36 Kansas AG NEWS Fall 2018

H & H Plumbing, Heating & Air“One Call Does It All”

785-263-1339Serving Abilene and Surrounding AreasAffordable • Professional • Convenient

www.hhplumbingheatingandair.com

FARMERS SPRAYING SERVICE, INC. Seeding, Spraying, Crop Dusting

PRATT 620-723-2211 or 620-672-6172

Crop Care By Aer

GRAIN ELEVATOR • AGRONOMY • CARDTROL

Hugoton • Moscow • Satanta • Ryus • HickokUlysses • Milepost • Lakin • Lydia

www.unitedpag.com

Glad to be part of Southwest Kansas Agriculture

BAINTER OIL SERVICE INCBulk Fuel & Propane Delivery

to the Farm & Oil Field929 Main, Hoxie • 785-675-3903

State Exchange Bank

Mankato, KS

Ag & Commercial Lending785-378-3222

To put it gently, most of our farms are overflowing with stuff that can be recycled or repurposed. This is why from time to time, our barn aisles turn into temporary storage spaces and even obstacle courses. This is actually why barns are built with doors at both ends.

So, when your horse gets out of the pasture and wanders up to the barn looking for what he can get into, he’ll step into the aisle, dance through open boxes, clear a hay double-stack and fling your tool belt into the air before scaring himself as he shoots through the back door, snorting. Then he’ll run a victory lap while his pasture mates squeal at the fence and he considers what to do next. Yep. That’s how that works.

But, getting back to stuff. Do you have too much of any these lying around?• Baling twine• Broken manure forks• Cracked buckets and scoops• Organic debris• Plastic wrap from baled shavings• Scrap metal• Shredded rope• Spent saddle pads• Used wood shavings

All of these things can be recycled or put to another use. We just have to get tired enough of it getting in our way.

Whether you hate to throw stuff away or have reached the point where you surrender and decide to tidy up, here are some ideas for dealing with farm stuff:• Weld used horse shoes into wall hooks, latches and racks• Turn old fabric into cloths for cleaning or wound dressing• Use old saddle pads in cat and dog bedding• Sew ripped horse blankets into doggie jackets• Reuse good spray bottles• Cut up paper bags for poultice wraps or shred them for bedding• Use old buckets for storage containers or cavaletti bases• Use old PVC pipes with broom handles or wooden dowels for blanket racks• Place big plastic bags/wrapping under mulch and top soil as weed liners• Use old tires as feed bucket holders• Saw big plastic barrels in half, cover or sand the sharp edges and use them for water troughs or extra-large feeders• Repurpose building materials or donate them

And, if you need fabric shredded, throw it over the fence for the horses or tie a knot in it and leave it for the dogs’ next tug-of-war. For paper shredding, nobody does it better than chickens.

Farm Stuff

785-527-2472

•Bulk DEF•Exceptional Rewards Program

For Bulk Fueling Customers•Indoor Subway Restaurant

loves.com Belleville 1356 US Highway 81

Travel Stop Store 647

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Fall 2018 Kansas AG NEWS 37

Customer Service

620-356-1211After Hours, Weekends or Holidays

888-551-41401850 W. Oklahoma Ave. (W Hwy. 160) Ulysses

www.pioneerelectric.coop

electriccooperative, inc.

Our goal at Stampede Feeders is to be good caretakers of your cattle, so as to maximize profits or minimize

losses so you the customer can attain the highest rate of returns on your investment and to provide a safe,

wholesome product to the consumer.

5503 East Rd. 210, Scott City, Kansas 67871

(620) 872-0800

Delicious Burgers • PiesCinnamon Rolls620-983-2307

105 N. Walnut St. • PeabodyPops Diner

First Choice Meats Inc.Custom Processing

540 S. 5th St. • Herington 785-258-3160

• Modern Length Graders & Air Screen Processors• Bulk & Bagged Certified Wheat Seed • Bird Seed

Contact Us For All Your Seed Needs

Now serving from 2 locations:Beloit, KS (785)738-5134

Toll Free 800-705-4416

Custom Seed Processing & Treating

Solomon RapidsSeed, Inc.

www.solomonrapidsseed.net

Osborne, KS (785)346-2104

PrecyclingPrecycling is a way of doing things so that you acquire less stuff that needs to be recycled and start getting clever about the rest of your stuff at the same time. Funny how our mind works like that.

Here are some examples of precycling:• Use cloth bags for shopping• Use cloth towels instead of paper ones• Choose “long life” products (rechargeable batteries, long-lasting light bulbs)• Get concentrated products (more uses, same product)• Buy in bulk (more product, less packaging)• Go for less packaging OR packaging you can reuse (glass bottles, metal boxes)• Use alternatives to disposable products (dinnerware versus paper plates)

• Swear off Styrofoam (a slow-to-break-down hazardous material)• When plastic purchases are unavoidable, choose types 1 or 2 (easier to recycle)

I’ve decided to build a cat labyrinth in the barn rafters with my old rain gutters and lead ropes, with cat nests (pallet boxes) in each corner for naps. This will empty one corner in a storage room. It’ll also make me go ahead and cut up a couple of spent horse blankets and saddle pads for the cat nests.

Green MaterialsEco-friendly materials are less widely available and more expensive than their predecessors, but they want you to spend more on them to save resources. There are other reasons, too. I grit my teeth and do it.

(continued on next page)

Gideon ExcavatingDependable Fully Insured Service

Basement ExcavationBuilding Pads • Crushed Rock • Topsoil

Drain Tile • Ponds • Demolition

St Marys 785-437-6245

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38 Kansas AG NEWS Fall 2018

Ag VenturesFarm Services

14204 270 Road • Ransom785-731-5659

Ag Chemical & Dekalb Seed

Locally Adapted Genetics™WHEAT • SOYBEANS • ALFALFA • SORGHUM

CORN • NATIVE GRASS • COVER CROPS

Toll Free 1-800-634-2836 • Local 620-465-22459218 S. Halstead St. Hutchinson

Full Service Sinclair StationPassenger and Truck Tire Service

On-the-Farm Tire Service • Oil Changes • Batteries105 West 1st St. • Tescott, KS • www.c-sservice.com

304 11th Ave • Dodge City

www.avenergy.com

Residential • Commercial Agricultural

Delivering Fuel, Propane & Oil

620-225-4994

HAMM AUCTION & REAL ESTATEFull Service www.hammauction.com

107 NE State Road 61 • Pratt, KS

AMANDA’S BAKERY & BISTROGlad to serve our Farmers & Ranchers!

785-200-6622 302 N. Broadway ■ Abilene

Here are a few ideas:• Next time you need to replace light bulbs, try compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, which last a lot longer (9-20 times) than incandescent bulbs• Reduce the need for and cost of electric light by adding dutch doors, skylights or windows• Try using bamboo wood on a building project—it’s spendier than other lumber, but it’s very tough and second-to-none as a renewable resource (bamboo grows 20 times faster than other trees)• Grow bamboo and have it both ways• Wood-plastic composites are another option that lasts a long time and requires very little upkeep• Build or convert a sheltered space so you can buy shavings in bulk instead of in bags (you will save lots of greenbacks and plastic bags this way)• Grab used heavy-duty rubber sheets or strips as a substitute for stall and aisle mats• Wood pallets can be put to all kinds of use around the farm (stacking and storage, gates, trim• Dragging or spreading manure in the pasture builds the soil• Used stall bedding can put into the production of black gold fertilizer when combined with other organic waste or it can be aged (spread out in the sun) by itself to become high-dry compost that can be mixed with clean shavings for a second use as stall bedding. I know, probably not what you want to hear. But, if you can bring yourself to handle it four more times (take it out of the stall, spread it in the sun, put it back in the wheelbarrow and dump it back in the stall) you can get a second use out of it.

Other Ag WasteClosing thoughts on other types of farm trash and waste.• Carcasses. When a large animal dies, there are basically two options for dealing with it: burial or rendering. If space permits and you have the equipment necessary, livestock burial works like composting because the

remains will break down over time and nourish the ground.• Chemicals. This waste is a different animal with its own rules and regulations. You are responsible to know these as well as those printed on the original container. Most chemicals

are hazardous to some degree and require careful containment before taking to a chemical collection site.• Feed. Bagged or baled, when it gets stale, it can still be safely fed to birds, fish, swine and possibly cattle. When it gets infested with bugs, it can still be feed to chickens and possibly fish. But when it goes bad (mold, fungus, rot) should be buried or burned.• Hay. That which can’t be safely fed to livestock is great for the compost pile.• Kitchen. Crops that don’t make the grade for sale and don’t get eaten are

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Fall 2018 Kansas AG NEWS 39

GRAIN OPERATIONAuto/Farm Service Center

Truck-Tire

Rozel

620-527-4216Sanford • Burdett

620-527-4306

• Feedmill • Seed Cleaning• On the Farm Fuel Service • Delivery

Seed • Feed • FertilizerCustom Applications

Golden Valley

A Force for Justice in Southwestern Kansas!• Grazing Leases• Estate Planning & Probate• Oil & Gas

1021 Fleming St., Ste. A • Garden City, KS 67846

620-277-3315

highly recyclable and make an ideal addition to compost.• Metal. Sought-after in many markets, it’s not hard to find a good collection site for whatever metal you have lying around that you absolutely cannot use or repurpose.

want only certain kinds of manure or compost for their plants. I lucked out in this regard a few years ago and had a number of dedicated growers who collected everything my horses could produce spring and fall for their gourmet mushrooms and antique roses.

The growers converged on the barn every afternoon to pick up fresh poop and spirit it away to their custom compost operations. They picked up the horses’ gifts by hand and deposited them in gleaming white buckets or better, caught them as they fell from under long black and chestnut tails. Of course, my herd noticed these collection ceremonies, got the Big Head and became insufferable. There came to be so much fanfare about poop it became personally embarrassing as I watched my horses strut about stiff-legged, tails curled over rumps, as if bodily functions had become a key to the universe. Their delusions of grandeur came to an end the day they saw me push the big wheelbarrow back into the barn in my sloppy clothes sans gleaming, white buckets.

And that, dear reader, is a glimpse of the human economy of recycling.

- J.E. Holloway

• Oil. There are many oil collection sites these days and some equipment dealers will take drums of used engine oil off your hands so they can use it on site and give you a new drum.• Wood. Like other organic matter, wood is highly recyclable. Spent stall shavings with manure can be added to compost piles with good results. Old fences, gates, pallets and construction debris can be repurposed, chipped for composting, burned or donated.

Depending on your area, you might look for serious horticulturalists who

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