Here at
O'Neal Farms, we are always excited to have visitors. This month's visitor was
extra special though! Flat Aggie came all the way down to White Deer, Texas
to visit us and spend some time learning about our farm. We so enjoyed her
visit, and I'm happy to share the details of what all we did while she was here!
Flat Aggie learned two big lessons while she was here in
Texas. First, farmers use different land for different purposes based on the
topography, or how the land is formed. Second, she helped use prepare the
planter we’ll be using soon to plant our corn and cotton.
The first stop on Flat Aggie’s tour of O’Neal Farms was at
one of our wheat fields. She was amazed by how flat the field was! I told her
the Texas Panhandle is so flat you can see for miles and miles. Because it is
so flat, it tends to be really windy so we try to capture the energy created by
the wind with wind turbines. If you look really closely at the background of
this photo, you can see the wind turbines a few miles away from our field. It
was very windy when Flat Aggie visited us. She almost blew away!
We use this field to grow crops because it is flat. This
allows us to use the ground without worrying about causing soil erosion.
Erosion can be caused by wind, which is why we like to keep our fields growing
with crops when we can because the plants’ roots hold onto the soil, or by
water from rain. If we planted crops on hilly ground, we would lose much of our
soil to erosion from water. When it rains here in Texas, it usually pours down
quickly. The old-timers call our rainstorms “gully washers” because the rain
comes down so fast that it washes gullies into the ground if farmers aren’t
careful to protect their land. That’s why we are very careful to use flat
ground for farming and the hillier ground for grazing our cows.
Speaking of cows, we went to the cow pasture right beside
the wheat field to show Flat Aggie what I meant by different topographies. As
you can see in this photo, there are a few more hills in this pasture compared
to the wheat field. That’s why we use it for our cows to eat the grass. The
grass that grows in these pastures is native, or original, to our area and has
been growing here for hundreds and hundreds of years! Since the grass has been
here so long, it does an excellent job of holding onto the soil with its roots,
keeping the soil from eroding when the wind blows or when we get rain.
Flat Aggie chose a perfect time to visit us because we have
a bunch of baby cows, or calves, running around on the farm. FA got to say hi
to the calves and a few of their moms at the hay feeder. The calves were tired
so they were taking naps in the soft hay on the ground. Once they saw FA
though, they wanted to meet her. Cows and calves are naturally curious animals.
After saying hi to the cows and calves, Flat Aggie helped us
check over the planter we will be using to plant our corn and cotton in the
next few weeks. We are very lucky to have tractors and big planters to help us
on the farm. Otherwise we would need many, many more people to help us on the
farm. We use a 24-row planter. Each row is 30 inches apart. That means we can
plant 60 feet of crops at a single time! That’s a lot of corn and cotton!
Our planter makes planting our crops a fun and easy process.
We load all of the seed into the main tank and then the seed is pushed to each
row box through a series of tubes. Flat Aggie is checking a row box here. From
the row box, the seed is placed in a furrow in the ground created by a couple
of shovels. Once the seed is placed in the ground, another set of shovels cover
the seed back up. Seed has to be surrounded by soil to grow the best, and we
want to make sure every seed has the best chance to grow. Our planter helps us
do that.
That was all Flat Aggie had time to do at our farm this
visit. We stay busy year-round here in Texas with our crops and our cattle. We
were so happy Flat Aggie came to visit us when she did! Soon we will be busy
with planting that it would have been more difficult to give her a good tour of
the farm! If Flat Aggie ever finds herself back down in Texas, we would love
for her to stop by again! Hopefully she enjoyed her visit enough to come back
again.
Are you a farmer or a teacher who wants to learn more about the Flat Aggie project? Check out more from Nicole at Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom. It is such a fun project to teach kids about agriculture from real farmers!