Western Kansas "wheat crop is abysmal"

Aaron Harries, Kansas Wheat's Director of Marketing, reports from Wichita:
 
Participants of the second day of the Winter Wheat Tour from Colby to Wichita project the region to produce an average of 37.1 bushels per acre, well off last year's Winter Wheat Tour two-day estimate of 48.5 bushels per acre.

If realized, it would be the highest since 1998.

More than 100 participants of the annual Wheat Quality Tour anticipate the 2012 Kansas wheat crop will total 403,933,601 bushels, and average about 49.1 bushels per acre. Those are the findings after two-and-a-half days of criss-crossing the state and making more than 500 field stops along the way.

Kansas wheat crop more drought stressed in southwest Kansas, harvest could start in three weeks in southern Kansas counties.

The 2012 Wheat Quality Council Hard Red Winter Wheat Tour departed Colby early Tuesday morning with expectations of lower yield predictions than those recorded on Day One. 

Record high potential year noted after day one for the history of the tour.

Over 100 individuals (a record crowd), including representatives from Mexico, Brazil and Japan left Manhattan early Tuesday morning to kick of the 2012 Wheat Quality Council Hard Red Winter Wheat Tour. 

The participants took six routes across the northern half of Kansas to reach Colby Tuesday evening.  In total, 267 field stops were made.

My dad is one of nine children born to my grandparents.  I used to kid my grandma that at supper time, she must have put a feed bag on dad, given a bottle to the baby and thrown the rest in a trough for everyone else to fight over.  Certainly, that supper was usually hard-earned by the kids.  Nine “child laborers” came in handy back in the day on a dairy farm.

But, the chores usually extended beyond the family farm.  A son or two might be sent to help an uncle put up hay on one day, while some daughters may have gone to help an aunt clean some chickens on another.  If a neighbor should get laid up by illness, all would rush to their aid whether finishing harvest or milking the cows.  This kind of community kindness would now be considered illegal for anyone younger than 16 under rules proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor.