The Haxtun Corn Festival is just around the corner!  Here's the schedule of activities, as seen in the Haxtun-Fleming Herald, so everyone can plan their day!

Haxtun 89th Annual Corn Festival

Saturday, September 25, 2010
Entry to the festival is free and booths are set-up on main street most of the day.
(map of Haxtun)

7 am - Fireman's breakfast in the Fire Hall

8 am - J.Jeffryes Memorial Run/Walk (Starting line on main street )

8:30 am - 4:30 pm - High Plains Heritage Quilt Show at the Haxtun Community Center

8:30 am - Awards for runners on main street ; Parade registration at Haxtun Community Center & lineup at grade school parking lot

9 am - Parade judging at grade school parking lot

9:45 am - Kiddie Parade (no motorized vehicles)

10 am - 89th Annual Corn Festival Parade on main street

Following parade on main street : Pedal Tractor Pull; Carnival booths; Food Court; Vendors

11 am - Paymaster at Haxtun Town Hall till noon; FFA Auction

Noon - Hot Dog Eating Contest
            - Beer Garden south of Town Hall open until 4pm

12:30 pm - Little Miss and Mr. Corn Festivall on main street (Pre-registration required)

1 pm - Street games begin, followed by live music
           - Johnny Miller Memorial 2-Cylinder Tractor Pull
           - Five Point Pitch Tournament

5 pm - Demolition Derby at Haxtun Arena (THE BEST!)

6-9 pm - Alumni meeting at Haxtun High School gym

9 pm - Dance at Haxtun American Legion

Other events: Crop & garden show, flower show, Cooking with Corn Contest & Cake decorating

Sunday, September 27, 2009

8 am - Shotgun Start at F&H Golf Course

10 am - Antique tractor pull - Platte Valley Points Pull

For more info, contact the Haxtun Chamber of Commerce at 774-6104


Check out last year's festival !

There is a definite difference in the way directions are given in a rural area versus in a city, especially if a farmer is giving them. Growing up in a city environment, I can tell you that for the first twenty years of my life I only gave directions in terms of street names or highway numbers, number of blocks or minutes to travel in a given direction, and whether you should turn right or left. In the country, directions are given by local features ("so-and-so's" place), miles to travel, and by north-south-east-west. So I thought I'd do a quick tutorial to help new residents familiarize themselves with navigation in our county . . . As I got to writing this quick tutorial, I realized it will take a few blogs to cover everything, so this is number one in the series: Towns and Highways!



Here's a basic map of Phillips County and the surrounding area. The county border is that pea green line. As you can see, Haxtun is on the western edge of the county. Holyoke, 20 miles east of us, is the biggest town in our county with about 5,000 people and is the county seat (meaning it has the court house and county offices). Amherst (on Hwy 23 east of Holyoke) and Paoli are the two other towns in the county with very small populations, probably less than 100.

The layout around here is really pretty basic once you get used to it. When you're trying to orient yourself, especially when talking to a local, you should keep a picture in your head of the two highways that pass through Haxtun, 6 and 59, and the cities that they connect us to. Highway 6 runs west to Sterling and east to Holyoke. Highway 59 runs north to Sedgwick and south to Yuma. 

It's also helpful to be familiar with the highways that connect the surrounding cities. This is what I picture in my head:



Anyone who has looked at a real map should be laughing now because my drawing is OVERLY simplistic. Most of these highways run at diagonals and have large turns at correction lines (I'll explain that in another blog), but my quick-and-dirty map can help get you where you're going. 

Now, let me describe the towns in the neighboring counties quickly for you.

Sterling and Fleming (just west of Haxtun on Hwy 6) are in Logan County. Sterling is a larger city than any in our county. It is a bit of a shopping hub for northeast Colorado because it has Walmart, Home Depot, and lots of fast food. It's also on the interstate, which is always handy. Fleming is a very small community that has put forth a lot of effort to keep its town alive with a nice downtown and school. It is home of the locally famous Bully's Restaurant (hmm, their website appears to be down, but check back later for more info on their rocky mountain oyster and steak nights!).

Sedgwick, Ovid and Julesburg are north of us in Sedgwick County. Julesburg is the county seat (if you haven't guessed, this is a very big deal in rural counties because the county seat has more services available and a better chance of surviving the years). It's on the interstate and has a few nice shops downtown and restaurants. Sedgwick and Ovid are both very small with little services to offer. However, they each have restaurants worth sampling. Lucy's just off the interstate by Sedgwick is a greasy spoon that is a favorite in the county. The Stockade in Ovid is similar, but with a little more variety, including a full bar. There is also a mexican restaurant in Ovid, but I've never tried it.

Yuma and Wray are in Yuma County. Both are thriving communities. They have very different characters, but plenty of services and shops to offer in both towns. I would especially recommend taking a walk down Wray's main street. 

Stay tuned for my next segment on "Getting Around Phillips County: County Roads and Rural Addresses"!

I just realized that I never reported on the wheat harvest this year. Let me give you the review in hindsight!

First, harvest was late. We had mild temperatures at the start of the summer with some extra moisture. While water is great when the wheat is growing, it isn't very helpful when you're waiting for the heads to ripen and dry. Harvest normally happens around the beginning of July, but this year was put off until about the middle of the month. This is actually the second year in a row that harvest started late - is it a new trend?

Harvest seemed to pass smoothly for our family without any major hiccups . . . except for that combine being broken down for two days . . . otherwise, all ran smoothly! For more details about wheat harvest, check out my post from last year's harvest.

Although the crops had looked pretty nice in their fields, many farmers were unpleasantly surprised to find they had frost damage, rust (fungus), and mosaic (virus). All those things lower the yields of the crops and their quality. It doesn't make us feel any better that our pain was shared with other farmers in our area. Did any crop yield the desired 60 bushels per acre? I don't know, but I doubt it.

Every year, farmers plant a crop and do their best to tend it until harvest. No matter how much sweat and hope the farmer puts into the crop, the actual production depends more on weather and natural phenomenon than on the actions of the farmer, though. So the farmer waits most of the year, hoping that frost, hail, or disease doesn't wipe it all out. Finally they reach harvest and take that first sample to the grain elevator . . . Did all their work pay off or will they have another hard year? I think farming is one of the hardest jobs and requires the most faith. Many people out there think that the family farmer is gone, but they're still here, still trying to provide a staple and some years barely making ends meet. I hope if you ever meet a farmer, you will give a nod of support and maybe even strike up a conversation - they have an interesting perspective on the world!

I went out to do my normal chores at the start of this week and got a pleasant surprise. Melise and I were kneeling next to the chicken house getting ready to collect eggs when a pair of guineas went walking past. Somewhere in the back of my brain I knew something was not normal. I glanced up quickly and then looked back at my work . . . then I looked up again because I had seen a bunch of little fluffy things gathered at the feet of the guineas - keets!

Keets are baby guineas, in case you didn't know. To see more about keets go here .

Well, we had been missing two guineas for about a month, which is the time it takes for eggs to hatch. Roy had looked everywhere for a nest and hadn't found one. He said he could hear them calling at night, so he knew they were still there. We weren't sure if they had turned wild or what, but now we know!

So what did I do when I saw the keets? I ran to get my camera, of course!



This was the best picture I got because the little things move so quickly that the camera didn't want to focus on them. The movement also made them hard to count. I see 15 in this picture, but while I was out there I counted anywhere from 17-20. I may have counted a few keets twice . . .

As we sat there admiring the keets, another curious visitor appeared.



That's our cat Franky on the right and the keets are on the left (they're hard to see, I know). I thought about shooing Franky away, but then I decided to see how the guineas would react to him.



In the above picture you can see Franky start to stalk forward. The mother hen is in the middle of the adult guineas with her back to us. What you can't tell from the picture is that she is lowering her head and raising her wings in preparation to attack . . .



Suddenly, the hen flew at Franky claws first and they disappeared in a blur of fur and feathers!

It only lasted a second because Franky took off running. Neither were injured and Franky got the message!

Moments later, all was calm again as seen in the picture below. By the way, that is the male and female together as mating pairs almost always tend to be while they guard nests and keets.



The guineas have seemed to watch out for their own pretty well until this morning. Roy and I woke up before 6am to a lot of "buckwheat!" (that's the call of the female), warning crows from the males, and cries of distress from a keet. By the time we got out, we found another of our cats, Noni, with a dead keet. We were both pretty upset. We went looking for the other keets, but couldn't find them. Roy thought he saw the parent guineas returning to their nest, which we've decided is south of our house by an old, fallen down barn.

We gave up looking for the keets and went back in the house. After a few minutes, we heard some keets crying. Roy ran out to discover that they were scattered all over our yard, across two or three acres, hiding in various places. The best we can guess is that something attacked the little guinea family and they scattered, which is instinctual behavior. After everything calmed down, the keets started calling out for mom and trying to make their way back to the group. So Roy started the slow project of retrieving them while I kept the cats distracted.

It was a difficult process because a keet would only cry when it thought no one was around. As soon as Roy would get really close, the keet would fall silent, so he would have to look for the little camouflaged bodies in tall grasses. Not easy. When he did get a hold of a keet, he deposited them in the dense lilac bushes next to the chicken house. A guinea hen came along after a little bit and took charge of them. What's interesting is that we're pretty sure that this hen is not the original mom. We're guessing that she recently turned broody , which made her willing to adopt!

Keeping the stray keets safe from the cats was also difficult. There are seven adult cats and just one of me, so I couldn't watch them all. They are much better bird hunters than we are, of course, plus they're faster and quieter, so catching a keet for them is easy. We lost one more to a cat and rescued three or four from close encounters. Don't judge the cats too hard. They're only following their instincts and those same instincts keep the rodent population down, which is why we keep cats in the first place.

In the end, 10-12 keets ended up under the adoptive hen! Roy caught most of them, but some found their way on their own or with a little help from the adult guineas who seemed to herd the keets in the right direction. We've seen them a few times throughout the day, grazing happily. We still have hopes that the original guinea mom is hiding at her nest with a few more keets. We'll see what the future holds!

Here's the video I promised of our Raum 3.5 wind turbine being erected. The whole process took about an hour, so this 2 min clip just highlights the process.

You should read this blog post before you watch the video. At the beginning, you'll see the the turbine being raised from a horizontal position using a gin pole and a winch attached to the back of a pick-up. When it is almost erect, Roy and his dad check that the bolts are lining up and start tightening them down. The last clips are of the turbine during a short test run. If you listen closely Roy says what it is producing.

Monday was a momentous occasion at our house. Roy and his dad, Big Roy, erected our wind turbine with Roy's grandma, mom, wife (myself), and daughter all watching. After all the hubbub of getting the foundation and wiring done, this was a quiet affair.

Over the last few weeks, Roy has been preparing for this day by assembling the turbine. First, they had to put together the two tower pieces that weigh about 2600 lbs combined. You can see here that their method involved a tractor, some barrels and a lot of muscle.



To get the two pieces to slide together, they used a come-along, which locks as you lever it tighter so it can't slip backward.



Next, they assembled the rotor and the blades.



Then we had a wind turbine all ready to go . . . except that it was laying on its side.



Are you wondering yet how this thing was erected? Well, that skinny little pole standing up perpendicular to the wind turbine is a gin-pole. You can see that there is a cable connected from the top of the gin-pole to the turbine pole. Another cable is later attached from the gin-pole to a winch (like a large reel) on the back of a pick-up to pull the top of the gin-pole towards the ground, which acts to lever the turbine into a standing position.

The base of the tower has a hinge on it to aid in the erection process and to help line it up with the bolts in the foundation.



After it's up, they screw the bolts down and ensure that it is perfectly upright.



Okay, you probably noticed that I skipped right over the actual moment that our tower was erected . . . that's because I don't have pictures of it . . . I have video! Only I haven't formatted it yet, so you'll have to wait a day or two.  Till then you can admire the finished product!



We're not allowed to run the turbine until an electrical inspector signs off on it. We will let you know as soon as that happens!

By the way, my husband sells these turbines (and many other designs, too), just check out his website at www.ColoradoWindTurbines.com . He also does solar arrays and energy audits!

In less than two weeks is Haxtun's annual Old-Fashioned Saturday Night. The big event of the day is the car show, but there are several other things going on, too:

Old Fashioned Saturday Night Schedule:

• Garage sales will happen all over town starting at 8am
• Farmers Market on main street from 9am-11am (see details below)
  
• Poker Run starts at the Haxtun Fire Department between 9:30-11am. The prizes start at $1,000!
  
• Car show registration 3-5pm on main street (or pre-register by calling the town hall 970-774-6104).
  
• Vendors will have games, food, toys, etc on main street starting at 3pm
•  Hog Roast at the Fire Hall 5-7pm
  
• Burn-out contest on main street 7:30 pm
• Pitch tournament at the Haxtun Community Center at 7pm.
• Dance at the American Legion 9pm - 1am

The car show is the main event that everything else centers around. The cars park up and down main street, which is quite a site! It usually draws vehicles from all over the state (and probably from other states, too). Awards are given out in the following categories: original intent, daily driver, late model, motorcycle, truck, street rod, classic, dare to be different, and mayor's choice.

Here's a map of Haxtun with all the important locations marked for those who aren't local. By the way, when I say "main street" I'm talking about S. Colorado Ave - turn north off Hwy 6 and go past the railroad tracks. You'll have to park on adjacent streets or at the far north end.

I'm actually in charge of organizing the Farmer's Market for the Chamber of Commerce! It's been a little slow in the making because most gardens aren't producing much yet and a lot of the locals are tied up in wheat harvest for the next few weeks. I'd really appreciate if you all would help me spread the word! Anyone with homegrown, homemade, or handmade products can sell at the Farmer's Market. There is no fee! Just send me an email at susan@ourhaxtunlife.com if you want to sell so that I can give you instructions about where to set up! Spread the word!

There is a lot of freedom in having your own garden. Anytime you want a salad you can just walk into your own yard and pick it fresh . . . . until your chickens discover it, that is. I now eat the few pathetic greens that the birds somehow miss (pout, pout).

So since I last wrote on the blog about how I was taking a little hiatus my life went from crazy to insane whirlpool of dizzying despair! Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it really felt like I was treading water against a strong undertow for the last two weeks. I felt like some of it was backlash for taking a break from the blog, as if I removed a weight from one side of a scale only to have the other side rebound wildly from the sudden release.

Enough analogies. I think life is calming down again, so let me share a few things that have happened.



Two weeks ago I walked into the garage to check our young guineas and found the scene pictured above . . . That would be the top of their enclosure that they're sitting on . . . now it has a lid!  Needless to say, these birds are ready to be outdoors hunting bugs, but we're still trying to find them homes! Anybody? Anybody?

Well, things around here have been both hectic and non-eventful, but such is the life of a mothers, farmers, and those who own their own business!

Roy was gone all last week for energy audit training for his business, Chinook Energy. That left me in charge of the chickens, guineas, cats, dog, keets in the brooder, and the garden. Mostly, I just had more feeding, watering, and cleaning up to do, but it took ... << MORE >>

But back to country driving. I now live on a gravel road, which really is a type of paved road because gravel is brought in to cover the bare ground and provide traction. It still gets a little dusty or muddy, depending on the weather, but not near as bad as a true dirt road. We only have 1.5 miles of gravel between us and the highway. It's a short distance compared to what some people around here have. This is what the road usually looks like:



If you're not used to country driving I bet your first reaction to that picture is "Oh my gosh, there is a large piece of farm equipment on the road and the road is not very wide!" That's my reaction, anyhow. Even when it is a normal car coming from the opposite direction, it feels a little tight to me. But everyone slows down and moves aside on approach and you always get where you're going.
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