When Duane Bauer cut soybeans west of Elsmore a few days ago, they made 38 bushels to the acre. Generally, that’s not remarkable for beans, but in this case was because they were a short-season variety.
“You don’t see that kind of yield but about every 20 years,” said brother Darrell. “They usually make 18 to 20 — in a good year,” said brother Don.
With corn harvest drawing to an end, the Bauer triumvirate soon will move on to soybeans in earnest. Don, the oldest brother, predicted good yields, just as they did with corn that averaged in the 135 bushels range, or about 35 bushels above what farmers often say is break-even for corn’s cost-intensive production.
A plus in Bauer fields is that worms haven’t been detected in more than a limited numbers. “I know there are some around” — aerial and other spraying has been common — “but we had maybe one on 50 pods. Not enough to get concerned about.”
That the three brothers farm together in what for many are retirement years isn’t happenstance.
IN THE LATE 1940s and into halcyon days of the ’50s, Darrell, Duane and Don — now 72, 73 and 74, respectively — were inseparable.
They’d take their fishin’ poles and scamper downstream along the banks of Big Creek. A good hole of water often produced and after they’d had their fill there, they’d fish their way back home.
A little older, they’d notice a covey or two of quail dart across the road when they rode the school bus home. They’d jump off, race into the house, grab their shotguns and have a mess of quail for Mom (Violet) to clean and cook while they dashed to the barn to help Dad (Ralph) with milking.
Chores were as much a reality on the Bauer for three strapping lads as any others, but Dad also recognized there was more to life than work. Maybe, because he had played semi-pro baseball and probably never got the “kid” completely out of his system.
At Elsmore High, the three amigos — by birth and inclination — played all sports and in consecutive grades occasionally found themselves all on the basketball court at the same time. Baseball was a summer diversion, in amateur games at Bronson and with the Chanute American Legion team.
Some of Don’s favorite memories are diamond-oriented.
Once the Kansas City Monarchs, managed at the time by Hall of Famer Buck O’Neil, came to Bronson for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games. O’Neil asked the Don’s coach about borrowing a player, with the Monarchs one short.
“You want to play?” Don was asked. “Sure,” he said. He was put in right field, and “I might have been the first white kid to play on an all-black team.”
At Chanute, as the Legion team’s catcher, Don was part of a battery with Paul Lindblad, a southpaw who went on to have a stellar major league career.
THE BAUER BOYS always were eager to spend time on the farm, to help Dad as he aged and couldn’t do all he once did.
“By 1995 Dad was pretty well done with farming,” Don said.
Rather than break up the home place of 440 acres, perched idyllically on the banks of meandering Big Creek, the Bauers concluded a partnership of the three was the better way to go forward.
Today, “we have 1,200 acres of broken (farm) ground and 2,000 acres of pasture and hay,” Don said. While they work together and some of the enterprise is within confines of their partnership, each also has a part of his own.
DON IS THE storyteller, and it doesn’t take much to get him on a roll.
In 1951 rain came in torrents and produced the greatest flood eastern Kansas has known. Big Creek, which drains thousands of acres, was out of it banks several times and flooded bottom-planted corn so much Ralph Bauer still had 300 acres standing the next March.
“Dad asked Roy Singer, at the elevator in Elsmore, if he would buy it,” Don recalled, then a 12-year-old and more conscious of daily matters. Sure, said Singer, which led the Bauers to harvest the acreage with a two-row picker, not shelled but on the ear. “We got $2 a bushel,” which relatively was a better price than corn fetches today, about $3.50 a bushel in kernel form.
Two years later, 1954, was one of the driest ever in Allen County. This time the decision was to put up 300 acres of corn as silage for the dairy herd. “It didn’t fill the (upright) silo,” a dismal harvest, Don said.
The brothers operate with equipment that would dwarf their father’s, and also have a cattle working area that would be the envy of many sale barns. “It was a lot of work when we didn’t have much to work with,” Don said, which changed radically when they erected a series of pens, working lanes and chutes, including one where cattle are constrained for vet work.
Best of all, for the sentimental brothers, is a large profile cut-out, “Bauer Brothers,” that rests atop a gate.
While crops have been good this year — from planting delayed a little longer than usual but with showers in August that were significant — they also give much attention to their beef cattle.
“Pasture are good, we have 700 big bales of hay put up and the ponds are full,” no better way to go into winter time, Don said. The cattle will munch in corn and milo stubble for a while after pasture grass wilts and he expects hay to be a part of their diets sometime in later December, which means the hay on hand should be more than sufficient.
AT AN AGE when many men are spending more time sipping coffee and doing less physically, the Bauers embrace the work that goes into keeping a spread the size of theirs up and running in tip-top condition.
“We all enjoy the work and it keeps is in shape,” said Don, allowing the “in shape” is important because elk season will be upon him and Darrell before long. Duane hasn’t chased after elk because his 40 years of school teaching kept him at home.
Deer hunting is a different story. All three like to stalk whitetails, and this year they may return to field with scatter guns to hunt quail.
“We’re seeing a lot more this year,” Don said. “They seemed to be making a comeback last year and we may have a huntable population this year.”
They’d prefer a shower or two in the next week days — it’s getting mighty dry — but with a forecast that doesn’t sound promising, harvest will go quicker — and they will be able to take to the field for hunting without a smidgen of guilt.
