Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853 or [email protected]
KU FACULTY, STAFF HEAD HOME TO HELP WITH THE HARVEST Many urban Kansans arrange their vacations around the wheat harvest so that they can help on a family's or friend's farm.
At KU, a handful of faculty and staff members with roots entrenched in farming return to their homesteads each summer to help cut wheat, drive a grain truck or get a noon meal to the fields.
KU faculty and staff who regularly help with the harvest include a Jetmore doctoral student who will teach communication studies classes next fall; a geophysics professor who farms with his brother in Rooks County and a grant development officer with the Hall Center for the Humanities who returns twice a year to a homestead near Colby to help her brother bring in wheat and other crops.
KU GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANT WARMS UP COMBINE IN JETMORE Every summer, Mark Nuss, graduate teaching assistant in communication studies at the University of Kansas, farms about 2,000 acres near Jetmore about 30 miles north of Dodge City.
Later this month, Nuss will be harvesting wheat not only on his farm, but those of his father, Jarrell, and his brother, Lynn. Together the Nuss families manage about 8,000 acres of land.
Nuss has been teaching at Fort Hays State University in Hays, but this August he will return to KU to begin work on his doctoral dissertation and to teach classes. He earned a bachelor's degree at KU in 1989 and a master's degree at Ft. Hays State in 1991.
"Lots of people have a romantic notion of farm life. They envision a farmer on a tractor riding home at sundown for a glass of lemonade, but in reality farming is kind of a rugged existence," Nuss said. "The day we finish harvesting, I will start plowing fields to prepare the seed beds for the fall."
Nuss said he loves farming and his home in Jetmore and feels similarly about teaching because it broadens horizons and allows him to travel.
KU GEOPHYSICIST PITCHES IN WITH HARVEST ON FAMILY FARM Don Steeples, McGee professor of geophysics at the University of Kansas, has the 260-mile drive from Lawrence to his family farm near Palco, down to an art.
For nearly 25 years, Steeples has left Lawrence in late June to help with the harvest on the family farm near Palco, about 35 miles northwest of Hays.
Don and his brother, David, vice president of Stockton National Bank, are getting a combine and trucks ready to harvest wheat on the 1,500 acres they have farmed most of their lives.
Helping with the farm operation led Dave Steeples, a former Tonganoxie High School teacher and coach, to set an unenviable family record one weekend several years ago. He left Tonganoxie on Friday night heading west and scouted a football game at Holton before driving on to arrive in Palco about 2 a.m. Saturday morning. He was up at 6 a.m. the same day planting wheat. He worked until about 1:30 a.m. Monday before driving back to Tonganoxie. He arrived in time to take a shower and get meet his first class by 8 a.m.
Their father, the late Wally Steeples, retired from public education at age 47 to farm full time near Palco until his death at age 62 in1966. Their mother, Marie, lives in Hays.
KU STAFFER HAULS GRAIN IN HIGH PLAINS COUNTRY Kathy Porsch, grants officer for the Hall Center for Humanities, has been helping with harvest since she was 13 years old on a farm that her late father operated near Selden about 32 miles northeast of Colby. Porsch said she usually drives a grain truck and occasionally drives the tractor pulling a grain cart.
Since she moved to Lawrence in 1987 to complete a master's degree in journalism, she has returned when the harvest times matched her desk-job schedule to help her brother, Michael, and uncle, Francis, harvest wheat, corn and silage.
In recent years however, Porsch said, the schedules of the farm, the unpredictability of when the grain will ripen and be ready to harvest and grant application deadlines in late June, have created planning conflicts for her. "Thus, I help as I can. If the grain is ready when I can get away, I do. If it is ready when I am under deadline, Michael and Uncle Francis have to limp along with one less hand."
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