Nevada FB Annual Meeting--Welcome BBQ & Day 2

NVFB President Hank Combs

Hank Combs of RC Farms and Recycling in Las Vegas, Nevada is the Nevada Farm Bureau President, and after formal election at the end of the annual meeting, he will continue to remain our PResident for another year.  Hank does a great job and has a lot of work coming up--winter is a busy time for Farm Bureau (why?  Well, what better time for farmer's to get together than the cold season when the crops are dormant--it may not work for everyone, but that is when the majority of Farm Bureau's big events are held.  In December he heads to Washington D.C. to meet with the Presidents of the rest of the States' Fram Bureaus, in January it is on to the Annual American Farm Bureau Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, and then February brings the Farm Bureau's National Leadership Conference in Orlando, Florida. A lot of time and effort goes into serving in the Farm Burea, but there is a lot of pay-off as you see the results of the work you do trying to educate about and preserve such an important industry.

Welcome to Winnemucca from Humboldt FB County President, Arlow Nielsen

Welcome to Winnemucca from their Mayor, Di An Putnam

Lincoln County Members (I am not prejudice, just from there, too, so they are the lucky group that got my camera's flash)

Jule Wadsworth, Secretary/Treasurer, JoAnn and Bevan Lister, Co. President, and Paul Mathews, State Vice President.

Welcome to Nevada Farm Bureau Policy.....

Voting Delegate Session

Doug Busselman is our Executive Vice-President at Nevada Farm Bureau and our key lobbyist.  He is always on top of what is happening in Nevada legislation in regards to agriculture or what should be happening and helping to keep us in-tune so that we will have the policy in place to protect or promote our needs.

Our current policy is shown on the screen during the delegate session with any proposed changes, so that we are able to read and discuss it as a delegation.  County Farm Bureau's are given voting delegates based on the number of voting membership that their county has.  A month or two before state meeting we are assigned several areas of policy for each county to very closely look at and see if there are changes to be made.  The proposals are then brought together at the Open Resolutions meeting which is usually held by video conference several weeks before the state meeting.  By the time we meet for state meeting it has all come together for the voting delegation to meet and decide on.

President Combs, and Vice President Paul Mathews, run the delegate session.  Which progressed very quickly and efficiently at this meeting.  Changes are discussed and voted on then added or excluded, while Doug types them all up in order to put them all together in our policy book.  You can find current policy on our webpage at nvfb.org

And, I figured I had better show the other side, too, the delegates!  Don't let them fool you, if the right policy subject comes up, they can be a VERY lively group!

Lincoln County Delegates, Jule W. Bevan and JoAnn L.

Did I Mention the Food??



Matt Scramlin, of AFBF, was in town for our state meeting from his home in Virginia.
Here he is visiting with State FFA Officer Kadee Buckmaster, and Craig and Marlene Shier of Humboldt County.  Marlene is the Vice Chair for the Women's Leadership Committee and was instrumental in helping put on the meeting in her home county.



One thing about Farm Bureau Meetings is that you never go without good food.  As the people who produce the food, we know what is good and we always have plenty of--Oh, and if you have never had the Tri-Tip that Winnemucca's FFA Chapter can cook, well, you are missing out!  They sponsored our Welcome BBQ the first night, and with the help of the NV FFA State Officers, did an excellent job of serving it, too!

YF&R Members at the State Meeting.  The State FFA offers us a great opportunity for recruitment and so we try to involve them each year in our annual meeting and Discussion Meet.  Here are Three current officers, Jordan, Aly, and

The Silent Auction....

Each year a silent auction is held and county's are asked to bring donations for the auction--a couple of items that represent their county or agriculture or just fun stuff they know others will be interested in.  Over the course of the meeting people browse the selection, placing bids, trying to bid items up for others, and sometimes getting quite competitive.  At the end of the meeting the bids are closed and the winners are announced.  The money raised is divided between the Women's Leadership Committee, The Heritage Foundation and the YF&R.  So thanks for all who support it!!  And, I must say that I am really enjoying my chokecherry jelly and hot pads!

Just a couple more odds and ends......

I took a couple pic's just to show the people and what was going on--the final one is President Combs with our newest addition at the Farm Bureau office in Sparks, Zach Allen, who does all of our media coordination and technical stuff like the website and the journal, etc.  This was his first meeting with us and we are so glad he survived to start getting ready for the next!



Thank a Farmer/Rancher for Thanksgiving Feasts.....

Thanksgiving Dinner at My Home....

Well, Remember I told you in my post about the annual meeting in Winnemucca that I had gotten my potatoes there?  Here's the proof!  I had to show my kids the bag and the map and show them how I had traveled from the far right, closer to the bottom, all the way up and over to the star.  They thought it was pretty cool. (So did I ;) )  Anyway, they made for some GREAT mashed potatoes!   So, thanks to Winnemucca Farms and all of the nations potato producers, potatoes are a staple of life that I just can't even imagine life without--we normally eat Sunday dinner with my grandparents and my uncles family, and if there is one thing that is the highlight of dinner, it is the mashed potatoes and gravy.  We had a lot of things going on this fall and had to miss it several times in a row, which just about did my six-year old under, he missed Grandma's mashed potatoes. 

So, I decided I would take a few pic's of some of the things on our table this year and express my thanks for the bountiful harvest that we have in this nation due to the hard-working agriculturists that are the backbone of the country!

Dinner Rolls.....

I don't know about your family, but my family is very big on dinner rolls, with butter and jam, dipped in gravy, stuffed as a sandwich, whatever.  We like our breads and carbohydrates--I usually stick to whole wheat, but when it comes to dinner rolls we have to have basic white, soft and yummy!  I made about 9 dozen this year for Thanksgiving.  My kids thought I was crazy for making so many--I guess they aren't counting how many they eat!  So, to all the wheat growers in our nation, and those dairies producing the cream for that sweet cream butter--thank you for helping make my Thanksgiving Wonderful!  I enjoyed learning more about Winnemucca Farms' wheat production, also--I make about 12-16 loaves of multi-grain whole wheat bread every two weeks, so wheat is a very important part of my storage room.

My FIRST Turkey!

Well, I have to say that I kind of shock myself in this category--I love to cook, BUT I have never had to cook a whole turkey before--always had mom or grandma or my mom-in-law there, but not this year, so my sis-in-law and I muddled through it--from the pic, I'd say we did okay--from the taste, I'd say we ought to start our own catering business!  Okay, so I am maybe a little out of control, but it was pretty great.  Thanks to all those poultry producers our there--this 24 lb bird came from the Butterball plant in Utah, close to my sis-in-law's.  They wanted to get the 48 lber--YIPES--where in the world would we have cooked it?  And to think there are people out there adopting them, instead of letting them come to their full-potential on a Thanksgiving table--I know if I was a turkey, I definitely wouldn't mind it if I ended up looking this good! ;)

Cheesy Broccoli Bake

Okay, so this was a new one that I found and loved--and at the request of many, I will be adding the recipe to my personal blog over the next few days--so, if you are interested, let me know!  (Broccoli, Red Peppers, Cheddar and Cream Cheese, Fried Onions, More thanks go out to the veggie producers out there that keep us filled up on vitamins and flavor!)

SWEET CORN!

Straight from my garden to my freezer, with only a little parching and cutting off in between.  So, this time I get to thank ME for the hours of planting, watering, and weeding, not to mention the work of harvesting and freezing 30 quart bags of corn this year--should have been double that, but we had a hard time not eating it straight off the cob until we had about made ourselves sick and we finally decided to freeze some for later!!

A Few Past Salads....

Fruit and vegetables and pasta and more thanks to all of those great things that American farmers put on our table that just make Thanksgiving dinner so memorable and worth all the work for one meal a year!

Sweet Potato Better Than Pie?

This is one of those dishes that should be served as dessert--it is filled with butter and sugar and topped with pecans and coconut, and so good that you would never dream you might be eating a vegetable in there!  Our cousin has requested now that I make this every time he comes to visit, and I really do think that he skipped the pie because he ate so much of this!!

Well, I honestly can't believe that I didn't take any pictures of the pie!  Pecan, Coconut Cream, Hawaiian Cream, Chocolate Cream, Pumpkin, Key Lime, and Cheesecake all graced the dessert table--what would life be like without our dairy products and our SUGAR!?!?!?!  I also toured a pecan farm last year at national YF&R which really opened my eyes up to where nuts come from on a production-basis.  From sea to shining sea, our nation is covered with a bountiful harvest thanks to the American Farmer and Rancher!  I am thankful for their dedication and hard work in making this industry one that provides so much for our nation and others!

Hope you all had a FABULOUS THANKSGIVING, too!

Nevada FB Annual Meeting--Day 1 THE TOUR!

Winnemucca Farms Inc., Winnemucca, NV

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Day One of the Nevada Farm Bureau's Annual Meeting began with a Tour of Agriculture in Humboldt, County, which meant a trip to Winnemucca Farms, the 2nd Largest Potato Producers in the United States.  (Did you know that Nevada produced so many potatoes?)  The land is very, very sandy here, and of course, the wind was blowing pretty bad this day, so you can see the haze across the valley, but the sandy soils mean great potatoes--which those of you, like me, who have tried to grow them in much heavier soils would envy.

This is just one of their on-site storage facilities that is currently holding seed-potatoes for the coming year.  They do grow a lot of their own potato seed, in fact, the have about 1700 acres in production in Orvada that is mainly for seed, but still buy some, too, and so what kind of potatoes they produce often depends on the availability of seed.

Our tour was conducted by this guy-and I cannot recall his name, so you'll have to forgive me that, but he is the current manager of the operation.  The picture to the left is of the air-cooling system for the storage barns, on the wall to the left are several large fans pushing air into the building.  Temperatures have to be controlled, because the potato heaps begin to produce their own heat and can cause temperatures of up to 100 degrees in a day, even when outside temps are twenty below.

Winnemucca Farms has about 20,000 acres in production right now, in three locations, this site is their largest, with around 15,000.  The have 112 irrigation pivots, ran off of 53 wells, with around 35,000 acre feet of water.  That also means that there is close to 75 miles of water pipeline running through their land.

Bob Combs, President of RC Farms in Las Vegas, wanted to take this picture for me so that I had proof I was actually there--Otherwise, I am usually always behind the camera.  This computer screen shows their irrigation set up--at anytime they can click on any one of the 'pivots' on the screen and pull up a control panel for that pivot, they can also see what direction the pivot is facing, whether it is running, how much pressure it is using, etc.  Pretty amazing!!

It wasn't horribly cold, but that wind sure could blow!  It was worth standing in to learn about the farm.  Unfortunately, we were not able to go into the processing plant because the manager was in China for meetings with the company that owns Winnemucca Farms, RD Offut.  Their processing plant does a lot of things like hash browns and french fries that are frozen and sold.  They sale a large amount of potatoes to Frito Lay for Chips, to Wal-Mart, and to a dehydrating plant in Winnemucca that turns them into flakes--their largest buyer is a producer of fish feed in Asia.

Our Youngest, Young Farmer and Rancher on the tour was not really thrilled about the wind or the tour--maybe someday!

I have to say that it is pretty impressive to see this much equipment on one farm--okay, one VERY large farm.  Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that they (Meaning owners, RD Offut) have the largest ownership of John Deere dealerships in the US?  Well, amongst quite a few other large and profitable businesses.  So, when their farms have issues, they go to John Deere for solutions, and when John Deere comes out with new tractors--well, guess who gets to try them out?  I didn't get a picture of the shop-but from the size of it it looks like they have their own mechanics shop and tire dealership to keep them running, too.

So, Winnemucca Farms not only produces lots and lots of potatoes, but they also have Alfalfa, Timothy, and Wheat on the premises.  Some of us might think this bag was stuffed full of silage--well, we would be wrong, it is full of 15,000 bushels of wheat kernels.  This is their first year storing in the bags, so they say it is a huge learning process for them that they are taking one step at a time, but due to shutdowns in transports on the Columbia River, they decided to look for new options in selling and storing their wheat and this is what they found.  There are 650,000 bushels of wheat on the premises in bags, and another 250,000 in a storage unit in Winnemucca.  They plant winter and harvest the end of summer, and say their biggest problem is getting the over 7,000 acres of wheat cut with higher than 7% moisture content.  In one week the content plummets and that is too short of time for them to get it all harvested.  (By the way, if you think in pounds and not bushels, think of 60 lbs per bushel--that's a little bit of wheat! Don't have a calculator handy, okay, I'll tell you--54,000,000 pounds.)

So, while I have to say I was a bit disappointed by missing the processing plant (Hey, I got up at 4 am and drove over 6 hours to get there in time for it!)--I really, really enjoyed the chance to go on the tour and learn so much.  I am definitely proud of Nevada Ag and it's potatoes, wheat and hay--all this time and I never knew until we started planning this meeting a year ago and looked into the potato farm as a potential tour.  A few weeks ago on my way to Las Vegas we stopped at the Chevron in Alamo and above the Frito Lay chip stand was a sign with someone from Winnemucca farms, and information proudly telling that Frito Lay gets their potatoes form them!  I think we could use a few more of those signs throughout the state and help Nevadans see and appreciate Nevada Ag a little more.

Oh, and in case you haven't ate any Frito Lay chips lately, I did buy two bags of Winnemucca Farms potatoes from Wal-Mart before I headed home--I'll let you know how our mashed potatoes turn out for Thanksgiving Dinner!