Thankfully the pinto beans are at the Beanery (this is the name of the elevator that cleans and stores the pinto beans in our area—the Olathe Producers is another elevator which does the same thing).

At the elevator the pinto beans will be cleaned and sorted and culled…any broken (splits), discolored beans, and green pintos will be sifted into the proper pile to be sold.

Green pinto beans will be thrown away along with any chaff or weeds or weed seeds.  The discolored beans has a very small market for animal feed….cows love pinto beans.  The splits will go to a factory to be made into smashed canned pinto beans ready for your taco.

 The other pinto beans…the really nice ones will be sold at market value for whole pinto beans to be used however the buyer wishes.  The whole pinto bean market is what a farmer strives for…that is where the most money is to be made—right now the market is extremely volatile/unstable.  Terry will talk with the owner of the Beanery sometime today to see if they can sell the beans for us and for what price.

Then Terry will decide if we hold them for a spell or sell.  Mostly he likes to sell because a truly fresh pinto bean is liked by most people.  If you have ever eaten a truly fresh pinto bean you will be stunned at the difference in the cook time, the flavor and the size of the bean.

There isn’t pay check until the beans are sold!

Oh, for the record….I’ve been asked several times if we take subsidies for farming.

NO!  NEVER!   Neither did my parents or grandparents and neither has Terry’s Dad or grandfather.  If we can’t pay our own way we don’t do it.  That is why we both worked in town…and why we have old equipment…if you can’t afford it you don’t need it…has always been the mantra on our farm.

ENOUGH of that ….since Terry got Linkin a new compound bow, we thought it would fun to take Tally shopping.  She wanted a “REAL COWGIRL HAT”.  Not a fake one made of plastic.

Off we went to the Davis Clothing Company where she picked out a black hat…no pink one for her, Thank you Very much!  It was really nice to shop at the Davis Clothing Company, Rena, Mr. Davis’ daughter, let Tally try on several different colors—then she steamed the hat so it was the perfect COWGIRL shape, and took her to the special three-way-mirrors so Tally could see which one was just right for her.  The experience was very nice.

Later, at home, Tallin wanted to practice with Terry’s longbow and her ONE arrow, of course wearing the COWGIRL hat!  What a hoot!

Well, the two big harvests are out of the way (the hay and the pinto beans), and the irrigation is about done— now we wait until the end of October or later for the harvest of the field corn.  A little break in the farming before the next big round of hard work.

All is good and right with the world!

Your friend on a farm

Linda