Whats your "Windy" story? :)

[crsublette]

Past week or so I have been fighting terrible wind. Here are some pictures.

First picture is an aerial shot of a wind front coming to the area.

The first several attached pictures are me driving a tractor to try to slow down and reduce the volume of dirt blowing. There are many techniques we used to accomplish this by spraying water from a truck, ripping the ground open to create large caverns and clods, and spreading chunks of crude cow manure.

Water essentially forms a thick crust over the powdered dirt to stop it from blowing, but, in very high winds, the wind shear can easily break this crust. Ripping the ground open allows the blowing dirt to become trapped behind the clods and in the caverns, but, when the wind shifts, then the dirt will start to blow again until the process repeats. Chunks of crude cow manure works much like crushed asphalt except manure is much cheaper and better overall; the chunks act as obstacle to trap the dirt, but, when the wind shifts, then the process repeats except it is much easier covering a large area with cow manure rather than ripping the ground.

When we need to slow down and reduce volume of dirt blowing on a field where a crop is, then we use a rotary hoe (which is in the pictures below) or other similar tractor implements depending on the type of crop. These type of tractor implements essentially create dirt clods without damaging nor digging out the plant. Unfortunately, this is a very short term fix that only lasts for about 24 hours or so due to the clods being so small. Once these tractor implements become ineffective, then we have to water the ground and the repeat the process. Also, wind shear can melt these small clods.

The tractor implements described above essentially are trying to save the plant's root crown. Dirt acts like sandpaper that literally burns the plant's leaves and crown. If the plant crown can be save, then there is a significant increased chance that plant will be saved.

The image, "rotaryhoe8", is a close up picture of the rotary hoe.


The other attached pictures below are the tumble weeds or also fondly called a Texas Christmas Tree. These weeds can get huge up to 5 foot tall, which can cause some serious damage. On occasion here, we have fires started and power outages due to a large tumble weed being blown into electrical transformers. Tumbleweeds are chalk full of oils and quickly ignite, and, when caught on fire, the tumbleweeds quickly become air borne. Tumbleweeds can also be caught on fire by gasoline powered cars.

Tumbleweeds are no good except, for a brief period while they're young, they can stop dirt from blowing and these weeds are very easy to grow in any blank ground and require extremely little water to grow. If there is a wall of tumbleweeds on a fence row, then this can make for an excellent wind block and a good obstacle to stop dirt from blowing.

The tumbleweeds get so bad, as shown in image "tumbleweeds4", that they can tear down quite stout barbed wire fence rows and completely block county roads where the county officials have to use a front end loader to pile them up, which these then turn into huge dirt piles due to the blowing dirt.


Enjoy!

 

[crsublette]

The wind on this day was constantly blowing 45mph with gusts 55~60mph. This is actually a typical day during March and April around here. During some years, we would have constant weeks full of days that is always blowing like this and sometimes reaching up to 70mph gusts.

Here are a few more pictures that didn't get uploaded... Apparently 10 is the limit for images in one post.

 

[crsublette]

Whats your "Windy" story?

 

[addy1]

Dust storms in arizona..........300 foot wall of dust coming at you. Here is a time lapse of one, not taken by me.

 

[dieselplower]

holy cow! the snow and wind blow hard enough here sometimes that it causes a whiteout... nearly impossible to drive in. people will stop on the highway, drive into the ditch, or pull over to the shoulder if they are smart. much less interesting story i know...

 

[Dave 54]

Charles it seems your having a bit of wind my friend as you know here in the UK weve had our fair share of winds mostly up to hurricane force and for storm after storm :-

https://www.gardenpondforum.com/thr...he-hatches-in-the-south-west-yet-again.13555/

Dave

 

[Nepen]

I'm stuck in snowshoe, WV right now coz the snowstorm and high wind enough to rattle my window. Not looking forward to driving home tomorrow.

 

[MitchM]

Wow, those dust storms look bad!

I've only got the usual Canadian windchill numbers of -48F for you.
Neither my camera nor fingers work at that temperature....

 

[crsublette]

Dust storms in arizona..........300 foot wall of dust coming at you. Here is a time lapse of one, not taken by me.

Yep yep. That is exactly what I was told the aerial view of the picture looks like.

The aerial picture I posted was taken just a little less than a week ago and was taken from about 12,000 feet high. Just guess how big it was when at ground zero.

When I was kid, around 15 years ago, we would have dirt storms like this happening all the time during Spring and sometimes through August. I am quite familiar with these fast moving massive dirt walls.


Back in the day, farm planting equipment was different. Planters back then required really clean farm fields since they had terrible down pressure to insert the seed. Now, planters use special springs and intense leverage along with hydraulics to significantly increase the down pressure so the fields do not have to be so clean. Even as I am just a conventional tillage farmer, I only have to plow fields 2~3 times (including fertilizer) until a field is ready to be planted.

The dirt does not blow like it used to when I was younger.

 

[crsublette]

holy cow! the snow and wind blow hard enough here sometimes that it causes a whiteout... nearly impossible to drive in. people will stop on the highway, drive into the ditch, or pull over to the shoulder if they are smart. much less interesting story i know...

Yeah, all that "fog" in the tractor pictures is actually dust in the air. Back when I was a kid, it used to be much worse than how it is now, that is at least now we have about 2,000 feet of visibility when these storms hit.

 

[crsublette]

Charles it seems your having a bit of wind my friend as you know here in the UK weve had our fair share of winds mostly up to hurricane force and for storm after storm :-

https://www.gardenpondforum.com/thr...he-hatches-in-the-south-west-yet-again.13555/

Dave

Yeah, we do not get hurricane force winds too often here although they are not rare, but in Wyoming they get them more often. These strong winds have been this way ever since I was a young kid around 15 years ago.

 

[crsublette]

Wow, those dust storms look bad!

I've only got the usual Canadian windchill numbers of -48F for you.
Neither my camera nor fingers work at that temperature....

I wish we would get that cold here since the dang insects here live too long.

 

[crsublette]

My grandfather began the family farming venture while everyone was running away from this region, during the Dust Dowl, and he accrued up to 12,000~18,000 acres of land for livestock (cattle) and grain (corn, sorghums, & hard red winter wheat). As a quick aside, here is a video of my grandfather. American Farmers explains the dustbowl disaster in Dalhart Texas (at 1:23 into the video). Due to typical family drama and internal disputes, the farm has dwindled so much that all is left to me is 600~800 acres.


The Dust Bowl changed everything for us and is one reason why the Precision Farming private industry was formed. The government's response was to create a slew of programs, which most are not around anymore due to money issues and the NRCS is the main one that still remains from that era. The NRCS (natural resource conservation service) helps to pay farmers to plant grass instead of farming it, which over-farming was one of the major reasons that led to the Dust Bowl. NRCS is still around to help with grass projects and to help provide discounts to building better irrigation but it has seen most of the budget cuts here lately. With the Precision Farming industry, without government aid, tractor and equipment companies spent big money into research and development to create much better equipment.

The funny thing is that the politicians in Washington D.C. never took it serious until the dust was literally pushed into the upper atmosphere and it traveled all the way north east to Washington D.C.


My farm is right in the center of the big red spot in the map below.

Also, if you thought we are in a bad drought now, then look at how it was during the Dust Bowl and this was 80 years ago!! (( not too soon after all of the hysterics were scared of an impending ice age ))

It is with anything in weather, that is there are cycles to it all.

From the 1960s~2010, my area had record breaking wet years. Now, just as when I started farming, we are back to record breaking drought years.


Here is what the Drought Index looks like for the month of February, 2014.

 

[crsublette]

For anyone that is curious.... Here are some pictures of the farming agriculture in my area and my grandfather's homestead, which is where I now operate from. Believe it or not, there was even much more farmland than this during the Dust Bowl.

We were cleaning the equipment yard there. Most of our equipment ya don't see since it was parked out in the fields due to wheat silage harvest and getting ready for wheat grain harvest. Barns don't show too well. We got a huge old quonset barn that was used as a grain elevator to hold wheat for the following year during my grandfather's era, but now we just use it to store our trucks and machines.

Through out 2011~2012, my dad and I renovated the house and yard. Essentially got a skid steer and went crazy. Hired some good folk for some designing and material.

Funniest things city folk seem to often ask, "what are all those blinking lights, what's going on here?". Circle pivot irrigation uses these huge blinking lights that can be seen for a few miles. Lights tell us the sprinkler is at least "kind of" moving. During irrigation time, you'll see hundreds of these blinking lights all over the place. Quite a sight to see at night sometimes.

Picture #2, #3. All the trees ya see there were one of my responsibilities as a kid. My dad got with the NRCS and their $1 tree sapling program, which is part of a "stop the wind" wind-block programs they do, and planted hundreds of trees, around 900. For this huge project, my dad actually got a Land Stewardship award, in person, from the President of the US of A. Pictures only are showing the ones on this property. So, one of my jobs when I was really young (around 10yo) was to pull weeds, install/repair the protective coverings on the trees, and to irrigate them until I was about 12yo to start driving tractor. My dad did not believe in his kids should start driving tractor much sooner than that so everything else was my choirs. Now, the trees are around 15~20 feet tall. 2011 drought killed alot of the deciduous trees although the pines survived just fine. My dad loves trees. Ya don't see many trees out here. Dad pretty much turned his house into a sanctuary for deer, dove, quail, pheasant, sometimes prong horns, and all sorts of other critters.

With my "pond-less" water fountains scattered in my yard and my small ~430 gallon pond & stream, there are all sorts of birds and wildlife, even coyotes, come to get a drink. In this semi-arid area, it is like a little oasis for them during the time when farm sprinklers turned off.

Also, a good population of coyotes here, starting to get a bit healthier recovering from mange. A big canyon is near Dalhart and I got some fields over there. One area where some bob cats live.

A little story for ya. I was coming up on my 4wheeler to walk a sprinkler. Saw a big bob cat run into the field. Corn was about 10 foot tall. Told myself, "heck no, not going in there with him. gonna wait a few days."

Hope pictures aren't too big. 1st picture just a picture of all the agriculture in my area.

 

[crsublette]

Around here... The smart farmers farm like it is never going to rain since we know the dry weather cycles, that define this semi-arid high plains region, will always be around.


Not changing the subject, but thought I would share what this area looks like to give a sense of perspective.