mission was to help me make my connecting flight. But because she was in full uniform confused people kept coming up to her asking her questions, most of which even I could have answered for them. The first few she answered with a fake customer service-y smile. But then some guy came up to her and asked, “Is this train going to terminal C?” To which she replied. “Hmmm… Let me think about, because that’s a hard one. Is the train with several giant signs marked ‘Train To Terminal A’ the train to Terminal C? Gee, I dunno. I work for United that’s above my pay grade buddy.”

So finally we made it to my gate. The plane was almost finished boarding. She looked at me taking out my receipt paper boarding pass and exploded in a fit of laughter. She had the exact same thought I had about the boarding pass (I got the joke I used earlier about it from her). She said, through her laughter, “Ahahahahahaha, Honey why were we rushing when you don’t even have a real boarding pass? I thought you was trying to get to Boston! What are you gonna board with this thing a Walgreens?” 

My exclusive VIP Walgreens style boarding pass

She crumpled it up and cut a long line of people at the service desk to get me a real boarding pass. She refused a tip when I offered her one. I was one of the last three people to board the plane, but I boarded the plane and that’s all that matters.

When I landed I went straight to my mother's art opening in Boston. Like, right from the airport. 

I live my life in a constant state of readiness for an art opening. Which is why I flew in this dress with fishnets and full makeup+jewelry (I even managed to track down a new necklace after mine broke going through security.)

Monday:

This morning I woke up at around 10:00AM and I sat down and started writing my blog. 

It's 2:00AM. I'm only just adding the last pictures. 

But, since this is my final blog post, I must say…

Well, That's All Folks:

The last picture, in the last post!

I am absolutely astounded with the viewer turnout I received. I’ve mentioned this before, but as an aspiring writer nothing warms my heart more than to know people are reading and enjoying what I’m writing. Because, as you know if you’ve read even one post on my blog, I don’t hold back. So I’m glad to know people are liking what I put out there. I couldn’t be more grateful that I had so many people taking each step with me on my Quest To Quinter. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

It was worth every lost hour of sleep, every moment spent away from the farms or the black and white westerns. It was worth retyping everything every time my laptop died and I forgot to save. It was worth adopting the same obsessive photo taking habits as my mother.

I mentioned at the beginning of the post that although this is entitled The Final Chapter, it’s only the final chapter of this blog. The journey stemming from my Quest to Quinter has only just begun, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

Here’s to getting so far out of your comfort zone you discover your comfort zone has room to grow, to making news friends, meeting new people, learning new things, to taking lots and lots of pictures, and just to show you all how far I’ve come, here’s to corn dogs as well.

Cheers,

Amelia J. Spalter

Putney Class of ’17