Marla remembers dear old Dad!
Wheat harvest in south central Kansas usually starts around Father’s Day. This is very appropriate as most everyone’s dad (in Kansas, anyway) is involved in wheat harvest. It seems fitting to be with your dad harvesting wheat on “his” day.
Thinking about my own dad and wheat harvest is a good story. You see, as a young boy, he not so fondly remembers cutting and threshing wheat. He has regaled me with stories of the hot itchy work of feeding the thresher with a pitchfork. This was before modern combines were used, back when wheat was reaped with a reaper or shocked into shocks and then threshed using a stand-alone threshing machine.
First, we propagate our favorite race of stem rust by infecting a highly-susceptible variety planted in ‘spreader trays.’ Pictured above is a high-yielding line that also excels at making lots of spores!
