Albin news August 9, 2010

Albin News Readers,

This article completes the first dozen Albin news articles that I have written as the de-facto Albin news reporter. Once again I've been surprised at how much is going on in this seemingly placid community. I thought that I would run out of reportable news pretty quickly but so far have just ran out of time to report it all!

In community news, there is a primary election happening on Tuesday August 17 from 7am to 7pm at the Albin Community Center. It is important to vote in the primary because it determines which candidates will run in the general election in November. Also, if you're not a registered voter, you can register at the primary election so you'll be ready to vote in the general election. If you value our system of democracy and want to keep a good thing going, take the time to vote!

We have another candidate from the Albin community running for public office. Kelly Krakow is hoping to be elected for one of three County Commissioner positions. Kelly is currently working for Farmer's insurance in Torrington and would continue doing so if elected to public office. Other candidates running for County Commissioner are Jeff Ketcham, Diane Humphrey, Judy Case, Troy Thompson, C. Kim Cox, and Dale Meyer. The current commissioners are Jeff Ketcham, Gay Woodhouse, and Diane Humphrey.

Many of the local residents are in Cheyenne this week showing off their best and tastiest at the Laramie County Fair. Kelly Krakow's daughter Kayla showed her Targhee sheep and won grand reserve champion ram and ewe. The Targhee sheep are known for their excellent wool qualities. Most of the showing will happen later this week. More details to follow.

For the aspiring and accomplished guitar players in the community, the Albin Community Center is hosting guitar jams on the second and fourth Mondays of the month from 7 pm to whenever. The purpose is for more experienced guitar players to help the less experienced guitar players advance their skills. Bring your own guitar.

This is Dixie's most recent update on Tim's condition.

Ps. 95:6-7 (ab) Come let us worship and bow down;Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand..
   Ever wonder about God's 'pasture' here on earth?  We would have never dreamed of this one...but it is His pasture because He is here with His hand over His sheep (us)!  I don't know about other pastures, but the ones we've been across are not smooth and can have some big rocks and ruts. Alongside the bumpy ride you can choose to see the beauty of the pasture with its grasses, wildflowers, wildlife (hopefully you see/find all your cattle, too), and water.  Tim had a 'bumpy ride' today--because he is physically moving more and more, it causes more muscles to fire and overwork to the point of being very uncomfortable and needing some extra Tylenol at times.  He did have some good stretching sessions and the highlight of the day was he was allowed to eat some applesauce---Praise the Lord!!
Please pray for an extraordinary soothing and relaxing time in the therapy pool in the morning and also for our monthly family meeting with his team (doctor, day nurse, night nurse, Occ Th, Sp Th, Phy Th, and a few others) in the afternoon.   Also, pray for Tim's strength, verbal/communication skills to begin, and to see his smile soon!  Was so good to have Lee and Charlene visit us today as they have walked this road many times before with great faithfulness.  Have a great evening--Howard & Dixie

Master Gardener Ann Sanchez passed along this information resource for local gardeners.

There are countless gardening websites available on the internet. Jerrene Randall shared with me one of her favorites and it has now become one of mine. WyomingGardens.com is a site that you may visit once, or you may sign up for a free internet monthly newsletter. There are several different authors and they each write about a different topic. An example of topics this month includes: Fast Growing Trees in Wyoming, Controlling Insects Organically, Bearberry Shrubs, and an article about the County Fair. The radio archive link will connect you with a list of past gardening topics that have been written from a Wyoming perspective. This site offers quick information about the special challenges we have growing plants in our great state.

In Ag news, we are now in the peak of our irrigating season. During the month of August, the spring crops have finished building the plant and are now growing the good stuff. The corn is setting ears, the beans are filling pods, and the sunflowers are just now breaking open and will soon be filling heads.

Keeping pivots running efficiently is paramount this time of year. I would like to share a tip that has helped me run my pivots efficiently. Like most farmers in the area, I'm dealing with a lot of 20+ year old pivots of varying shapes, sizes, makes and models. Ideally, I try to know within plus or minus 30 minutes when the pivots are going to finish watering a field so that I'm not waiting for the pivot to come around or running water where I don't want it. A lot of pivots are outfitted with automatic stops but many (especially where there are several wells and pivots tied together in one irrigation system) cannot automatically shut the well down when the pivot stops. Hopefully the following tip can help make our irrigation more efficient.

To understand why this works, you have to understand how a pivot moves. On all of the pivots I've run, the end tower has a one speed electric motor that simply runs a certain percent of the time. The operator just sets the pivot to run at, say 50%, and the end tower will turn on for five minutes and off for five minutes until it's told to stop. Since the speed of the pivot is based on the percent run time of the motor, there is a linear relationship between the percent setting and the run time of the pivot. I learned in high school algebra that two points define a line. That means that if you know how fast the pivot runs at a certain percent (i.e. takes 36 hrs to half a circle at 17.5%) then you have all the information you need to figure how fast to run your pivot to go any distance and arrive at the right place at the right time.

The first step is to take what you already know about your pivot and calculate what I call the “speed number.” Let's say you know the pivot makes a half a circle in 40 hours at 25%. Intuitively you should know that it makes the same half circle in 20 hrs at 50%. If you double the speed, it takes half the time to travel the same distance. Also, a full circle would take 40 hrs at 50% because the pivot has to travel twice as far at the same speed. However, what if your pivot is setting about a quarter of the way around when you change a gear box and get it running again at 3:00 pm on Monday? How do you set your pivot such that it comes around at 8:00 am on Wednesday when you need to switch the water to another pivot? This is when it's handy to have a “speed number” to work from.

The speed number is the time it takes to do a full circle times the percent setting. A pivot that makes a full circle in 40 hrs at 50% has a speed number of 2,000 (40hrs x 50% = 2,000). Once you have this number, it gets really easy to set the pivot speed.

First of all, take the speed number and multiply it by the percent of the circle that it needs to travel (for ½ of the field multiply it by 0.5, for ¼ of the field multiply it by .25, etc). If the pivot is stuck out in the middle somewhere, just guess how many tenths along it needs to go and times it by the speed number. So if the pivot needs to travel ¾ of the way around then times the speed number by 0.75 (2,000 x ¾ = 1500).

Second, divide that number by either the hours you want the pivot to travel or the percent setting you want to use. If you want the pivot to be around in 41.5 hrs, then divide 1500 by 41.5 hrs and you get 36.1%, the speed the pivot needs to be set on to finish watering in 41.5 hrs. If you want to set your pivot on 25 percent to reach a certain watering goal, then divide 1500 by 25%. This gives you 60 hrs, the number of hours it will take the pivot to finish the field at 25%.

A lot of pivots have the handy little charts in them showing how much water will be applied at different percentages. This works OK but still requires some guess work. The beauty of finding the speed number on a pivot is it accounts for a lot of the eccentricities of the individual pivot that develop over time. Once you zero in on that speed number, those pivots will start running like clockwork!

The GDUs for 2009 and 2010 May 15 – Aug 9 (Baseline 50 deg F) are 1329.5 and 1497.0.