As I pull up to the north gate each morning, I turn the heater fan down (in the winter, anyway) and turn on the radio. Along with 850 KOA’s Colorado Morning News, I also get a status update on my electric fence. Now that’s service! No wonder the AM radio station’s call letters KOA stand for King Of Agriculture.
Of course, April (Zesbaugh) and Steffan (Tubbs) don’t actually use their broadcasted words to tell me how the fence is performing. Rather, the fence tells me, through the signal it broadcasts over the AM band, and which my pickup radio detects.
The unit that powers the north fence, called an “energizer,” or more commonly a “fencer,” is powered by alternating current (AC) electricity. Electricity is supplied to the ranch house through the regional power company from the so-called national electrical grid. Electrons flow from the far away power plant, through hundreds of miles of steel transmission cables, booster stations and transformers, until it finally reaches the ranch at a standard household voltage.
The fencer is plugged into 120 volt household current at the garage, and uses an internal transformer to change the AC into direct current (DC) which it sends in pulses through the roughly five miles of electric fence it energizes.
As the 12,000 – 15,000 volt pulses course through the length of the steel fence wire, they excite electrons in the steel, freeing many of them to fly off of the steel and into the atmosphere, making the fence a radio broadcasting station of sorts.
Though the signal is powered by quite a bit of voltage, the amperage, or “push” of the current is quite low, and so is the range of the fence’s radio broadcasting capability. At 20 feet from the fence, my pickup radio can’t pick up a single “pop,” but at 5 – 10 feet it picks up the signal nice and clear.
As the hosts of the morning show report the news Coloradoans need and want to hear with their morning coffee or on their drive to work, I can hear in the background a soft “pop-pop-pop” as the electric charge travels through the wire, then the air, then to my antenna. Hearing that “pop-pop-pop” is a good thing, and it tells me a lot about how the fence is functioning.
If the popping sound is clear and strong, it means that the fence is working properly. If the sound is softer than usual, it means that the wire is slightly grounded, probably giving up some strength to a wet wooden fence post, or sometimes to overgrown grass or weeds. If the sound is intermittent, the wire has probably come loose from an insulator and is probably grounding as it swings in the breeze and occasionally touches a steel post or even the ground. If there’s no popping sound at all, there’s obviously no current flowing through the wire. The problem could be a continuous ground, a broken wire, or a power outage at the ranch house. The fencer might even be unplugged, as happens occasionally when nieces and nephews visit and “explore.”
If I get a strong popping signal in the morning, I can go about my chores with the knowledge that the fence is working correctly and needs no attention. If the popping is weak, intermittent, or absent, I know I probably have a repair to make. Once a week or so I drive the length of the fence, looking for missing insulators and listening to the steady “pop-pop-popping.” Having the radio detect the condition of the fence makes the job quick and easy. Most of the time.
The electric fence I check each day isn’t really vital to the success of the operation. It’s there only to keep the cattle out of shelterbelts and wildlife plantings which surround the pasture. On the other side of the shelterbelts and wildlife plantings is a sturdy four-wire barbed wire fence. Still, it’s best to keep the cattle where they belong, and my pickup radio helps me with the task.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Is the Renewable Fuels Standard for corn ethanol sustainable?
Like the word “green,” the word “sustainable” has a lot of cachet these days.
Over the last 10 days I asked a selection of people I met what “sustainability” means. The total number of respondents was 27. Twenty-one were from Nebraska, three from Wyoming, two from Colorado, and one from Quebec, Canada.
Five of the 27 were able to rattle off a pretty fair definition of “sustainable,” saying in essence that it involves replacing what is used in a system so that the system can continue to produce indefinitely.
Twenty-two of the respondents, however, (including a pair of college/university professors) could only come up with vague mumblings about “green”, “the planet”, “global warming”, and so forth. The single most repeated definition was, “sustainability is, like, sustainable. You know?”
So to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s see how Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, defines the word.
sus-tain-able adj (ca. 1727) a: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged (techniques/agriculture) b: of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods (societal).
In very simple terms, sustainability in agriculture is the ability to replace what is used during food production so that food can continue to be produced, and to do so without permanently damaging the production system.
In 2005 congress passed the Energy Policy Act. One of the provisions of that act was the mandate to produce ethanol and other biofuels to be blended with the U.S. fuel supply. This provision, called the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), has the force of federal law behind it, and calls for a tiered increase in the quantity of biofuels – mainly ethanol – produced through 2022. In 2008 the RFS was revised and upgraded, calling for the production of 36 billion gallons of “renewable fuel” annually by 2022.
According to the RFS, 31 billion of the 36 billion gallon annual requirement is to be ethanol. Fifteen billion gallons is required to come from traditionally fermented and distilled corn starch each year. Cellulosic biofuel – ethanol produced with feedstocks other than corn – is required to produce 16 billion gallons each year. The remaining five billion gallons is called “undifferetiated advanced biofuel,” described as “…other than derived from corn starch…(including) “cellulosic biofuels, “biomass-based diesel”, and “co-processed renewable diesel.”
Since corn-based ethanol is the subject, we’ll ignore the other fuel types in the RFS and ask this question. Is the 15 billion gallon annual production of corn ethanol sustainable? We’ll look at four areas. What is the present production level, and how does it compare with the mandate? Is there enough farmland to produce the corn required to meet the mandate? Can the required quantity of corn be sustainably and reliably produced without taking corn from the human food stream? And finally, is the RFS likely to be economically sustainable at the consumer level?
We will not look at tax credits for ethanol producers and blenders, nor will we look at the so-called “corn subsidy.” Those are topics for another article.
Production numbers
According to numbers published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in March, 2010, for the 2009 production year, 10.7 billion gallons of corn ethanol was produced. The RFS called for 10.5 billion gallons, so the goal was exceeded. Or was it? The same publication cited daily production in barrels as 787,000. At 44 gallons per barrel, production totaled 287.25 million barrels, or just over 6.5 billion gallons. What happened to the other four billion gallons? Is this a simple math or unit conversion error? Thus far the answer remains unclear. Was production in 2009 a 4 billion gallon shortfall or did the industry beat the standard by 200 million gallons? Is it possible that the number reported is different than the actual production number?
The numbers for 2010 aren’t in yet, but industry administrators are claiming a 12-month production run of slightly more than one billion gallons over their production target. What the 2010 “target” was is again unclear, and no credible number has been published. Was their target the RFS mandated 12 billion gallons? Or was it a smaller number?
Farmland
According to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture, U.S. farmland totals 406.5 million acres. In 2007 corn was cultivated on 86.2 million acres and produced 12.7 billion bushels. According to the USDA, 2009 corn production hit 13.2 billion bushels, the highest annual production on record, on 86.5 million acres. Production numbers for 2010 haven’t yet been released, but USDA estimates put the number at 93 million bushels lower than to 2009 number, on roughly the same acreage.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the 10.7 billion and 13.5 billion gallon ethanol production numbers for 2009 and 2010 are correct. If so, it is just possible, in theory, to eke out enough corn to hit the 15 billion gallon annual RFS mandate, on the same or just slightly more acreage. But is that target reliably sustainable? What happens when the weather doesn’t cooperate? What happens when there is drought, or flooding, or disease or pest problems?
Proponents of the RFS and the mandate to produce 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually opine that the solution is to plant more acres of corn. But is upping U.S. corn acreage sustainable? If you count sorghum, soybean, sugarbeet, and even dry bean acres, you could theoretically add about 70.6 million additional acres of high-yield corn cultivation, for a total of nearly 160 million acres. But that’s really all the suitable high-yield corn land available in the U.S. And if you convert all sorghum, soybean, dry bean and sugarbeet acres to corn, the law of supply and demand will become the driving force. As stocks of the non-planted crops dwindle, their value will increase. Farmers, if they remain at liberty to plant the crops which will bring them their highest economic return, will turn away from corn and begin planting the more valuable crops. Corn production will fall off.
Or will farmers remain at liberty?
If the 2009/2010 corn ethanol production numbers are actually lower than reported, the prospect of complying with the 15 million gallon per year mandate begins to look somewhat bleak. Is the RFS really sustainable?
Food vs fuel
Corn ethanol production in 2009 used more than 38 percent of total U.S. corn production for the year. USDA and the ethanol industry report that somewhat more than 40 percent of 2010 corn production went to ethanol plants. The remaining 60 or so percent is used essentially for human consumption. The largest part is fed to animals, which are in turn fed to people. Humans also consume corn in sweeteners, breads, snacks, and other food items. If corn acres and corn production can’t sustainably be increased, can corn ethanol production be increased by diverting corn from the human food stream? Is this a sustainable scheme?
Presently, animal feed demand for corn is sharply down. This is because the numbers of food animals in the U.S. is at a very low ebb. The cow herd is at it’s smallest since 1963, and hog and poultry numbers are at their lowest point in decades. Yet demand for meat remains high and is increasing as the U.S. and much of the world continue to climb out of the recession.
The reduced number of food animals in the production pipeline began driving prices higher last year and will continue to do so for months and years to come. Food animals, like other agricultural crops, cannot be produced overnight.
This food animal shortfall is contributing to rapidly escalating retail food prices, both in the U.S. and around the world, where food prices are back at the same 2008 levels which were described as a crisis.
U.S. food prices were up about two percent in the fourth quarter of last year. But two percent is a drop in the bucket compared to world food prices, which skyrocketed 32 percent in the last half of 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Index of World Food Prices.
Is diverting food stream corn to ethanol production a sustainable option in the light of rising food prices? Is it politically sustainable with the grim possibility of food riots and even widespread famine just over the horizon?
The thermodynamics of blending gasoline with ethanol
Don’t let the big science word put you off. Thermodynamics is just the study of heat, and heat is what internal combustion engines produce. The heat is converted to locomotive energy, or more simply, it is used to drive the wheels.
Heat is produced by burning fuel and air in the tightly closed environment of the cylinder(s) of the engine. Traditionally, the fuel burned has been gasoline. Most transport trucks and a very small percentage of automobiles use diesel, but diesel is a tangential subject and not important to our analysis of the sustainability of the RFS corn ethanol mandate.
Gasoline is a very good fuel. It’s a hydrocarbon, and as the name suggests it’s made up of hydrogen and carbon. To provide power, it’s is mixed with air and burned in the engine, producing heat (energy) to drive the engine and chemical combustion products which are released through the exhaust system. The combustion products contain hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, mostly in the form of water (H20), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Burning gasoline produces a lot of energy, about 115,000 Btu (British thermal units) per gallon, according to data produced by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. ORNL is one of the main research institutions of the Department of Energy.
In general, gasoline is safe, easy to handle and store, and readily available throughout the world at a reasonable cost. In the decades following WWII, however, gasoline gained the reputation of being a heavy polluter. For various reasons, early gasoline formulations and less sophisticated engines emitted lots of lead, nitrogen compounds and soot, in addition to H2O, CO and CO2. Federal emission and efficiency standards enacted in the1960’s and 1970’s led to the development of cleaner, more efficient engines and fuel formulations, and today, modern gasoline is actually a remarkably clean burning fuel.
Gasoline is such a good fuel, however, that enormous quantities are used around the world (390 million gallons per day in the U.S. alone). At this scale of use, a great deal of carbon is released to the atmosphere, and in recent years concerns have grown as to the effect this atmospheric carbon load has on climate change. Carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, tends to retain heat in the atmosphere in what is commonly called the greenhouse effect. Carbon monoxide emissions also became a concern in urban areas with many automobiles and heavy traffic, where smog and high carbon monoxide levels were a health risk
The combination of environmental concerns and a desire to “free” the U.S. from its dependence on foreign oil prompted, in large part, congress to mandate the RFS. The ethanol produced under the RFS is required to be added to, or “blended” with gasoline.
The mandated introduction of ethanol into the gasoline stream means consumers now have a choice between regular gasoline and a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, sometimes called E-10. Nearly every gasoline retailer in the country offers both choices. Standard engines can burn up to a 10 percent ethanol blend without modification.
An alternative is E-85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Engines capable of burning this blend are specially modified and equip vehicles known as flex-fuel models. Of the roughly 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S, about 6 million are flex fuel powered.
With the stated purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and freeing the U.S. from dependence on foreign oil, we must now ask whether the RFS has been or will be successful in doing so, and if successful, at what cost to U.S. consumers?
Let’s look first at emissions.
Unlike the hydrocarbon gasoline, made up of hydrogen and carbon, ethanol is an alcohol, composed of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. Because alcohols have higher octane, or anti-knock ratings than gasoline, ethanol was considered as a replacement when lead anti-knock additives were banned from gasoline in the early 1970’s. While lead was eventually replaced by safer compounds, ethanol was shown to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, and ethanol additives began to be used in urban areas in the late 1970’s.
Ethanol is able to reduce CO emissions because it features oxygen in each molecule, and when combusted, that oxygen combines with carbon monoxide in the exhaust (carbon plus one oxygen, CO) to form carbon dioxide (carbon plus two oxygen, CO2), a less toxic gas, but one that is said to be a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.
Now let’s look at the economics of blending ethanol with gasoline.
At most filling stations, regular and 10 percent ethanol blend (often called premium) gasolines are offered side by side, and the per-gallon price of the ethanol blend is usually, but not always, less than the per-gallon price of regular gasoline. Blended gas appears at first glance to be a less expensive alternative. Is this true? Unfortunately, it is almost always not true.
Ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 Btu (British thermal unit) of energy, compared to 75,700 Btu for ethanol. Therefore, ethanol has only 66 percent the energy of gasoline. The ratio of energy input to work output is constant in an engine. You can think of it as 1:1; for each energy unit you put in, you get one work unit out. Put in less energy, you get less work out. If your car goes 10 miles on one quart of gasoline, it’ll only go 6.6 miles on one quart of ethanol.
Blending gasoline with ethanol dilutes the energy content of the fuel. A 10 percent blend has only .966 (96.6 percent) the energy of regular gasoline. Now that’s not a large energy reduction, only 3.4 percent, but it is significant and adds up over time.
Ethanol blend prices typically run 5-10 cents lower than regular gasoline prices. On Monday in Kimball, Neb., for instance, regular gas was $3.11 per gallon, while the ethanol blend was $3.04. To break even, or to pay the same price per unit of energy, the ethanol blend price would have to be $3.00 (.966 x $3.71). The ethanol blend costs more and yields less energy. Less energy means reduced mileage and range.
To break even, or to get the same bang for the buck, the ethanol blend price has to be the same as the energy ratio, .966. To reduce the price at the pump, the ethanol blend price has to be less than .966 of the cost of regular gas. Ethanol blending doesn’t save the consumer money at the pump unless it beats the energy spread.
The environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently approved a 15 percent blending rate, so soon consumers might be getting even less while paying more. A 15 percent blend has only .949 (94.9 percent) the energy of regular gas. To calculate the breakeven price, multiply the regular gas price by .949. Using our previous example, $3.11 times 0.949 equals $2.95. Therefore, a 15 percent ethanol blend should cost $2.95 per gallon, simply to provide the same energy for the same price. We'll have to see how the 15 percent blend is priced, but if history is our guide, the new blend is unlikely to meet or beat breakeven price.
The news is even worse for E-85, which has an energy ratio of .711. E-85 was priced at $2.85 per gallon on Monday, 22 cents above the breakeven price of $2.63.
At today’s prices, corn ethanol costs consumers more, and provides less. Is corn ethanol economically sustainable for consumers? It seems not.
Is the RFS mandate of producing 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol sustainable? You be the judge. It might be. But the prospect is looking rather shaky at the moment.
Over the last 10 days I asked a selection of people I met what “sustainability” means. The total number of respondents was 27. Twenty-one were from Nebraska, three from Wyoming, two from Colorado, and one from Quebec, Canada.
Five of the 27 were able to rattle off a pretty fair definition of “sustainable,” saying in essence that it involves replacing what is used in a system so that the system can continue to produce indefinitely.
Twenty-two of the respondents, however, (including a pair of college/university professors) could only come up with vague mumblings about “green”, “the planet”, “global warming”, and so forth. The single most repeated definition was, “sustainability is, like, sustainable. You know?”
So to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s see how Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, defines the word.
sus-tain-able adj (ca. 1727) a: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged (techniques/agriculture) b: of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods (societal).
In very simple terms, sustainability in agriculture is the ability to replace what is used during food production so that food can continue to be produced, and to do so without permanently damaging the production system.
In 2005 congress passed the Energy Policy Act. One of the provisions of that act was the mandate to produce ethanol and other biofuels to be blended with the U.S. fuel supply. This provision, called the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), has the force of federal law behind it, and calls for a tiered increase in the quantity of biofuels – mainly ethanol – produced through 2022. In 2008 the RFS was revised and upgraded, calling for the production of 36 billion gallons of “renewable fuel” annually by 2022.
According to the RFS, 31 billion of the 36 billion gallon annual requirement is to be ethanol. Fifteen billion gallons is required to come from traditionally fermented and distilled corn starch each year. Cellulosic biofuel – ethanol produced with feedstocks other than corn – is required to produce 16 billion gallons each year. The remaining five billion gallons is called “undifferetiated advanced biofuel,” described as “…other than derived from corn starch…(including) “cellulosic biofuels, “biomass-based diesel”, and “co-processed renewable diesel.”
 |
| Can this corn help to ease fuel prices and reduce our dependency on foreign oil? Can it do so in a sustainable fashion? |
We will not look at tax credits for ethanol producers and blenders, nor will we look at the so-called “corn subsidy.” Those are topics for another article.
Production numbers
According to numbers published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in March, 2010, for the 2009 production year, 10.7 billion gallons of corn ethanol was produced. The RFS called for 10.5 billion gallons, so the goal was exceeded. Or was it? The same publication cited daily production in barrels as 787,000. At 44 gallons per barrel, production totaled 287.25 million barrels, or just over 6.5 billion gallons. What happened to the other four billion gallons? Is this a simple math or unit conversion error? Thus far the answer remains unclear. Was production in 2009 a 4 billion gallon shortfall or did the industry beat the standard by 200 million gallons? Is it possible that the number reported is different than the actual production number?
The numbers for 2010 aren’t in yet, but industry administrators are claiming a 12-month production run of slightly more than one billion gallons over their production target. What the 2010 “target” was is again unclear, and no credible number has been published. Was their target the RFS mandated 12 billion gallons? Or was it a smaller number?
Farmland
According to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture, U.S. farmland totals 406.5 million acres. In 2007 corn was cultivated on 86.2 million acres and produced 12.7 billion bushels. According to the USDA, 2009 corn production hit 13.2 billion bushels, the highest annual production on record, on 86.5 million acres. Production numbers for 2010 haven’t yet been released, but USDA estimates put the number at 93 million bushels lower than to 2009 number, on roughly the same acreage.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the 10.7 billion and 13.5 billion gallon ethanol production numbers for 2009 and 2010 are correct. If so, it is just possible, in theory, to eke out enough corn to hit the 15 billion gallon annual RFS mandate, on the same or just slightly more acreage. But is that target reliably sustainable? What happens when the weather doesn’t cooperate? What happens when there is drought, or flooding, or disease or pest problems?
Proponents of the RFS and the mandate to produce 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually opine that the solution is to plant more acres of corn. But is upping U.S. corn acreage sustainable? If you count sorghum, soybean, sugarbeet, and even dry bean acres, you could theoretically add about 70.6 million additional acres of high-yield corn cultivation, for a total of nearly 160 million acres. But that’s really all the suitable high-yield corn land available in the U.S. And if you convert all sorghum, soybean, dry bean and sugarbeet acres to corn, the law of supply and demand will become the driving force. As stocks of the non-planted crops dwindle, their value will increase. Farmers, if they remain at liberty to plant the crops which will bring them their highest economic return, will turn away from corn and begin planting the more valuable crops. Corn production will fall off.
Or will farmers remain at liberty?
If the 2009/2010 corn ethanol production numbers are actually lower than reported, the prospect of complying with the 15 million gallon per year mandate begins to look somewhat bleak. Is the RFS really sustainable?
Food vs fuel
Corn ethanol production in 2009 used more than 38 percent of total U.S. corn production for the year. USDA and the ethanol industry report that somewhat more than 40 percent of 2010 corn production went to ethanol plants. The remaining 60 or so percent is used essentially for human consumption. The largest part is fed to animals, which are in turn fed to people. Humans also consume corn in sweeteners, breads, snacks, and other food items. If corn acres and corn production can’t sustainably be increased, can corn ethanol production be increased by diverting corn from the human food stream? Is this a sustainable scheme?
Presently, animal feed demand for corn is sharply down. This is because the numbers of food animals in the U.S. is at a very low ebb. The cow herd is at it’s smallest since 1963, and hog and poultry numbers are at their lowest point in decades. Yet demand for meat remains high and is increasing as the U.S. and much of the world continue to climb out of the recession.
The reduced number of food animals in the production pipeline began driving prices higher last year and will continue to do so for months and years to come. Food animals, like other agricultural crops, cannot be produced overnight.
This food animal shortfall is contributing to rapidly escalating retail food prices, both in the U.S. and around the world, where food prices are back at the same 2008 levels which were described as a crisis.
U.S. food prices were up about two percent in the fourth quarter of last year. But two percent is a drop in the bucket compared to world food prices, which skyrocketed 32 percent in the last half of 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Index of World Food Prices.
Is diverting food stream corn to ethanol production a sustainable option in the light of rising food prices? Is it politically sustainable with the grim possibility of food riots and even widespread famine just over the horizon?
The thermodynamics of blending gasoline with ethanol
Don’t let the big science word put you off. Thermodynamics is just the study of heat, and heat is what internal combustion engines produce. The heat is converted to locomotive energy, or more simply, it is used to drive the wheels.
Heat is produced by burning fuel and air in the tightly closed environment of the cylinder(s) of the engine. Traditionally, the fuel burned has been gasoline. Most transport trucks and a very small percentage of automobiles use diesel, but diesel is a tangential subject and not important to our analysis of the sustainability of the RFS corn ethanol mandate.
Gasoline is a very good fuel. It’s a hydrocarbon, and as the name suggests it’s made up of hydrogen and carbon. To provide power, it’s is mixed with air and burned in the engine, producing heat (energy) to drive the engine and chemical combustion products which are released through the exhaust system. The combustion products contain hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, mostly in the form of water (H20), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Burning gasoline produces a lot of energy, about 115,000 Btu (British thermal units) per gallon, according to data produced by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. ORNL is one of the main research institutions of the Department of Energy.
In general, gasoline is safe, easy to handle and store, and readily available throughout the world at a reasonable cost. In the decades following WWII, however, gasoline gained the reputation of being a heavy polluter. For various reasons, early gasoline formulations and less sophisticated engines emitted lots of lead, nitrogen compounds and soot, in addition to H2O, CO and CO2. Federal emission and efficiency standards enacted in the1960’s and 1970’s led to the development of cleaner, more efficient engines and fuel formulations, and today, modern gasoline is actually a remarkably clean burning fuel.
Gasoline is such a good fuel, however, that enormous quantities are used around the world (390 million gallons per day in the U.S. alone). At this scale of use, a great deal of carbon is released to the atmosphere, and in recent years concerns have grown as to the effect this atmospheric carbon load has on climate change. Carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, tends to retain heat in the atmosphere in what is commonly called the greenhouse effect. Carbon monoxide emissions also became a concern in urban areas with many automobiles and heavy traffic, where smog and high carbon monoxide levels were a health risk
The combination of environmental concerns and a desire to “free” the U.S. from its dependence on foreign oil prompted, in large part, congress to mandate the RFS. The ethanol produced under the RFS is required to be added to, or “blended” with gasoline.
The mandated introduction of ethanol into the gasoline stream means consumers now have a choice between regular gasoline and a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, sometimes called E-10. Nearly every gasoline retailer in the country offers both choices. Standard engines can burn up to a 10 percent ethanol blend without modification.
An alternative is E-85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Engines capable of burning this blend are specially modified and equip vehicles known as flex-fuel models. Of the roughly 250 million passenger vehicles in the U.S, about 6 million are flex fuel powered.
With the stated purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and freeing the U.S. from dependence on foreign oil, we must now ask whether the RFS has been or will be successful in doing so, and if successful, at what cost to U.S. consumers?
Let’s look first at emissions.
Unlike the hydrocarbon gasoline, made up of hydrogen and carbon, ethanol is an alcohol, composed of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. Because alcohols have higher octane, or anti-knock ratings than gasoline, ethanol was considered as a replacement when lead anti-knock additives were banned from gasoline in the early 1970’s. While lead was eventually replaced by safer compounds, ethanol was shown to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, and ethanol additives began to be used in urban areas in the late 1970’s.
Ethanol is able to reduce CO emissions because it features oxygen in each molecule, and when combusted, that oxygen combines with carbon monoxide in the exhaust (carbon plus one oxygen, CO) to form carbon dioxide (carbon plus two oxygen, CO2), a less toxic gas, but one that is said to be a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.
Now let’s look at the economics of blending ethanol with gasoline.
 |
| What’s the real story on fuel prices? It's more than price per gallon. |
Ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 Btu (British thermal unit) of energy, compared to 75,700 Btu for ethanol. Therefore, ethanol has only 66 percent the energy of gasoline. The ratio of energy input to work output is constant in an engine. You can think of it as 1:1; for each energy unit you put in, you get one work unit out. Put in less energy, you get less work out. If your car goes 10 miles on one quart of gasoline, it’ll only go 6.6 miles on one quart of ethanol.
Blending gasoline with ethanol dilutes the energy content of the fuel. A 10 percent blend has only .966 (96.6 percent) the energy of regular gasoline. Now that’s not a large energy reduction, only 3.4 percent, but it is significant and adds up over time.
Ethanol blend prices typically run 5-10 cents lower than regular gasoline prices. On Monday in Kimball, Neb., for instance, regular gas was $3.11 per gallon, while the ethanol blend was $3.04. To break even, or to pay the same price per unit of energy, the ethanol blend price would have to be $3.00 (.966 x $3.71). The ethanol blend costs more and yields less energy. Less energy means reduced mileage and range.
To break even, or to get the same bang for the buck, the ethanol blend price has to be the same as the energy ratio, .966. To reduce the price at the pump, the ethanol blend price has to be less than .966 of the cost of regular gas. Ethanol blending doesn’t save the consumer money at the pump unless it beats the energy spread.
The environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently approved a 15 percent blending rate, so soon consumers might be getting even less while paying more. A 15 percent blend has only .949 (94.9 percent) the energy of regular gas. To calculate the breakeven price, multiply the regular gas price by .949. Using our previous example, $3.11 times 0.949 equals $2.95. Therefore, a 15 percent ethanol blend should cost $2.95 per gallon, simply to provide the same energy for the same price. We'll have to see how the 15 percent blend is priced, but if history is our guide, the new blend is unlikely to meet or beat breakeven price.
The news is even worse for E-85, which has an energy ratio of .711. E-85 was priced at $2.85 per gallon on Monday, 22 cents above the breakeven price of $2.63.
At today’s prices, corn ethanol costs consumers more, and provides less. Is corn ethanol economically sustainable for consumers? It seems not.
Is the RFS mandate of producing 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol sustainable? You be the judge. It might be. But the prospect is looking rather shaky at the moment.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Dreams
January is a hard time for funerals. As if there’s an easy time.
We buried our Great-Aunt last week. The weather, after four days of sub-zero temperatures, cooperated. The skies were clear and the sun was bright. But a cold January wind swept through the cemetery.
She was 83 years old when she passed, and had been married to my Great-Uncle since 1946. The two had been inseparable since meeting in high school. They had three daughters and many grand- and great-grandchildren.
They grew up during the Great Depression, living a life I can only imagine, never understand.
Consider this – consider hoeing beets every day from planting to harvest, starting in the fields as soon as you were able to pick up a hoe. All day, every day, except when school was in session, when you worked the fields before and after school. And except for a few hours on Sunday when you went to church.
Before heading to the fields in the morning there were chores to do – a cow or two to milk, horses to feed, hogs to slop, chickens to feed and eggs to gather. And the same chores in the evening, after a day in the fields and at school.
Consider living in a one-room shack with your parents and a dozen siblings. A home where German was the tongue, but where the children were expected to master flawless English.
Where there was no indoor plumbing, just a hand well and a privy. A single cast iron stove for warmth. Consider spending the daylight winter hours gathering coal along the railroad tracks, one lump at a time, to burn in that stove, to stave off the killing cold.
Consider the deep terror caused by a winter sniffle when there was no money for a doctor and the doctors had no antibiotics.
Consider living and working in those conditions and being expected to be neat, clean and polite, to show and live your family pride and thrift and honesty and integrity.
No computer. No I-Pod. No television. No Radio. No refrigerator, microwave, toaster (let alone toaster oven!), no range. Just a wood stove. No car. No bus to ride to school.
Yet they were clean and neat and polite and well fed and didn’t see the hardship of walking to school and to the fields.
Consider the courage and the deep and abiding love it took to get married in 1946. Consider the scrimping and saving and the hard physical labor it took to acquire land and machinery and start to farm while raising a family. Consider the delight and the warm glow of success at being able to purchase your very own radio.
Consider building, with the labor of your family alone, a modest but successful farm and ranch. Building your own barn. Your own home. Hiring laborers. Putting in one of the first pivots in the county. Watching your daughters grow and marry and start families of their own.
Consider working hard and building every day throughout the long but oh-so-brief years. Feeding the county, and the state, and the nation, and the world. Building and keeping an honored and honorable name.
By the time I came on the scene killing labor was a thing of the past, the depression only a word. But the reality of those things remained in the weathered skin and strong, ropy muscles of those who had lived it. And in the stories they told of “hard times.” Stories told with honest laughter and verisimilitude only those who’ve lived it can bring.
I am blessed with countless sweet, loving memories of these people and the way they lived their lives, working hard and without complaint. Clean, neat, well dressed, honest, forthright, giving. Loving.
Today when I work hard and the sweat runs heavy and muscles strain and heart pounds and the breath rasps in and out like a steam engine, I am blessed in knowing that I’ve never worked as hard as my grandparents and great uncles and great aunts did. I’m blessed that I never knew the terror of illness or the numbing cold of coal picking. Blessed that I never hoed a row of beets beneath the hammering sun. But blessed most of all that I knew those who did, knew their strength and character and love. And that today I am in some way a small fulfillment of their love and their courage and their dream.
We buried our Great-Aunt last week. The weather, after four days of sub-zero temperatures, cooperated. The skies were clear and the sun was bright. But a cold January wind swept through the cemetery.
She was 83 years old when she passed, and had been married to my Great-Uncle since 1946. The two had been inseparable since meeting in high school. They had three daughters and many grand- and great-grandchildren.
They grew up during the Great Depression, living a life I can only imagine, never understand.
Consider this – consider hoeing beets every day from planting to harvest, starting in the fields as soon as you were able to pick up a hoe. All day, every day, except when school was in session, when you worked the fields before and after school. And except for a few hours on Sunday when you went to church.
Before heading to the fields in the morning there were chores to do – a cow or two to milk, horses to feed, hogs to slop, chickens to feed and eggs to gather. And the same chores in the evening, after a day in the fields and at school.
Consider living in a one-room shack with your parents and a dozen siblings. A home where German was the tongue, but where the children were expected to master flawless English.
Where there was no indoor plumbing, just a hand well and a privy. A single cast iron stove for warmth. Consider spending the daylight winter hours gathering coal along the railroad tracks, one lump at a time, to burn in that stove, to stave off the killing cold.
Consider the deep terror caused by a winter sniffle when there was no money for a doctor and the doctors had no antibiotics.
Consider living and working in those conditions and being expected to be neat, clean and polite, to show and live your family pride and thrift and honesty and integrity.
No computer. No I-Pod. No television. No Radio. No refrigerator, microwave, toaster (let alone toaster oven!), no range. Just a wood stove. No car. No bus to ride to school.
Yet they were clean and neat and polite and well fed and didn’t see the hardship of walking to school and to the fields.
Consider the courage and the deep and abiding love it took to get married in 1946. Consider the scrimping and saving and the hard physical labor it took to acquire land and machinery and start to farm while raising a family. Consider the delight and the warm glow of success at being able to purchase your very own radio.
Consider building, with the labor of your family alone, a modest but successful farm and ranch. Building your own barn. Your own home. Hiring laborers. Putting in one of the first pivots in the county. Watching your daughters grow and marry and start families of their own.
Consider working hard and building every day throughout the long but oh-so-brief years. Feeding the county, and the state, and the nation, and the world. Building and keeping an honored and honorable name.
By the time I came on the scene killing labor was a thing of the past, the depression only a word. But the reality of those things remained in the weathered skin and strong, ropy muscles of those who had lived it. And in the stories they told of “hard times.” Stories told with honest laughter and verisimilitude only those who’ve lived it can bring.
I am blessed with countless sweet, loving memories of these people and the way they lived their lives, working hard and without complaint. Clean, neat, well dressed, honest, forthright, giving. Loving.
Today when I work hard and the sweat runs heavy and muscles strain and heart pounds and the breath rasps in and out like a steam engine, I am blessed in knowing that I’ve never worked as hard as my grandparents and great uncles and great aunts did. I’m blessed that I never knew the terror of illness or the numbing cold of coal picking. Blessed that I never hoed a row of beets beneath the hammering sun. But blessed most of all that I knew those who did, knew their strength and character and love. And that today I am in some way a small fulfillment of their love and their courage and their dream.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Cold
At 7 a.m. the temperature is zero and heading lower. As I drive through the pasture an inch or so of new snow crunches and squeals beneath the pickup tires. All around me the world is gray and white and just a little bit gloomy looking. The only real color I can see is the dark-green of juniper windbreaks and just a smudge of lightness on the southeast horizon where the sun is scheduled to make its tenth appearance of the new year.
Overhead the sky is fluffed with dirty cotton clouds, a nearly uniform overcast with a few bulging fat cloud bellies here and there on the horizon. I’m snug and dry in the pickup cab with the heater fan providing a welcome rush of warm air and holding the frost at bay as it fights for purchase on the windshield. The pickup thermometer tells me it’s now –2 F.
I pull up to a stock tank, abandon the warmth of the pickup cab and grab my trusty short axe from the back seat. I look at the thick, marbled ice adorning the surface of the tank, where on warmer days cool water would ripple. The ice is puffed up a bit in the center of the tank, like a dome of frosting on a cupcake. It’s slightly translucent, a light milky gray color, and on closer inspection looks to be shot through with millions of tiny bubbles. Nevertheless, it looks hard. A third of the way in from the north rim of the tank the cylindrical aluminum float is frozen fast at a crazy angle, one end up at about 45 degrees, the other frozen solid in the mass of ice.
The tank stands alone on the prairie, at the high point of a 50 acre depression, surrounded by a ring of frozen, dusty dirt where hundreds of sharp cattle hooves tread daily. The ring of dirt is surrounded by a larger ring of snow-covered grass. There’s buffalo grass there, and blue grama, and wheatgrass and needlegrass and even some little bluestem. But the grasses are hidden beneath a thin blanket of fresh, clean snow. Little creature tracks meander across the new snow, vole tracks and mouse tracks and rabbit tracks and even the paw prints of a feral cat.
My immediate chore is to chop drinking holes in the ice so the cattle can water. Even in the depths of winter mature cows need eight or more gallons of water every day. But I pause for a moment to take in the cold but beautiful scene. The air is cold and bites at the exposed skin of my face. There’s only a light breeze from the north, for which I am profoundly grateful. With my back to the touch of breeze a sweatshirt hood provides enough protection to keep my ears from stinging. It’s a nearly silent morning, crisp and fresh and new. The only sounds are the ones I make – the crunch of snow beneath my feet, the ghostly inrush and outrush of air as I breathe, the clink of the axe head as I tap the ice to test its hardness.
I begin by carefully chopping the float free of the ice’s glacier grip. As the axe head opens a first hole, water flows out onto the surface of the ice. The thick layer of ice has gripped the rolled rim of the tank, expanding as it froze, pushing down on the liquid below. For a moment at least, the hole becomes an artesian well as pressure forces water up and out. With the float free, I begin chopping in earnest, opening and widening yesterday’s drinking holes. As I chop, newly freed liquid water splashes back into my face and onto my jacket and jeans, freezing instantly. The splashback is irritating, but only a little, and only part of the job.
As I chop away the ice, my muscles warm up and my heart sends warm blood coursing through veins and arteries, making the cold feel less cold. My breathing rate increases and clouds of vapor puff about my head with each exhalation. The sound of axe on ice carries south on the breeze, and from a half-mile away I can see ears flicker in the lightly bunched cow herd. Within moments a leader strikes off in my direction, suddenly thirsty. The rest of the cows string out behind her, and they soon become a dark line moving across the whitened plain.
Holes opened and chopping done, I take a minute to watch the cows approach. Near the back of the line a pair of bulls start a pushing match, heads low and pressed together, muscles straining, hooves splayed and searching for grip on snowy ground.
The sun finally makes an appearance, spilling over the southeast horizon in a brilliant, golden show of fusing hydrogen. I feel the warmth of the light on my face, marveling, as always, at the enormous power of the sun, able to warm me from 93 million miles on even the coldest morn.
The moment is fleeting, though, and the sun soon disappears behind a steel-gray overcast. The cold returns to my face as the cows near the tank to drink. The lead cow looks at me, pauses, then thrusts her nose into the frigid mixture of water and ice in a drinking hole. Slurping noisily, she drinks deeply, watching me all the while.
Time to go, time to get on with morning chores. Hungry calves and horses await their morning corn and hay, and there’ll be thick ice in their stock tanks as well. As I drive on through the arctic dawn, with heavy work ahead of me, I think about how lucky I am to see and do these things, how fortunate I am to be here, and not trapped in a city or town with only a desk and computer to look forward to.
Overhead the sky is fluffed with dirty cotton clouds, a nearly uniform overcast with a few bulging fat cloud bellies here and there on the horizon. I’m snug and dry in the pickup cab with the heater fan providing a welcome rush of warm air and holding the frost at bay as it fights for purchase on the windshield. The pickup thermometer tells me it’s now –2 F.
I pull up to a stock tank, abandon the warmth of the pickup cab and grab my trusty short axe from the back seat. I look at the thick, marbled ice adorning the surface of the tank, where on warmer days cool water would ripple. The ice is puffed up a bit in the center of the tank, like a dome of frosting on a cupcake. It’s slightly translucent, a light milky gray color, and on closer inspection looks to be shot through with millions of tiny bubbles. Nevertheless, it looks hard. A third of the way in from the north rim of the tank the cylindrical aluminum float is frozen fast at a crazy angle, one end up at about 45 degrees, the other frozen solid in the mass of ice.
 |
| Free at last, a stock tank float bobs on the ice-choked surface Monday on a ranch south of Kimball. |
My immediate chore is to chop drinking holes in the ice so the cattle can water. Even in the depths of winter mature cows need eight or more gallons of water every day. But I pause for a moment to take in the cold but beautiful scene. The air is cold and bites at the exposed skin of my face. There’s only a light breeze from the north, for which I am profoundly grateful. With my back to the touch of breeze a sweatshirt hood provides enough protection to keep my ears from stinging. It’s a nearly silent morning, crisp and fresh and new. The only sounds are the ones I make – the crunch of snow beneath my feet, the ghostly inrush and outrush of air as I breathe, the clink of the axe head as I tap the ice to test its hardness.
I begin by carefully chopping the float free of the ice’s glacier grip. As the axe head opens a first hole, water flows out onto the surface of the ice. The thick layer of ice has gripped the rolled rim of the tank, expanding as it froze, pushing down on the liquid below. For a moment at least, the hole becomes an artesian well as pressure forces water up and out. With the float free, I begin chopping in earnest, opening and widening yesterday’s drinking holes. As I chop, newly freed liquid water splashes back into my face and onto my jacket and jeans, freezing instantly. The splashback is irritating, but only a little, and only part of the job.
As I chop away the ice, my muscles warm up and my heart sends warm blood coursing through veins and arteries, making the cold feel less cold. My breathing rate increases and clouds of vapor puff about my head with each exhalation. The sound of axe on ice carries south on the breeze, and from a half-mile away I can see ears flicker in the lightly bunched cow herd. Within moments a leader strikes off in my direction, suddenly thirsty. The rest of the cows string out behind her, and they soon become a dark line moving across the whitened plain.
Holes opened and chopping done, I take a minute to watch the cows approach. Near the back of the line a pair of bulls start a pushing match, heads low and pressed together, muscles straining, hooves splayed and searching for grip on snowy ground.
The sun finally makes an appearance, spilling over the southeast horizon in a brilliant, golden show of fusing hydrogen. I feel the warmth of the light on my face, marveling, as always, at the enormous power of the sun, able to warm me from 93 million miles on even the coldest morn.
The moment is fleeting, though, and the sun soon disappears behind a steel-gray overcast. The cold returns to my face as the cows near the tank to drink. The lead cow looks at me, pauses, then thrusts her nose into the frigid mixture of water and ice in a drinking hole. Slurping noisily, she drinks deeply, watching me all the while.
Time to go, time to get on with morning chores. Hungry calves and horses await their morning corn and hay, and there’ll be thick ice in their stock tanks as well. As I drive on through the arctic dawn, with heavy work ahead of me, I think about how lucky I am to see and do these things, how fortunate I am to be here, and not trapped in a city or town with only a desk and computer to look forward to.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Time for snow?
Summer faded slowly, oh-so-slowly, into a lingering, mostly pleasant autumn this year. Other than the few skiffs of snow, a handful of nearly cold days, and the brisk hammering of intermittent wind spells, the weather has been pleasant for a long time. These nice conditions made fall chores on the ranch a good bit easier than in many years. We had little trouble finding pleasant days for moving herds, sorting calves and weaning, preg-checking and sorting cows, vaccinating and pouring, and hauling grain and hay.
But as they do every year, the days got shorter and the temperatures fell off. Now that we’ve passed the winter solstice and the days are getting longer, winter – real winter – is just around the corner. And that’s as it should be.
Last year winter came early. Looking back over my weather log I see that first frost came on September 28, the first hard freeze on October 3, the first snow fell on October 8 and snow fell every day for a week. We had a nice warm up for a couple of weeks, and then winter settled in for good on October 27. From then until the spring melt there was snow cover on the ground.
This year was different.
It was frosty cold on Christmas morning but the skies were clear and the dawn came like thunder. A second daybreak with warm, bright sunlight was sweet and welcome after a pair of solstice-dark, glowering mornings.
Wheat fields and clean fallow were crystalline bright with frost; countless pinpricks of sparkling brilliance dazzling eyes and mind and heart in a near-explosion of up-sun splendor. Stubble and prairie were drab in comparison, brown and gray and lumpy, but tinged with their own brand of frost, not as spectacular, perhaps, but lovely in their own right.
I turned on the tap in the northwest quarter and started filling the tank and watched as the cows trailed in single file, providing most of the ground color against a bright blanket of sparkling white frost. The tall junipers were a glowing green accent around the edge of the pasture. A few handbreadths above the western horizon hung a bright, slivery, waning gibbous moon. As I drove in to feed the calves kicked up their heels, throwing dazzling pinpricks of sparkling frost into the air, then dashed to their places at the feedbunk. If I wasn't in church Christmas morning I don't know where I was.
The air cooled quickly Christmas evening, but the sky was clear and the wind calm. As the sun set in the south-southwest, it produced one of the Great Plains' signature treasures - a gorgeous sunset. I don't think I longed for a white Christmas this year.
By Monday the weather-guessers were predicting the first real winter storm of the year, due to sweep into the region Wednesday night. Predictions are for arctic temperatures, chilling north winds, and somewhere between four and 10 inches of blowing snow for the lowlands. More snow was predicted, of course, for the high country.
I’ve enjoyed the snow-free days we’ve had this year, even though I know they are a double edged sword. No snow means no precipitation, and each day without precipitation drives us deeper into drought. As I drive around the county I see a lot of wheat stands in very poor condition and know that a thick blanket of insulating and, eventually, water providing, snow may mean the difference between a crop and no crop.
There’s nothing we can do about the weather, of course. We take what we get. There are upsides and downsides to every weather event, and the trick to survival seems to be to never get too high on the upside or too low on the downside. Easier said than done.
Still, I’ve enjoyed our snow-free days. And I’m ready for the snow-filled days to come.
But as they do every year, the days got shorter and the temperatures fell off. Now that we’ve passed the winter solstice and the days are getting longer, winter – real winter – is just around the corner. And that’s as it should be.
Last year winter came early. Looking back over my weather log I see that first frost came on September 28, the first hard freeze on October 3, the first snow fell on October 8 and snow fell every day for a week. We had a nice warm up for a couple of weeks, and then winter settled in for good on October 27. From then until the spring melt there was snow cover on the ground.
This year was different.
It was frosty cold on Christmas morning but the skies were clear and the dawn came like thunder. A second daybreak with warm, bright sunlight was sweet and welcome after a pair of solstice-dark, glowering mornings.
Wheat fields and clean fallow were crystalline bright with frost; countless pinpricks of sparkling brilliance dazzling eyes and mind and heart in a near-explosion of up-sun splendor. Stubble and prairie were drab in comparison, brown and gray and lumpy, but tinged with their own brand of frost, not as spectacular, perhaps, but lovely in their own right.
 |
| Welding gauges glow in sunset light on Christmas Day south of Kimball. |
I’ve enjoyed the snow-free days we’ve had this year, even though I know they are a double edged sword. No snow means no precipitation, and each day without precipitation drives us deeper into drought. As I drive around the county I see a lot of wheat stands in very poor condition and know that a thick blanket of insulating and, eventually, water providing, snow may mean the difference between a crop and no crop.
 |
| As the sun sets on Christmas Day on a south Panhandle ranch, a hay-feeding truck casts shadow on a light-washed outbuilding. |
Still, I’ve enjoyed our snow-free days. And I’m ready for the snow-filled days to come.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Now where in the heck...
As I drove into town the other day and stopped at the stoplight (yes, the one and only stoplight in Kimball) my Toyota pickup gave me an unexpected message.
As I flicked on the right turn signal I noticed that the dash indicator was blinking much more rapidly than usual and I could hear the relay clicking like mad. This generally means that the tail light bulb is burned out.
In modern vehicles (mine’s a 2005) this can be quite an irritation. Long gone are the days of simply removing a flat lens cover and popping in a spare 1057 (if I recall the number correctly) bulb. Oh, no. Everything is modular these days.
You can still replace the bulbs, of course, and the chore isn’t really that bad, but you have to remove the entire tail light assembly to get to them. The replacement bulbs can be a bit pricey, too.
So I pulled into the parking lot of the local parts house and hopped out to see if I could remember how to remove the tail light assembly. But I didn’t have to. The whole thing had gone missing. Nothing left but a broken and ratty looking wiring bundle.
A friend of mine who was just leaving the store got quite a kick out of my situation. “Holy cow (or words to that effect) Evertson, how can you lose the whole dang thing?”
“Beats me,” I said. “I wonder how much one of these costs?”
“Don’t even ask ‘em in there,” he said, pointing to the parts store. “You can’t afford it. Buy one on line.”
But I had to ask, of course.
Turns out my friend was right. I couldn’t afford it.
After a surprisingly brief and relatively pain-free internet search, I found a replacement unit at a price I could live with. Three days later it arrived by FedEx. Installation was quick and easy.
With a proud and shiny new tail light assembly installed, I went in search of the old one. I had an idea that I’d lost it while driving over rough (former CRP) pasture ground, looking for the three cows I needed to make my tally come out right. But I’d driven over a lot of ground in two sections so I didn’t have a lot of hope. I’ve lost things on that ground before, lost forever until found accidentally a year or two or three later.
But I searched diligently, and after hours and hours of driving the cob-rough ground, I gave up and turned for home. That’s when I noticed a bright, silvery glint on the ground about a quarter-mile away. I headed for it, lost the glint, found it again, and finally pulled up next to the missing tail light. My tire tracks made it clear that I’d driven right by the darn thing several times. All’s well that ends well though.
As I flicked on the right turn signal I noticed that the dash indicator was blinking much more rapidly than usual and I could hear the relay clicking like mad. This generally means that the tail light bulb is burned out.
In modern vehicles (mine’s a 2005) this can be quite an irritation. Long gone are the days of simply removing a flat lens cover and popping in a spare 1057 (if I recall the number correctly) bulb. Oh, no. Everything is modular these days.
You can still replace the bulbs, of course, and the chore isn’t really that bad, but you have to remove the entire tail light assembly to get to them. The replacement bulbs can be a bit pricey, too.
So I pulled into the parking lot of the local parts house and hopped out to see if I could remember how to remove the tail light assembly. But I didn’t have to. The whole thing had gone missing. Nothing left but a broken and ratty looking wiring bundle.
A friend of mine who was just leaving the store got quite a kick out of my situation. “Holy cow (or words to that effect) Evertson, how can you lose the whole dang thing?”
“Beats me,” I said. “I wonder how much one of these costs?”
“Don’t even ask ‘em in there,” he said, pointing to the parts store. “You can’t afford it. Buy one on line.”
But I had to ask, of course.
Turns out my friend was right. I couldn’t afford it.
After a surprisingly brief and relatively pain-free internet search, I found a replacement unit at a price I could live with. Three days later it arrived by FedEx. Installation was quick and easy.
With a proud and shiny new tail light assembly installed, I went in search of the old one. I had an idea that I’d lost it while driving over rough (former CRP) pasture ground, looking for the three cows I needed to make my tally come out right. But I’d driven over a lot of ground in two sections so I didn’t have a lot of hope. I’ve lost things on that ground before, lost forever until found accidentally a year or two or three later.
But I searched diligently, and after hours and hours of driving the cob-rough ground, I gave up and turned for home. That’s when I noticed a bright, silvery glint on the ground about a quarter-mile away. I headed for it, lost the glint, found it again, and finally pulled up next to the missing tail light. My tire tracks made it clear that I’d driven right by the darn thing several times. All’s well that ends well though.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Solstice 2010
On Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 4:38 p.m. the sun will stop moving south and begin moving north. Tuesday will be the shortest day of the year at 9 hours, 21 minutes and 22 seconds. Tuesday night will be the longest night of the year at 14 hours, 38 minutes and 38 seconds.
Wednesday, December 22 will be about two seconds longer than Tuesday, and Wednesday night about three seconds shorter. And so it will go, days getting longer and nights shorter until on June 21, 2011 at 11:16 a.m., the sun will stop moving north and begin moving south. June 21 will be the longest day of the year at 14 hours, 59 minutes and 8 seconds. The night of June 21 will be the shortest of the year at only 9 hours and 52 seconds.
This is the Earth-centric view, of course. Although the day/night duration calculations are correct, and days seem to get shorter in the summer and fall and longer in the winter and spring, that’s just our perspective from the surface of the earth. In reality, so far as our solar system is concerned, the sun is fixed in the center of the system and the planets – including the Earth – orbit around it.
But Earth’s annual trip around the sun – its orbit – doesn’t account for the apparent movement of the sun – south to north in winter and spring and north to south in summer and fall. Were it as simple as that – the Earth orbiting the sun – we’d have a situation similar to that of the Moon. Luna, as the Moon is often called, orbits the Earth and rotates on its axis only once per revolution, keeping one side, the side familiar to us, always facing the Earth. The other side – the so-called dark side – never faces our planet, and only since the advent of space flight and rocket trips to the moon has man ever had a glimpse of the dark side.
But Earth, which is not tide-locked into a single rotation per orbit as the moon is, rotates much more frequently, making 365 and a quarter rotations for each orbit around the sun. Each rotation takes just under 24 hours. From these numbers, 365.25 and 24, we derive the length of our year, measured in days, and the length of our day, measured in hours.
This is all very well, but the fact that the Earth rotates once per day and orbits the sun every 365.25 days doesn’t explain the apparent north-south, south-north movement of the sun when viewed from the surface of Earth.
What causes that apparent movement is the fact that the Earth is tilted about 23.5 degrees in relation to the plane in which it orbits the sun. This plane is called “The Plane of the Ecliptic,” and is the same plane occupied by the other seven planets of our solar system as they orbit the sun. If the Earth stood vertical in the Plane of the Ecliptic, with the north pole straight up and south pole straight down, the sun would never move north or south. It would rise each morning in precisely the same location on the eastern horizon and set each evening in precisely the same location on the western horizon. Each period of day and night would be the same from day to day, and those periods would be very close to 12 hours for most of the planet.
Earth is tilted, however, and presently the axis of rotation – an imaginary line drawn through the center of the earth from the north physical pole to the south physical pole and around which the earth rotates once every 24 hours – is leaned over at 23.5 degrees.
So why the seasons? Why is there a summer solstice and a winter solstice? The secret is that the axial tilt of 23.5 degrees remains constant (at least in our very short temporal frame of reference) as the Earth orbits the sun. In the summer, the northern hemisphere is leaned over toward the sun, and the sun’s light shines more directly on the north half of the planet. In the winter, the northern hemisphere is leaned away from the sun, and the sun’s light shines less directly on the north half of the planet. If you live below the Equator, in Australia, say, the process is exactly reversed, and your summer begins in late December while your winter begins in late June.
All in all, three things have to work in concert to provide the seasons and the apparent solar movement we see. Earth has to orbit the sun. Earth has to rotate. And – perhaps most importantly – Earth has to be “leaned over” with an axial tilt of 23.5 degrees.
So enjoy next Tuesday, Dec. 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year, with the certain knowledge that as our planet continues to orbit the sun, our trusty axial tilt will mean lengthening days. Before you know it, it will once again be spring, and life will begin anew across the lovely and majestic Great Plains.
Wednesday, December 22 will be about two seconds longer than Tuesday, and Wednesday night about three seconds shorter. And so it will go, days getting longer and nights shorter until on June 21, 2011 at 11:16 a.m., the sun will stop moving north and begin moving south. June 21 will be the longest day of the year at 14 hours, 59 minutes and 8 seconds. The night of June 21 will be the shortest of the year at only 9 hours and 52 seconds.
This is the Earth-centric view, of course. Although the day/night duration calculations are correct, and days seem to get shorter in the summer and fall and longer in the winter and spring, that’s just our perspective from the surface of the earth. In reality, so far as our solar system is concerned, the sun is fixed in the center of the system and the planets – including the Earth – orbit around it.
But Earth’s annual trip around the sun – its orbit – doesn’t account for the apparent movement of the sun – south to north in winter and spring and north to south in summer and fall. Were it as simple as that – the Earth orbiting the sun – we’d have a situation similar to that of the Moon. Luna, as the Moon is often called, orbits the Earth and rotates on its axis only once per revolution, keeping one side, the side familiar to us, always facing the Earth. The other side – the so-called dark side – never faces our planet, and only since the advent of space flight and rocket trips to the moon has man ever had a glimpse of the dark side.
But Earth, which is not tide-locked into a single rotation per orbit as the moon is, rotates much more frequently, making 365 and a quarter rotations for each orbit around the sun. Each rotation takes just under 24 hours. From these numbers, 365.25 and 24, we derive the length of our year, measured in days, and the length of our day, measured in hours.
This is all very well, but the fact that the Earth rotates once per day and orbits the sun every 365.25 days doesn’t explain the apparent north-south, south-north movement of the sun when viewed from the surface of Earth.
What causes that apparent movement is the fact that the Earth is tilted about 23.5 degrees in relation to the plane in which it orbits the sun. This plane is called “The Plane of the Ecliptic,” and is the same plane occupied by the other seven planets of our solar system as they orbit the sun. If the Earth stood vertical in the Plane of the Ecliptic, with the north pole straight up and south pole straight down, the sun would never move north or south. It would rise each morning in precisely the same location on the eastern horizon and set each evening in precisely the same location on the western horizon. Each period of day and night would be the same from day to day, and those periods would be very close to 12 hours for most of the planet.
Earth is tilted, however, and presently the axis of rotation – an imaginary line drawn through the center of the earth from the north physical pole to the south physical pole and around which the earth rotates once every 24 hours – is leaned over at 23.5 degrees.
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| The Earth’s axial tilt of 23.5 degrees is the secret to the seasons, and the secret to December’s Winter Solstice. (Image courtesy NASA/In the public domain) |
All in all, three things have to work in concert to provide the seasons and the apparent solar movement we see. Earth has to orbit the sun. Earth has to rotate. And – perhaps most importantly – Earth has to be “leaned over” with an axial tilt of 23.5 degrees.
So enjoy next Tuesday, Dec. 21, the shortest day and longest night of the year, with the certain knowledge that as our planet continues to orbit the sun, our trusty axial tilt will mean lengthening days. Before you know it, it will once again be spring, and life will begin anew across the lovely and majestic Great Plains.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Dreams
In honor of the Middies big win today...
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/200325/760975
More than 25 years ago. My how time flies. The A-4F Super Fox was probably the best aircraft the Blue Angels ever performed in. Some of the footage gives you a real feeling for what "form" is really like.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/200325/760975
More than 25 years ago. My how time flies. The A-4F Super Fox was probably the best aircraft the Blue Angels ever performed in. Some of the footage gives you a real feeling for what "form" is really like.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Gales of November
When I stepped out of the house last Wednesday morning, into the teeth of a screeching, frozen wind, lyrics from the Gordon Lightfoot song “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” came to mind. Sure, I was on a ranch more than a thousand miles from Lake Superior, site of the infamous 1975 sinking of the mighty ore carrier, and it was late in the month, rather than “early”, but these sure seemed to be “…the gales of November.”
Only a few days after last weekend’s freezing fog departed, a howling wind began blowing across the EJE Ranch south of Kimball. Starting the day before Thanksgiving, the northwest wind averaged close to 30 mph for three days, with daytime gusts topping 40, and sometimes 50, mph. Combined with frigid temperatures ranging from 6 to 20 degrees F., the wind made outdoor excursions bracing a best, and often downright miserable.
Miserable is one way to describe the experience of feeding calves under such conditions. The cold makes everything harder to begin with. Bulky clothes keep the body warm but add extra weight and impede movement. Heavy winter gloves – a true godsend – keep hands and fingers from freezing up but pretty much destroy manual dexterity. Corn freezes solid at the spout of the grain wagon and needs to be pounded into free-flowing submission. The big round hay bales take on a layer of hard frost, and extra effort is needed to peel off slabs for forking up to the feed bunk. Once the labor starts and blood begins to flow, the body warms up nicely, but quickly becomes too warm under heavy clothing, and sweat begins to flow.
Add a howling wind to the equation, and regardless of how well your hood is tied or how tightly your jacket cuffs fit, your clothing is quickly blown full of itchy, scratchy hay. And rather than “pitching” hay along the feed bunk, as you can do in calm weather, each fork-full must be laboriously carried to it’s place.
Once the labor is ended, as you walk the feedlot to eyeball the calves for health and soundness, you begin to cool down. Your sweat-sodden under garments become cold and clammy, itchy and scratchy, a totally miserable feeling. And there’s still ice to chop in five tanks, cows and heifers to check and feed, electric fence to test and monitor, and often as not, snow to scoop and icy porch steps to salt.
Paradoxically, I love morning chores. On freezing, blustery days when the labor is hard and the conditions harsh, I’m locked in a contest I know I can win. There’s a lot to be said for that. I know that I can bear down and persevere – or as we used to say in the military, “suck it up and drive on.” Knowing that you can do hard and miserable things and be defeated by neither the elements nor the task is a good and valuable thing.
I love watching the seasons change, walking and working on the same patch of High Plains real estate, standing and laboring in the same geographic place in snow and rain and dry, under solid cloud or solid blue or all the possibilities in between, in dead calm air or seething winds, in temperatures anywhere between minus 30 and plus 110. I get to see the whole of this place, from extreme harshness to sublime mildness. I know the faces of this place, know them intimately, love them all.
I love watching the cattle; from birth all the way to their final days, watching them grow in health and vigor, watching them graze and eat and play and survive, watching them persevere in harsh weather and grow slick and fat in fine. I love to labor alongside them; fixing fence or putting up hay or chopping ice or just striding out amongst them, out over the vast and flourishing shortgrass prairie and under the same sky and sun, out there in the real world, the place that I love.
Only a few days after last weekend’s freezing fog departed, a howling wind began blowing across the EJE Ranch south of Kimball. Starting the day before Thanksgiving, the northwest wind averaged close to 30 mph for three days, with daytime gusts topping 40, and sometimes 50, mph. Combined with frigid temperatures ranging from 6 to 20 degrees F., the wind made outdoor excursions bracing a best, and often downright miserable.
Miserable is one way to describe the experience of feeding calves under such conditions. The cold makes everything harder to begin with. Bulky clothes keep the body warm but add extra weight and impede movement. Heavy winter gloves – a true godsend – keep hands and fingers from freezing up but pretty much destroy manual dexterity. Corn freezes solid at the spout of the grain wagon and needs to be pounded into free-flowing submission. The big round hay bales take on a layer of hard frost, and extra effort is needed to peel off slabs for forking up to the feed bunk. Once the labor starts and blood begins to flow, the body warms up nicely, but quickly becomes too warm under heavy clothing, and sweat begins to flow.
Add a howling wind to the equation, and regardless of how well your hood is tied or how tightly your jacket cuffs fit, your clothing is quickly blown full of itchy, scratchy hay. And rather than “pitching” hay along the feed bunk, as you can do in calm weather, each fork-full must be laboriously carried to it’s place.
Once the labor is ended, as you walk the feedlot to eyeball the calves for health and soundness, you begin to cool down. Your sweat-sodden under garments become cold and clammy, itchy and scratchy, a totally miserable feeling. And there’s still ice to chop in five tanks, cows and heifers to check and feed, electric fence to test and monitor, and often as not, snow to scoop and icy porch steps to salt.
Paradoxically, I love morning chores. On freezing, blustery days when the labor is hard and the conditions harsh, I’m locked in a contest I know I can win. There’s a lot to be said for that. I know that I can bear down and persevere – or as we used to say in the military, “suck it up and drive on.” Knowing that you can do hard and miserable things and be defeated by neither the elements nor the task is a good and valuable thing.
I love watching the seasons change, walking and working on the same patch of High Plains real estate, standing and laboring in the same geographic place in snow and rain and dry, under solid cloud or solid blue or all the possibilities in between, in dead calm air or seething winds, in temperatures anywhere between minus 30 and plus 110. I get to see the whole of this place, from extreme harshness to sublime mildness. I know the faces of this place, know them intimately, love them all.
I love watching the cattle; from birth all the way to their final days, watching them grow in health and vigor, watching them graze and eat and play and survive, watching them persevere in harsh weather and grow slick and fat in fine. I love to labor alongside them; fixing fence or putting up hay or chopping ice or just striding out amongst them, out over the vast and flourishing shortgrass prairie and under the same sky and sun, out there in the real world, the place that I love.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Haji
He wasn’t Haji then, he was just a week old calf abandoned by his mother, laying near death on the south side of a stock tank.
He looked like a brown bag of bones, eyes closed and breathing so slowly and so shallowly that he almost wasn’t. His gums and tongue were pale and as cold as the dust he lay in. He looked deflated, like a week-old party balloon. Not completely flat but close to it.
He was dehydrated and hypothermic, and those paired threats would kill him in short order if not immediately treated. He may already have been on the wrong side of the survival curve, past the point of recovery. But he was still with us, the spark of life was still there.
I scooped him up and placed him on the back seat in the pickup cab. He was surprisingly hard to lift and carry. Completely limp and utterly unresponsive, he was like a 60 pound bag of jello. His head lolled and hung off the side of the seat, so I had to shift his whole body to close the door. As I drove out of the pasture and headed to the home place three miles down the road I wondered if he’d survive the five-minute drive.
At the barn I lay him down in the sunshine on a bed of clean straw. He seemed a little bit more responsive, moving his legs and weakly trying to lift his head. Maybe that was a good sign, but maybe it was just a last bit of thrashing before death, which seemed to hover oh-so-near on that crisp April morning.
At the house I mixed a cup of electrolyte powder – mostly salt and sugar – in a quart of warm water and poured it into a soft plastic drenching bag. I fitted the long esophageal tube to the bag and retraced my steps to the barn. The calf was still alive and seemed to be breathing a bit more regularly. But he was still flat out and unresponsive.
I rolled him upright, legs underneath, and held him in place between my legs. Bending down, I raised his head to a hyper-extended position with my left hand and slid the drenching tube into the side of his mouth. With gentle pressure and a little jiggling I worked the tube down his esophagus and into his stomach. As soon as the end of the tube cleared his esophagus the electrolyte solution began flowing. The calf weakly chewed on the tube as the warm fluid filled his belly. His tongue and lips felt icy cold on my fingers, a sure sign that he was deeply hypothermic.
When the bag emptied I tossed it aside and moved the calf to a clean straw bed in a warming box. The box was a cube about three feet on a side, and equipped with an infrared lamp. The calf was still flat out and mostly unresponsive, but still alive and breathing. “Hang in there, buddy,” I said as I vigorously rubbed him down. I hung an old saddle blanket over the opening of the warming box to help hold in the warmth, then left to get on with morning chores. I’d done all I could for the calf. His survival now depended on whether he had enough energy left to make proper use of the electrolyte. Having never seen a calf this close to death recover, I gave him little chance to survive.
When I returned to the barn thirty minutes later I was pretty sure I’d find a corpse. But when I looked at the warming box, much to my delighted surprise, the calf was standing up, trembling a bit, and looking around. He tried to step out of the box but didn’t quite have the energy to get over the six-inch lip. “Hey, buddy, you’re looking good,” I said. In truth he looked sick and bedraggled and woebegone, but for all that, he was remarkably improved from when I’d left him.
The slanting morning sun was still bright and warm, and the forecast was for clear skies and moderate temperatures, so I moved the calf back to the sunlit straw bed near the south door. He was very weak and still shivering a bit, but he could hold his head up now and the sunshine would provide gentle, natural warming. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, but he had a fighting chance.
The next two weeks were far from easy for the calf. He needed electrolyte drenching a few more times, and drenching with milk replacer, too. He rallied and faded three or four times in the first week, then began to slowly progress day by day. He learned to take milk replacer from the bottle, and I fed him colostrum collected from a couple of new momma cows to give his immune system a boost.
In a perfect world we’d have been able to get a cow to adopt him. We had two candidates, a cow and heifer, each of which had lost a calf. But for one reason or another, neither would pair up with the hard luck calf. The calf knew what to do and was happy to nurse when the cow was restrained by a headgate, but he was either too weak or too timid to persist when the cow pushed him away or otherwise discouraged him.
We continued to bottle feed the growing calf and he quickly became a farmyard fixture, ambling around the outbuildings and through the windbreak, nibbling on tender spring grass and weeds and finding warm, sheltered spots to lie up and sunbathe. Mom took to feeding him his morning bottle, and the calf would follow her around whenever she was outside. One day he even followed her into the house, nipping quickly through the door behind her. He came to grief on the slick tile floor, though, slipping and falling heavily, then scrabbling and flopping wildly as he tried to regain his feet. After that experience he’d come to the door and look inside but never again tried to enter.
After a couple of weeks we turned him out with the first-calf heifers to see of he could learn to “steal” milk, and he got pretty good at it. He learned to sneak in from behind while a calf was nursing from the side, and the mild-tempered new mommas tolerated his antics quite well. He wasn’t the only “thief,” either. One of the smaller heifers had given birth to twins, and the plucky brother and sister soon learned to nurse from the closest and most convenient udder. We kept feeding the orphan calf a twice-daily bottle, and he was soon growing like a weed.
The calf took on an interesting personality, seemingly at home both in the herd and around people. Mom opined that we treated him like a sacred cow, so we took to calling him Haji. A long list of youngsters got in on the bottle feeding act, town kids and visiting grandkids and nieces and nephews. The kids delighted in feeding him, and he seemed to enjoy being around the kids. His primary interest was always the bottle, of course, but he always looked at, sniffed, and licked the “miniature” people (which the kids enjoyed more than their mothers).
After 60 days we stopped the milk replacer and Haji was on his own. He was eating grass and had become an expert at nursing on the sly. He continued to grow at a rapid pace and eventually caught up with and surpassed some of the younger calves. It was a good summer to be a bottle calf, with abundant grass and lots of sweetclover and plenty of young cows to sneak a bit of nursing from. At preconditioning on Oct. 9 he weighed in at 400 lbs. He was the lightest of the calves out of the mature cow herd and fell 140 lbs. below the average of that group. He was on the light end of the group out of the first-calf heifers, too, but not the lightest, and only 72 lbs. off the average weight of that group.
As we worked him in the chute, applying a brand and giving him shots, he was pretty much indistinguishable from the other calves, healthy and strong and anxious to leave the chute and get back to the pasture.
The time and expense of bottle feeding Haji will eat into his profit margin a bit, but not a lot. Though the battle to salvage orphan calves can be a tough and vexing one, it pays off in several ways. Firstly, of course, at the sale barn, where you can only sell the live ones. Secondly, the challenge is enjoyable, and part of the responsibility of animal husbandry. Finally, every bottle calf represents an opportunity to introduce a crop of youngsters to the ranch and the ranching experience. Most of those kids will remember seeing the cows and calves grazing naturally on grass and remember feeding Haji in the warm sunshine. Perhaps they’ll be less inclined to believe the anti-ag stories spun by those who’ve never actually visited a ranch.
He looked like a brown bag of bones, eyes closed and breathing so slowly and so shallowly that he almost wasn’t. His gums and tongue were pale and as cold as the dust he lay in. He looked deflated, like a week-old party balloon. Not completely flat but close to it.
He was dehydrated and hypothermic, and those paired threats would kill him in short order if not immediately treated. He may already have been on the wrong side of the survival curve, past the point of recovery. But he was still with us, the spark of life was still there.
I scooped him up and placed him on the back seat in the pickup cab. He was surprisingly hard to lift and carry. Completely limp and utterly unresponsive, he was like a 60 pound bag of jello. His head lolled and hung off the side of the seat, so I had to shift his whole body to close the door. As I drove out of the pasture and headed to the home place three miles down the road I wondered if he’d survive the five-minute drive.
At the barn I lay him down in the sunshine on a bed of clean straw. He seemed a little bit more responsive, moving his legs and weakly trying to lift his head. Maybe that was a good sign, but maybe it was just a last bit of thrashing before death, which seemed to hover oh-so-near on that crisp April morning.
At the house I mixed a cup of electrolyte powder – mostly salt and sugar – in a quart of warm water and poured it into a soft plastic drenching bag. I fitted the long esophageal tube to the bag and retraced my steps to the barn. The calf was still alive and seemed to be breathing a bit more regularly. But he was still flat out and unresponsive.
I rolled him upright, legs underneath, and held him in place between my legs. Bending down, I raised his head to a hyper-extended position with my left hand and slid the drenching tube into the side of his mouth. With gentle pressure and a little jiggling I worked the tube down his esophagus and into his stomach. As soon as the end of the tube cleared his esophagus the electrolyte solution began flowing. The calf weakly chewed on the tube as the warm fluid filled his belly. His tongue and lips felt icy cold on my fingers, a sure sign that he was deeply hypothermic.
When the bag emptied I tossed it aside and moved the calf to a clean straw bed in a warming box. The box was a cube about three feet on a side, and equipped with an infrared lamp. The calf was still flat out and mostly unresponsive, but still alive and breathing. “Hang in there, buddy,” I said as I vigorously rubbed him down. I hung an old saddle blanket over the opening of the warming box to help hold in the warmth, then left to get on with morning chores. I’d done all I could for the calf. His survival now depended on whether he had enough energy left to make proper use of the electrolyte. Having never seen a calf this close to death recover, I gave him little chance to survive.
When I returned to the barn thirty minutes later I was pretty sure I’d find a corpse. But when I looked at the warming box, much to my delighted surprise, the calf was standing up, trembling a bit, and looking around. He tried to step out of the box but didn’t quite have the energy to get over the six-inch lip. “Hey, buddy, you’re looking good,” I said. In truth he looked sick and bedraggled and woebegone, but for all that, he was remarkably improved from when I’d left him.
The slanting morning sun was still bright and warm, and the forecast was for clear skies and moderate temperatures, so I moved the calf back to the sunlit straw bed near the south door. He was very weak and still shivering a bit, but he could hold his head up now and the sunshine would provide gentle, natural warming. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, but he had a fighting chance.
The next two weeks were far from easy for the calf. He needed electrolyte drenching a few more times, and drenching with milk replacer, too. He rallied and faded three or four times in the first week, then began to slowly progress day by day. He learned to take milk replacer from the bottle, and I fed him colostrum collected from a couple of new momma cows to give his immune system a boost.
In a perfect world we’d have been able to get a cow to adopt him. We had two candidates, a cow and heifer, each of which had lost a calf. But for one reason or another, neither would pair up with the hard luck calf. The calf knew what to do and was happy to nurse when the cow was restrained by a headgate, but he was either too weak or too timid to persist when the cow pushed him away or otherwise discouraged him.
We continued to bottle feed the growing calf and he quickly became a farmyard fixture, ambling around the outbuildings and through the windbreak, nibbling on tender spring grass and weeds and finding warm, sheltered spots to lie up and sunbathe. Mom took to feeding him his morning bottle, and the calf would follow her around whenever she was outside. One day he even followed her into the house, nipping quickly through the door behind her. He came to grief on the slick tile floor, though, slipping and falling heavily, then scrabbling and flopping wildly as he tried to regain his feet. After that experience he’d come to the door and look inside but never again tried to enter.
After a couple of weeks we turned him out with the first-calf heifers to see of he could learn to “steal” milk, and he got pretty good at it. He learned to sneak in from behind while a calf was nursing from the side, and the mild-tempered new mommas tolerated his antics quite well. He wasn’t the only “thief,” either. One of the smaller heifers had given birth to twins, and the plucky brother and sister soon learned to nurse from the closest and most convenient udder. We kept feeding the orphan calf a twice-daily bottle, and he was soon growing like a weed.
After 60 days we stopped the milk replacer and Haji was on his own. He was eating grass and had become an expert at nursing on the sly. He continued to grow at a rapid pace and eventually caught up with and surpassed some of the younger calves. It was a good summer to be a bottle calf, with abundant grass and lots of sweetclover and plenty of young cows to sneak a bit of nursing from. At preconditioning on Oct. 9 he weighed in at 400 lbs. He was the lightest of the calves out of the mature cow herd and fell 140 lbs. below the average of that group. He was on the light end of the group out of the first-calf heifers, too, but not the lightest, and only 72 lbs. off the average weight of that group.
The time and expense of bottle feeding Haji will eat into his profit margin a bit, but not a lot. Though the battle to salvage orphan calves can be a tough and vexing one, it pays off in several ways. Firstly, of course, at the sale barn, where you can only sell the live ones. Secondly, the challenge is enjoyable, and part of the responsibility of animal husbandry. Finally, every bottle calf represents an opportunity to introduce a crop of youngsters to the ranch and the ranching experience. Most of those kids will remember seeing the cows and calves grazing naturally on grass and remember feeding Haji in the warm sunshine. Perhaps they’ll be less inclined to believe the anti-ag stories spun by those who’ve never actually visited a ranch.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A runway runs through it
I was giving a ranch tour to some city folk a few years back. As we drove along county roads and trail roads I pointed out crops and cattle and talked about what we do on the ranch and why. The four city folk – husband and wife, son and daughter – seemed interested and asked quite a few of the usual questions. Until the daughter, a mildly sullen 12 year-old, asked, “ How can you stand to live here? I mean, there’s nothing here!”
It was a question I should have been, but wasn’t, prepared for. These days I “head ‘em off at the pass” by emphasizing, at the beginning of the tour, the differences between the High Plains shortgrass prairie and the region they hail from.
But my response to the 12 year-old wasn’t very convincing. Wherever she looked, all she saw was a dreary landscape of grass and some cows. New Jersey, in her mind, was much, much better. People and trees and cool places to go and fun things to do. Nebraska was nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. Yuck!
As we neared the end of the tour I drove down the county road toward the home place, passing Kimball’s tiny airport on the south. Sitting on the left side of the vehicle, the girl hadn’t noticed it as we motored past at the beginning of the tour. “Hey! Are those airplanes?”
So we stopped and took a quick tour of Robert E. Arraj Field, Kimball’s Municipal Airport. I walked the family through the flight center office, pointing out the phones and computers for checking weather, then out onto the flight line. There were four light airplanes tied down on the ramp: a pair of Beech Bonanzas, a Piper Cherokee, and a Cessna 172. “We can walk right up and look,” I said, “But don’t touch the airplanes.”
As we walked around and looked, I was able to use my aviation background to answer questions about the airport and airplanes. The family seemed to enjoy the tour and were fascinated that we could just stop by and walk on in. “This is soooo cool!” said the formerly pouting 12 year-old, over and over. Chalk that tour up as a success.
I hadn’t thought about the local airport as a potential part of a ranch tour, but I’ve added it to the itinerary. And why not? In my life it’s always been there, just across the county road from the home place. In fact, the airport is pretty much surrounded by the EJE. And in addition to operating and housing airplanes, the airport is also a working agricultural enterprise, where a couple of local farmers raise wheat and hay.
And though it’s a small airport, home to less than a dozen aircraft, there is always a good deal of activity. With a wide, modern runway and both jet fuel and aviation gasoline available, Kimball is a popular stop for aircraft passing through. Whenever I drive by I always look at the flight line and I’m often rewarded with a glimpse of an interesting aircraft. Sometimes I stop and visit with the crews.
Monday was a good example. As I drove by the airport I saw a pair of Japanese “Zero” fighters parked in the fuel pits. Zeroes? Sure! Having seen these airplanes before at air shows, I knew what they were, and in the middle of air show season, with Kimball a good gas stop, I wasn’t surprised to see them. So I stopped, visited with the crews, and took a few pictures.
The airplanes were part of Tora Tora Tora flight of the Commemorative Air Force (CAF). The flight formed in the 1970's to commemorate World War II aircraft and the crews who flew them in defense of the U.S. and her allies. The aircraft, North American Harvard (T-6/SNJ) trainers built during the war and later converted by Hollywood for movie work, do a Pearl Harbor reenactment at airshows all over North America. They also continue to appear in movies and on television, most recently in the movie “Pearl Harbor.”
The pilots Monday were Dan Reedy and Ron Wright of Houston. Ron's wife Linda was along and riding in the tiny back seat of his “Zero”. They were very nice folks, and even though they were in a hurry to get home, they took the time to tell me about their aircraft and the air show in Lethbridge, Alberta, they’d participated in over the weekend. It happened to be the air show where a Canadian CF-18 crashed, providing spectacular video for television news around the world.
Even though the Wrights and Reedy were anxious to get home, they took the time to give us a formation flyover – including a shot of air show smoke – as they departed. A very nice gesture.
So that’s why Kimball’s tiny airport is now part of the EJE Ranch tour. There’s more than meets the eye in “flyover” country, including some of the things that fly over!
It was a question I should have been, but wasn’t, prepared for. These days I “head ‘em off at the pass” by emphasizing, at the beginning of the tour, the differences between the High Plains shortgrass prairie and the region they hail from.
But my response to the 12 year-old wasn’t very convincing. Wherever she looked, all she saw was a dreary landscape of grass and some cows. New Jersey, in her mind, was much, much better. People and trees and cool places to go and fun things to do. Nebraska was nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. Yuck!
As we neared the end of the tour I drove down the county road toward the home place, passing Kimball’s tiny airport on the south. Sitting on the left side of the vehicle, the girl hadn’t noticed it as we motored past at the beginning of the tour. “Hey! Are those airplanes?”
So we stopped and took a quick tour of Robert E. Arraj Field, Kimball’s Municipal Airport. I walked the family through the flight center office, pointing out the phones and computers for checking weather, then out onto the flight line. There were four light airplanes tied down on the ramp: a pair of Beech Bonanzas, a Piper Cherokee, and a Cessna 172. “We can walk right up and look,” I said, “But don’t touch the airplanes.”
As we walked around and looked, I was able to use my aviation background to answer questions about the airport and airplanes. The family seemed to enjoy the tour and were fascinated that we could just stop by and walk on in. “This is soooo cool!” said the formerly pouting 12 year-old, over and over. Chalk that tour up as a success.
I hadn’t thought about the local airport as a potential part of a ranch tour, but I’ve added it to the itinerary. And why not? In my life it’s always been there, just across the county road from the home place. In fact, the airport is pretty much surrounded by the EJE. And in addition to operating and housing airplanes, the airport is also a working agricultural enterprise, where a couple of local farmers raise wheat and hay.
And though it’s a small airport, home to less than a dozen aircraft, there is always a good deal of activity. With a wide, modern runway and both jet fuel and aviation gasoline available, Kimball is a popular stop for aircraft passing through. Whenever I drive by I always look at the flight line and I’m often rewarded with a glimpse of an interesting aircraft. Sometimes I stop and visit with the crews.
Monday was a good example. As I drove by the airport I saw a pair of Japanese “Zero” fighters parked in the fuel pits. Zeroes? Sure! Having seen these airplanes before at air shows, I knew what they were, and in the middle of air show season, with Kimball a good gas stop, I wasn’t surprised to see them. So I stopped, visited with the crews, and took a few pictures.
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| AI-114, Tora Tora Tora Flight of the Commemorative Air Force, on the ramp at Kimball Municipal Airport Monday afternoon. This aircraft was manufactured as a North American Harvard during WWII, then rebuilt by the film industry in the early 1970's to resemble a Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zero" for the movie "Tora Tora Tora." |
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| Pilot Ron Wright taxies AI-112 out of the fuel pits at Kimball Municipal Airport Monday afternoon. Wright and his wife Linda, along with Pilot Dan Reedy (flying AI-114), landed their two "Zeroes" at Kimball for food and fuel while returning to their home base in Texas. The two "Zeroes" and six other aircraft of Tora Tora Tora Flight of the Commemorative Air Force were featured at an airshow in Lethbridge, Alberta over the weekend. |
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| Dan Reedy, "Zero" pilot with Tora Tora Tora Flight of the Commemorative Air Force, visits with a local reporter at the Kimball Municipal Airport (IBM) Flight Center Monday. At left is fellow "Zero" pilot Ron Wright. |
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| Though the paint scheme and some cosmetic changes to the nose, canopy and tail make this aircraft look quite similar to the Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zero," it remains a North American Harvard at heart. The engine is the famous Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp. |
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| Zeroes on the Kimball flight line! |
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| Veteran of the movies "Tora Tora Tora" and "Final Countdown" as well as the movie/television series "Baa Baa Black Sheep," this WWII-era North American Harvard trainer has been altered to resemble a Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zero" fighter. |
So that’s why Kimball’s tiny airport is now part of the EJE Ranch tour. There’s more than meets the eye in “flyover” country, including some of the things that fly over!
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| Form and Smoke! A pair of Tora Tora Tora flight aircraft, Commemorative Air Force, depart Kimball Municipal Airport Monday afternoon following a fuel stop. Many thanks to Linda and Ron Wright and Dan Reedy for your willingness to share your story with us. |
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Fixin' Fence
Just after 3 p.m. the temperature bumps into triple digits. First 100, then 101, then finally 102. I don’t know it at the time, and frankly, I don’t care. It’s hot, very hot, and after a wonderfully cool spring I’m not used to or prepared for very hot.
I’m fixing fence on the EJE, one of the usual summer chores. The fence I’m working on has been rather neglected for several years, low on last summer’s priority list but high on this year’s. As I bake in the stifling heat I suddenly grin and laugh to myself as I realize (for the zillionth time?) how much I love this chore, even though I hate it from the bottom of my heart. Such contradictions are part and parcel of ranching. I turn and look at the wash I’ve just climbed out of, and pause to admire the straight, tight section of fence I’ve just completed. There was no grin on my face thirty minutes ago…
There’s only the barest hint of a breeze, and only occasionally. The air is mostly still and close and hot, and more humid than normal because the lush grass and sweetclover are transpiring, sucking in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen and water vapor. I feel the weight of the atmosphere bearing down from above, wrapping me in a hot, wet blanket of misery. Sweat pours from my skin and my clothes, boots and gloves become wet and sodden. Perspiration fairly pours from under the sopping ball cap on my head, running in a steady stream past the sweatband, into my ears and over my face. The sweat rivulets wash bug spray from my forehead and deposit in my now-stinging eyes. As I plod along the fenceline, stooping and grasping and nailing wire to wooden posts, I find myself on the edge of a small wash. Below me, in the bottom of the wash, mustard grows rank and wild, six feet tall and more.
The mustard-filled wash is hellish. The stiff stems and leaves claw and scratch at my arms and legs and snarl the four strands of barbed wire. Sorting the wires out is pure misery in the wash-bottom oven. The wire seems to be playing a rude game, dodging away from my sight and grasp, then suddenly snapping back and biting my arms until the sweat runs red. Cloying, choking mustard pollen fills the air and makes me cough and sneeze and wheeze and gasp. At my feet, hidden in an impossible snarl of weeds and wire, there is a sudden harsh buzzing sound. I jump and yell instinctively, fearing the sound means snake, even as in mid-jump I realize it’s only a grasshopper.
Time seems to stand still there in the wash, and my world becomes very small; only me, my fencing task, and natures efforts to defeat me. I persist, and keep working, despite a deep desire to give up and leave the wash for another time, another day. Slowly I gain the upper hand, get the wires unsnarled, staple each to the appropriate spot on the half-dozen nearly invisible posts. After what seems an eternity I scramble up the other side and emerge triumphant. Breathing heavily, with sweat pouring and eyes stinging, I look back and grin.
The misery of such labor is just that – misery. I hate it passionately – the heat and the sweat and the coughing; the close, stifling air and the stinging eyes and biting barbs. At the same time, however, the victory is sweet and delightful. I don’t think I can describe it adequately, but it includes the deep satisfaction in having struggled mightily and persevered and won out by finishing the job and doing it well.
I learned about fixin’ fence and learned the love and the hate of the thing when I was a youngster. Those memories are never far away when I’m doing the chore, and they’ve always been close and served me well whenever I’ve struggled with other hard tasks. During the harsh physical regimen of boot camp, for instance, while other tough 18 year-olds were falling out and giving up, I knew I could persevere and dig deep for untapped reserves. They’ve always been there; the well has never run dry.
The lesson’s not just about toil and perseverance, though. It’s about doing good work and contributing to an enterprise, of being part of something larger and longer-lived than oneself. There’s somehow a solid comfort in sharing the sweat and toil of my forbears on the same land and for the same reasons. One of those reasons, and perhaps the most important, is preserving the EJE’s ranching heritage for generations yet to come.
I have a nephew working with me this summer, trading the sweat of his brow for college cash. He’s always known “the farm” as the place where Googie and Grampy live, and as a place of fun and adventure. As he struggles now with fixin’ fence he’s seeing the ranch through different eyes, and he’s learning to hate the task with a passion. But he’s a good, solid young man, and though he may not realize it yet, he’s already showing signs of learning to love the task, too. He’ll probably never take up the profession of agriculture, but what he learns this summer will stand him in good stead no matter what he does in life.
I turn and move along the fenceline once again, bending and grasping and nailing, with the hint of a smile lingering on my still-sweaty face. The breeze picks up a bit and a cloud passes over, providing some much needed and wonderful shade. Delightful! Then the sweat bees show up.
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| Sweat bee, Dialictus zephrum |
I’m fixing fence on the EJE, one of the usual summer chores. The fence I’m working on has been rather neglected for several years, low on last summer’s priority list but high on this year’s. As I bake in the stifling heat I suddenly grin and laugh to myself as I realize (for the zillionth time?) how much I love this chore, even though I hate it from the bottom of my heart. Such contradictions are part and parcel of ranching. I turn and look at the wash I’ve just climbed out of, and pause to admire the straight, tight section of fence I’ve just completed. There was no grin on my face thirty minutes ago…
There’s only the barest hint of a breeze, and only occasionally. The air is mostly still and close and hot, and more humid than normal because the lush grass and sweetclover are transpiring, sucking in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen and water vapor. I feel the weight of the atmosphere bearing down from above, wrapping me in a hot, wet blanket of misery. Sweat pours from my skin and my clothes, boots and gloves become wet and sodden. Perspiration fairly pours from under the sopping ball cap on my head, running in a steady stream past the sweatband, into my ears and over my face. The sweat rivulets wash bug spray from my forehead and deposit in my now-stinging eyes. As I plod along the fenceline, stooping and grasping and nailing wire to wooden posts, I find myself on the edge of a small wash. Below me, in the bottom of the wash, mustard grows rank and wild, six feet tall and more.
The mustard-filled wash is hellish. The stiff stems and leaves claw and scratch at my arms and legs and snarl the four strands of barbed wire. Sorting the wires out is pure misery in the wash-bottom oven. The wire seems to be playing a rude game, dodging away from my sight and grasp, then suddenly snapping back and biting my arms until the sweat runs red. Cloying, choking mustard pollen fills the air and makes me cough and sneeze and wheeze and gasp. At my feet, hidden in an impossible snarl of weeds and wire, there is a sudden harsh buzzing sound. I jump and yell instinctively, fearing the sound means snake, even as in mid-jump I realize it’s only a grasshopper.
Time seems to stand still there in the wash, and my world becomes very small; only me, my fencing task, and natures efforts to defeat me. I persist, and keep working, despite a deep desire to give up and leave the wash for another time, another day. Slowly I gain the upper hand, get the wires unsnarled, staple each to the appropriate spot on the half-dozen nearly invisible posts. After what seems an eternity I scramble up the other side and emerge triumphant. Breathing heavily, with sweat pouring and eyes stinging, I look back and grin.
The misery of such labor is just that – misery. I hate it passionately – the heat and the sweat and the coughing; the close, stifling air and the stinging eyes and biting barbs. At the same time, however, the victory is sweet and delightful. I don’t think I can describe it adequately, but it includes the deep satisfaction in having struggled mightily and persevered and won out by finishing the job and doing it well.
I learned about fixin’ fence and learned the love and the hate of the thing when I was a youngster. Those memories are never far away when I’m doing the chore, and they’ve always been close and served me well whenever I’ve struggled with other hard tasks. During the harsh physical regimen of boot camp, for instance, while other tough 18 year-olds were falling out and giving up, I knew I could persevere and dig deep for untapped reserves. They’ve always been there; the well has never run dry.
The lesson’s not just about toil and perseverance, though. It’s about doing good work and contributing to an enterprise, of being part of something larger and longer-lived than oneself. There’s somehow a solid comfort in sharing the sweat and toil of my forbears on the same land and for the same reasons. One of those reasons, and perhaps the most important, is preserving the EJE’s ranching heritage for generations yet to come.
I have a nephew working with me this summer, trading the sweat of his brow for college cash. He’s always known “the farm” as the place where Googie and Grampy live, and as a place of fun and adventure. As he struggles now with fixin’ fence he’s seeing the ranch through different eyes, and he’s learning to hate the task with a passion. But he’s a good, solid young man, and though he may not realize it yet, he’s already showing signs of learning to love the task, too. He’ll probably never take up the profession of agriculture, but what he learns this summer will stand him in good stead no matter what he does in life.
I turn and move along the fenceline once again, bending and grasping and nailing, with the hint of a smile lingering on my still-sweaty face. The breeze picks up a bit and a cloud passes over, providing some much needed and wonderful shade. Delightful! Then the sweat bees show up.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Fixin' Fence 12/22/08
Solstice
I stand at the northwest corner of the pasture and face the rising sun. It’s cold out but the wind is light and at my back and the sun feels good on my face. As I breathe, exhalations of warm, moist air puff into momentary clouds of vapor and glow briefly in the dawn’s early light before dissipating on the breeze.
The pasture glows softly in the slanted morning sun. It’s a gorgeous panorama; ice crystals in the scattered thin snow sparkle brilliantly like diamonds as shortgrass takes on a golden illuminated glow and becomes, at least for a time, a noble carpet fit for royal feet to tread upon.
The sun comes as late this morning as it will come all year, for today marks the winter solstice. Although the Earth is as close to the sun in its elliptical orbit as it will be all year, the northern hemisphere is leaning far over in the planet’s axial tilt. From our perspective, the sun has been moving south since June’s summer solstice, days slowly getting shorter and nights longer. Finally at the end of that long southern march, today will feature the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year. It’s the first day of winter, and tomorrow the sun will begin to move north again, promising a new spring and the return of life to this frigid landscape.
There’s still life here, of course. The cows are at the far end of the pasture, a full mile to the south. From my vantage point I see them as scattered dots, moving slowly across the prairie and casting long shadows away from the sunrise. “Pretty as a picture,” I think, so I quickly snap one with my trusty and rugged digital camera. My pictures never capture the entirety of the subject, but they catch part of it, and I keep taking them.
In a continuing morning ritual, I test the electric fence before dropping the gate. Tester terminal to wire, ground lead to steel post, and voila – five strongly flashing diodes. The fencer is sending 5,000 volt pulses around the pasture. That’ll keep ‘em in – so long as they’re finding enough to eat.
And finding enough they are. This pasture was idled during the growing season and is rank with dry, cured grass and sedge. There’s still a lot of green in the pasture too, low down and near the ground. Though we’ve had some sub-zero temperatures and it’s now winter by the calendar, the hardy shortgrass prairie is still very much alive and hale. There’ll likely be green growth here throughout the winter.
The north stock tank is frozen over with a thick rind of hard, white ice. If this pasture was larger and used more extensively in the winter, it would pay to install propane tank heaters. But it’s not, and the conservative frugality of a successful operation dictates a manual option for making water available to the cows. I take up my maul and begin chopping. Ten minutes of vigorous lumberjacking gets the job done. It’s a good workout, and the 8-inch thick ice yields only grudgingly, but eventually I manage to hack out and clear a large hole. The cows hear the commotion of my labor and begin drifting my way for a drink of cool water. They don’t use as much water in the winter, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to drink every day. Chopping ice is a least favorite task, but it’s arguably the most important job of the cold season.
The south tank is frozen over too, of course. Axe work soon opens it for drinking as well, though I may have to do a bit more copping this evening as the cows return. This tank was a challenge last week when a stiff north wind drove minus 15 degree air down an under-tank rabbit burrow and froze the inlet pipe. Pesky (or something like that) rabbits. A propane torch eventually thawed the frozen pipe but not without a serious struggle, nor without making me wonder if the battle were a losing one.
My brother, prompted by the whining e-mail complaints I was sending out, reminded me that Thoreau (Henry David, of course) had a number of interesting things to say about winter and ice. Thumbing through my well-worn edition of “Walden,” I soon found the place, chapter 16, “The Pond in Winter.”
I stand at the northwest corner of the pasture and face the rising sun. It’s cold out but the wind is light and at my back and the sun feels good on my face. As I breathe, exhalations of warm, moist air puff into momentary clouds of vapor and glow briefly in the dawn’s early light before dissipating on the breeze.
The pasture glows softly in the slanted morning sun. It’s a gorgeous panorama; ice crystals in the scattered thin snow sparkle brilliantly like diamonds as shortgrass takes on a golden illuminated glow and becomes, at least for a time, a noble carpet fit for royal feet to tread upon.
The sun comes as late this morning as it will come all year, for today marks the winter solstice. Although the Earth is as close to the sun in its elliptical orbit as it will be all year, the northern hemisphere is leaning far over in the planet’s axial tilt. From our perspective, the sun has been moving south since June’s summer solstice, days slowly getting shorter and nights longer. Finally at the end of that long southern march, today will feature the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year. It’s the first day of winter, and tomorrow the sun will begin to move north again, promising a new spring and the return of life to this frigid landscape.
There’s still life here, of course. The cows are at the far end of the pasture, a full mile to the south. From my vantage point I see them as scattered dots, moving slowly across the prairie and casting long shadows away from the sunrise. “Pretty as a picture,” I think, so I quickly snap one with my trusty and rugged digital camera. My pictures never capture the entirety of the subject, but they catch part of it, and I keep taking them.
In a continuing morning ritual, I test the electric fence before dropping the gate. Tester terminal to wire, ground lead to steel post, and voila – five strongly flashing diodes. The fencer is sending 5,000 volt pulses around the pasture. That’ll keep ‘em in – so long as they’re finding enough to eat.
And finding enough they are. This pasture was idled during the growing season and is rank with dry, cured grass and sedge. There’s still a lot of green in the pasture too, low down and near the ground. Though we’ve had some sub-zero temperatures and it’s now winter by the calendar, the hardy shortgrass prairie is still very much alive and hale. There’ll likely be green growth here throughout the winter.
The north stock tank is frozen over with a thick rind of hard, white ice. If this pasture was larger and used more extensively in the winter, it would pay to install propane tank heaters. But it’s not, and the conservative frugality of a successful operation dictates a manual option for making water available to the cows. I take up my maul and begin chopping. Ten minutes of vigorous lumberjacking gets the job done. It’s a good workout, and the 8-inch thick ice yields only grudgingly, but eventually I manage to hack out and clear a large hole. The cows hear the commotion of my labor and begin drifting my way for a drink of cool water. They don’t use as much water in the winter, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to drink every day. Chopping ice is a least favorite task, but it’s arguably the most important job of the cold season.
The south tank is frozen over too, of course. Axe work soon opens it for drinking as well, though I may have to do a bit more copping this evening as the cows return. This tank was a challenge last week when a stiff north wind drove minus 15 degree air down an under-tank rabbit burrow and froze the inlet pipe. Pesky (or something like that) rabbits. A propane torch eventually thawed the frozen pipe but not without a serious struggle, nor without making me wonder if the battle were a losing one.
My brother, prompted by the whining e-mail complaints I was sending out, reminded me that Thoreau (Henry David, of course) had a number of interesting things to say about winter and ice. Thumbing through my well-worn edition of “Walden,” I soon found the place, chapter 16, “The Pond in Winter.”
“…I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where…a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
There are moments when the realization of my immense good fortune bursts to the fore and nearly drops me to my knees with gratitude. A frigid winter solstice, a frozen stock tank, and a loving, chiding brotherly reminder provide such a moment. Here’s hoping that each of you kind readers will be similarly blessed in the coming year.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Revisiting the case for ethanol
One of the top themes of the 2008 election cycle was energy independence, and each major presidential candidate presented a plan to achieve that goal. The McCain and Obama plans were remarkably similar, with each candidate emphasizing the need to replace petroleum based fuels with so-called green fuels.
Finding a replacement for petroleum is a good idea. Eliminating American dependence on foreign oil supplies makes good strategic sense, and reducing the environmental impact of energy consumption is simply good stewardship.
At first glance, and in theory, replacing gasoline with ethanol seems a perfect solution. Unfortunately, physics – and by extension economics – gets in the way.
On the physics side, alcohols such as ethanol contain less energy per volume than petroleum distillates like gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 Btu (British thermal unit) of energy, compared to 75,700 Btu for ethanol, or only about 66 percent the energy of gasoline.
The ratio of energy input to work output is more or less constant in an internal combustion engine. You can think of it as 1:1; for each energy unit you put in, you get one work unit out. Put in less energy, you get less work out.
Blending gasoline with ethanol dilutes the energy content of the fuel. A 10 percent blend has only .966 (96.6 percent) the energy as straight gasoline. That 3.4 percent reduction in energy translates directly to fuel efficiency; a 10 percent ethanol blend will deliver 3.4 percent fewer miles per gallon than straight or non-blended gasoline.
Such a relatively modest reduction in fuel efficiency would be of little concern if the cost to energy ratio were the same as the volume to energy ratio. In other words, if the price of 10 percent ethanol blends were 96.6 percent that of non-blended gasoline, the cost per unit of energy would be the same.
Unfortunately, ethanol blends are 10-20 cents per gallon higher than straight or non-blended gasoline prices. On Dec. 17 in Scottsbluff, Neb., non-blended gas was $1.41/gal, while mid-grade and premium ethanol blends, containing four and 10 percent ethanol respectively, were $1.51 and $1.61 per gallon respectively.
To deliver the same energy value as non-blended gasoline, the ethanol blends must be priced at 96.6 percent of the non-blended price, or at the same energy to volume ratio. Therefore the break even price for ethanol blends in Scottsbluff on Dec. 17 was $1.36, or 15 cents lower than the mid-grade price, and 25 cents less than the premium price.
From an energy standpoint, ethanol blends cost more and deliver less energy.
This is just one aspect of the challenge facing America in the ongoing struggle to achieve the worthy goal of energy independence.
Finding a replacement for petroleum is a good idea. Eliminating American dependence on foreign oil supplies makes good strategic sense, and reducing the environmental impact of energy consumption is simply good stewardship.
At first glance, and in theory, replacing gasoline with ethanol seems a perfect solution. Unfortunately, physics – and by extension economics – gets in the way.
On the physics side, alcohols such as ethanol contain less energy per volume than petroleum distillates like gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 Btu (British thermal unit) of energy, compared to 75,700 Btu for ethanol, or only about 66 percent the energy of gasoline.
The ratio of energy input to work output is more or less constant in an internal combustion engine. You can think of it as 1:1; for each energy unit you put in, you get one work unit out. Put in less energy, you get less work out.
Blending gasoline with ethanol dilutes the energy content of the fuel. A 10 percent blend has only .966 (96.6 percent) the energy as straight gasoline. That 3.4 percent reduction in energy translates directly to fuel efficiency; a 10 percent ethanol blend will deliver 3.4 percent fewer miles per gallon than straight or non-blended gasoline.
Such a relatively modest reduction in fuel efficiency would be of little concern if the cost to energy ratio were the same as the volume to energy ratio. In other words, if the price of 10 percent ethanol blends were 96.6 percent that of non-blended gasoline, the cost per unit of energy would be the same.
Unfortunately, ethanol blends are 10-20 cents per gallon higher than straight or non-blended gasoline prices. On Dec. 17 in Scottsbluff, Neb., non-blended gas was $1.41/gal, while mid-grade and premium ethanol blends, containing four and 10 percent ethanol respectively, were $1.51 and $1.61 per gallon respectively.
To deliver the same energy value as non-blended gasoline, the ethanol blends must be priced at 96.6 percent of the non-blended price, or at the same energy to volume ratio. Therefore the break even price for ethanol blends in Scottsbluff on Dec. 17 was $1.36, or 15 cents lower than the mid-grade price, and 25 cents less than the premium price.
From an energy standpoint, ethanol blends cost more and deliver less energy.
This is just one aspect of the challenge facing America in the ongoing struggle to achieve the worthy goal of energy independence.
Financial woes hit ethanol industry, too
Last week the Des Moines Register was only one of a score of corn-belt newspapers reporting in depth on the precarious financial situation of the nation’s ethanol industry. The Register’s lead with, “Experience is said to be a hard teacher, and the ethanol industry has learned some painful new lessons in the last half-year.”
The Register analysts go on to note that “…ethanol producers now know that when corn prices fall, the prices of crude oil and ethanol decline as well.”
Their observation is more or less correct, but their assignment of corn prices as the precipitating factor in oil and ethanol market adjustments is likely at least in part backward. This cart-before-the-horse outlook is probably illustrative of one of the major pitfalls the ethanol industry faces – faulty assessment of the driving factors in corn and ethanol markets.
Most ag economists agree that in the present market, corn and ethanol prices are dictated by oil prices, rather than the reverse. “Corn prices are now tied directly to oil prices,” said Paul Burgener at the Dec. 9 Colorado-Nebraska Crop Clinic in Sidney, Neb. An Ag Economics Research Analyst for the University of Nebraska, Burgener works out of the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff. “Corn is no longer a food and feed commodity,” he said.In the last six months, three of Iowa's 32 ethanol plants have closed and declared bankruptcy. Across the nation, more than a dozen plants have closed and even more newly built plants have delayed opening. At the beginning of the year the industry worried about winning political debates over environmental and food-cost concerns; now as 2008 draws to a close a major issue for many ethanol companies is surviving financially.
The outlook for the industry is far less rosy than it was in January.
Monte Shaw, Director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, sees the climate as “frustrating” for the industry, and admits that more plants may be closing in the near term as the market stabilizes. “The industry probably overbuilt itself,” he said.VeraSun, on Oct. 31 the first major ethanol producer to file for chapter 11 restructuring, recently closed facilities in Albert City and Dyersville, Iowa, and has closed or delayed opening of several other plants across the corn belt.
Shaw is optimistic, however, and cites the federally mandated one-and-a-half billion gallon increase for ethanol production in 2009.
Only time will tell whether that mandate is realistic or even achievable.
Perhaps the largest challenge facing the industry is that, at least in some sense, the numbers don’t add up.At first glance, falling corn prices should mean increased profits for ethanol producers. With oil prices driving the first iteration of a so-called “new energy economy,” however, ethanol prices have plunged along with oil and corn, stripping hoped-for profits from ethanol. As oil plunged from near $150 per barrel in July to less than $40 in December, corn fell from more than $8 per bushel to near $3 while ethanol plunged to $1.50 per gallon from a summer peak of $2.90.
The crude oil price dive reflects a demand falloff coincident with the worldwide economic downturn which followed the sharp downward adjustment of speculative hedge funds which had become such a major market player in recent years. Unfortunately for the ethanol – and nearly all aspects of the ag sector – speculation and hedging were rife in ag and energy markets as well.
Ethanol companies bought corn feedstock at high futures prices last summer, when it seemed high ethanol prices and a federal production mandate would make their business models cash flow. Now they find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to produce a less valuable product with comparatively hyper-costly corn, or as Shaw puts it, “…the (ethanol) plants are having to sell lower-priced ethanol while using more expensive corn.”
Ethanol profit margins plunged from 31 cents to 3 cents per gallon in only about 120 days, according to Iowa State University Extension research.
As some ethanol plants close their doors and others turn away previously contracted corn shipments, Chapter 11 safeguards are beginning to look less than safe. A Wichita facility which recently filed bankruptcy found only one auction bidder last month, and that bidder was the bank holding the plant’s note. On the block in Ohio, a multi-million gallon capacity plant didn’t draw a single bid. The ethanol industry has joined the long line of troubled enterprises seeking government bailout. The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) has been floating bailout proposals to lawmakers and President-elect Barack Obama's transition in recent weeks, asking $1 billion in short-term credit and $50 billion in loan guarantees to pay for industry expansion.
RFA and other industry groups are also asking the federal government to up the allowable percentage of ethanol in gasoline formulations. The current limit is pegged at 10 percent by the Environmental Protection Agency. The industry as asking for an increase to 15 percent initially, and to perhaps as high as 30 percent.
EPA and other regulatory agencies seem to be wary of increasing ethanol percentage in gasoline blend formulations. More study is needed, they say, not the least of which is an assessment of potential damages to current automobile engines at higher ethanol concentrations in pump fuel.
In addition, the ethanol industry, already receiving the benefit of a growing federal usage mandate, a significant tax subsidy and tariffs on imported ethanol, will likely face a serious fight from livestock interests and environmental groups before it receives any additional federal aid. Iowa’s Senator Charles Grassley recently opined that the industry must concentrate on preserving the incentives it presently enjoys.
Even though the new Obama administration, as well as a new congress heavily in favor of alternative energy, will soon be in place, executive and congressional support for the ethanol industry is unlikely to overcome all the problems facing ethanol plants.
With VeraSun recently allowed by a Delaware court to unilaterally void previously agreed to corn contracts, ethanol plants may now find it hard to purchase corn from skeptical farmers concerned that their delivery contracts might be voided as well.
Leaving aside the industries new credibility gap with farmers, low corn prices will make it difficult for many farmers to justify planting corn at last year’s record levels. The projected breakeven corn price for farmers is about $4 per bushel. Facing projected $3.50/ bu. prices, many farmers are already looking to alternatives.Nor can ethanol plants look to distiller’s grains to prop up their operations. Once a tidy chunk of industry profit, prices for the livestock feed – a by- or co-product of ethanol production, have plunged in recent months also. Summer prices neared $190 per ton for distiller’s grains, but have fallen off to about $100 per ton this month.
What does the future hold for the ethanol industry? Only time will tell, but in December, 2008 the ethanol boom seems to have gone at least slightly bust.
The Register analysts go on to note that “…ethanol producers now know that when corn prices fall, the prices of crude oil and ethanol decline as well.”
Their observation is more or less correct, but their assignment of corn prices as the precipitating factor in oil and ethanol market adjustments is likely at least in part backward. This cart-before-the-horse outlook is probably illustrative of one of the major pitfalls the ethanol industry faces – faulty assessment of the driving factors in corn and ethanol markets.
Most ag economists agree that in the present market, corn and ethanol prices are dictated by oil prices, rather than the reverse. “Corn prices are now tied directly to oil prices,” said Paul Burgener at the Dec. 9 Colorado-Nebraska Crop Clinic in Sidney, Neb. An Ag Economics Research Analyst for the University of Nebraska, Burgener works out of the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff. “Corn is no longer a food and feed commodity,” he said.In the last six months, three of Iowa's 32 ethanol plants have closed and declared bankruptcy. Across the nation, more than a dozen plants have closed and even more newly built plants have delayed opening. At the beginning of the year the industry worried about winning political debates over environmental and food-cost concerns; now as 2008 draws to a close a major issue for many ethanol companies is surviving financially.
The outlook for the industry is far less rosy than it was in January.
Monte Shaw, Director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, sees the climate as “frustrating” for the industry, and admits that more plants may be closing in the near term as the market stabilizes. “The industry probably overbuilt itself,” he said.VeraSun, on Oct. 31 the first major ethanol producer to file for chapter 11 restructuring, recently closed facilities in Albert City and Dyersville, Iowa, and has closed or delayed opening of several other plants across the corn belt.
Shaw is optimistic, however, and cites the federally mandated one-and-a-half billion gallon increase for ethanol production in 2009.
Only time will tell whether that mandate is realistic or even achievable.
Perhaps the largest challenge facing the industry is that, at least in some sense, the numbers don’t add up.At first glance, falling corn prices should mean increased profits for ethanol producers. With oil prices driving the first iteration of a so-called “new energy economy,” however, ethanol prices have plunged along with oil and corn, stripping hoped-for profits from ethanol. As oil plunged from near $150 per barrel in July to less than $40 in December, corn fell from more than $8 per bushel to near $3 while ethanol plunged to $1.50 per gallon from a summer peak of $2.90.
The crude oil price dive reflects a demand falloff coincident with the worldwide economic downturn which followed the sharp downward adjustment of speculative hedge funds which had become such a major market player in recent years. Unfortunately for the ethanol – and nearly all aspects of the ag sector – speculation and hedging were rife in ag and energy markets as well.
Ethanol companies bought corn feedstock at high futures prices last summer, when it seemed high ethanol prices and a federal production mandate would make their business models cash flow. Now they find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to produce a less valuable product with comparatively hyper-costly corn, or as Shaw puts it, “…the (ethanol) plants are having to sell lower-priced ethanol while using more expensive corn.”
Ethanol profit margins plunged from 31 cents to 3 cents per gallon in only about 120 days, according to Iowa State University Extension research.
As some ethanol plants close their doors and others turn away previously contracted corn shipments, Chapter 11 safeguards are beginning to look less than safe. A Wichita facility which recently filed bankruptcy found only one auction bidder last month, and that bidder was the bank holding the plant’s note. On the block in Ohio, a multi-million gallon capacity plant didn’t draw a single bid. The ethanol industry has joined the long line of troubled enterprises seeking government bailout. The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) has been floating bailout proposals to lawmakers and President-elect Barack Obama's transition in recent weeks, asking $1 billion in short-term credit and $50 billion in loan guarantees to pay for industry expansion.
RFA and other industry groups are also asking the federal government to up the allowable percentage of ethanol in gasoline formulations. The current limit is pegged at 10 percent by the Environmental Protection Agency. The industry as asking for an increase to 15 percent initially, and to perhaps as high as 30 percent.
EPA and other regulatory agencies seem to be wary of increasing ethanol percentage in gasoline blend formulations. More study is needed, they say, not the least of which is an assessment of potential damages to current automobile engines at higher ethanol concentrations in pump fuel.
In addition, the ethanol industry, already receiving the benefit of a growing federal usage mandate, a significant tax subsidy and tariffs on imported ethanol, will likely face a serious fight from livestock interests and environmental groups before it receives any additional federal aid. Iowa’s Senator Charles Grassley recently opined that the industry must concentrate on preserving the incentives it presently enjoys.
Even though the new Obama administration, as well as a new congress heavily in favor of alternative energy, will soon be in place, executive and congressional support for the ethanol industry is unlikely to overcome all the problems facing ethanol plants.
With VeraSun recently allowed by a Delaware court to unilaterally void previously agreed to corn contracts, ethanol plants may now find it hard to purchase corn from skeptical farmers concerned that their delivery contracts might be voided as well.
Leaving aside the industries new credibility gap with farmers, low corn prices will make it difficult for many farmers to justify planting corn at last year’s record levels. The projected breakeven corn price for farmers is about $4 per bushel. Facing projected $3.50/ bu. prices, many farmers are already looking to alternatives.Nor can ethanol plants look to distiller’s grains to prop up their operations. Once a tidy chunk of industry profit, prices for the livestock feed – a by- or co-product of ethanol production, have plunged in recent months also. Summer prices neared $190 per ton for distiller’s grains, but have fallen off to about $100 per ton this month.
What does the future hold for the ethanol industry? Only time will tell, but in December, 2008 the ethanol boom seems to have gone at least slightly bust.
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