Right now, Kansans who live anywhere near Wakeeney can only shake heads and wring hands. As they survey profound destruction wreaked upon homes and farms by gust-driven ice missiles the size of baseballs, they reveal the tenacity of prairie residents. They don’t lament, “Woe is me.” Instead, they count their blessings.

More than one battered resident has remarked that they lost property, but no one died. Even in instances where people lost livestock or pets, they express gratitude that family members are well. I can relate. I was relieved to hear my own mom’s voice telling me she was okay after that monster storm battered her house and yard.

Via radar, I watched that white mass layered in purples, pinks, and reds as it cut a swath across Western Kansas. I called Mom to be sure she knew it was coming. She didn’t need me to tell her. Her Nex Tech device alerted her to danger so she was heading for shelter.

Knowing she was protected inside her home comforted me. At Brownie Scout camp decades before, we faced an evacuation through golf-ball size hail. I recalled welts and bruises ice balls rising on young campers and couldn’t imagine facing even larger wind-driven projectiles. After I saw storm-damaged vehicles, windows, and roofs, it was clear anything alive and outside suffered trauma during that assault.

A friend posted the storm in real time on Facebook so I imagined everyone experiencing that icy barrage felt like they were entombed in a continuously battered barrel. It had to be the closest to war that citizens who’d never served in the military experienced. Mom confirmed this when I contacted her following the storm.

Afterwards, the real ordeal began. As people inventoried damages, they found shattered windows, punctured roofs, damaged siding and fences, destroyed lawn furniture, naked trees, and vehicles pocked with more dents than a golf ball has. Some even discovered that the knife-like wind flipped trailer s, trucks, and grain bins topsy-turvy. It stripped fields of ripening grain to toothpick-like stalks.

While those viewing devastating photos bemoaned their friends and loved ones’ fates, I saw so many grateful responses. Caveats such as “Others had it much worse,” or “It can all be cleaned up,” echoed through social media.

A friend with his own troubles helped Mom patch her broken windows. A cousin with carpentry experience drove over two hours the next morning to seal a roof so punctured it could function as a colander. He found a reliable repair company to restore her property. His guidance is a blessing because he has insights the rest of us don’t.

My friend on the farm who noted that others had things much worse than she did brightened lives when she posted a story about her Great Pyrenees pup that found a storm-battered dove and carried it to her. She protected it and watched to see if it would mend enough to fly away. Distant and close friends smiled when she reported it flew off despite significant feather loss.

Right now, it’s hard to think about normal for folks living in this battered region. But like that dove, life will take off.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

We’re into months of candidates and near-candidates and possible candidates shuffling around ahead of the June 1, 2018, filing deadline, formally naming campaign treasurers and starting campaigns.

It’s going to be an unusually busy fall this year as the statewide officeholders decide whether to keep their jobs or seek higher offices, plus 125 Kansas House seats (and so far, just one Senate seat, that of May 1 sworn-in Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, R-Pittsburg) are up for grabs in the 2018 elections.

With all that political gamesmanship under way, there is a key date in the new calendars that will likely have a dramatic effect on those campaigns, and whether some Kansans decide to spend the summer mowing instead of campaigning: Friday, April 20, 2018.

No, it’s not the national marijuana day—that 4:20 celebration—it’s also the date when the state’s best economic experts, the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, predict whether the state will have enough revenue on hand to finish out what will be the remaining two-plus months of this fiscal year and enough money to pay for expenditures budgeted for the coming fiscal year which starts July 1, 2018.

Not exactly what most Kansans consider the date that the earth either shakes or doesn’t. But to a surprisingly large degree, it is an earth-mover.

Enough money? Everything is good.

Not enough money? Then there must be, just before the primary election, cuts in spending on things that most Kansans want money spent on. Like social services, roads, law enforcement and corrections…you name it, someone out there wants it done with his or her tax money.

Or…there could be just-before the Legislature adjourns increases in taxes. That’s not anything an incumbent wants to campaign about or read on his/her opponent’s campaign cards, is it?

And that final estimate of revenues will be made just three days after what is likely to be the biggest influx of state income taxes in years. Key, remember, is that the massive income tax increases voted by this spring’s Legislature became effective retroactively to Jan. 1, 2017, and Kansans have been essentially given until April 17, 2018, to pay those taxes without penalty.

That extra time before penalties kick in means that if you don’t have adequate paycheck withholding you must come up with a big check for the state by April 17. Plus, folks who have LLCs or other businesses that for the past four years have been exempted from state income tax on “non-wage income” will be writing checks to the state on that date also. These last-minute payments essentially shake the state’s ability to monitor monthly how revenues are coming in.

Practically, if you have to pay taxes above your withholding, or try to remember just where you pay those income taxes if you’re coming off a four-year tax holiday, you aren’t going to be paying this year’s retroactive taxes early.

It’s that time-value of money deal. If you can earn another month or two of interest on your non-wage income, you’ll do it. That’s just marginally smart business. You pay your bills on the deadline, not early.

So those April receipts? Three days after the no-penalty payment deadline, they get ground into that Consensus Revenue Estimate that essentially decides what the governor and Legislature do to balance the budget. And, of course, whether voters are going to be inconvenienced and probably recall just who inconvenienced them when they see the name on the ballot.

Right now, before we know how this year’s tax increases work out, there are a lot of issues for candidates to talk about.

Those issues might change on April 20, 2018.

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com

Seems some people outside of agriculture routinely try to define the family farm. These same folks tend to question corporate farming whether family owned or not.

Let’s look at a Kansas family farm. In our state, many are based on owner operation. This means the rights and responsibilities of ownership are vested in an entrepreneur who lives and works the farm for a living.

The second key to defining the family farming system would include independence. Independence implies financing from within its own resources using family labor, management and intellect to build equity and cash flow that will retire the mortgage, preferably in the lifetime of the owner.

Economic dispersion is the next important step in defining what a family farm should entail. Economic dispersion would include large numbers of efficient-sized farms operating with equal access to competitive markets worldwide.

No family farm would be complete without a family core. This family-centered operation must have a family who lives in harmony within the workplace. All family members share responsibilities and the children learn the vocation of their parents.

The ideal family farm would be commercially diversified. Production of diversified commodities would help reduce price risks and maximize the use of farm resources. In turn, this would provide greater self-sufficiency to produce crops and livestock.

One final attribute necessary in defining today’s family farm would be the acceptance and use of innovative technology. This not only enhances farm labor, but also helps boost production.

Family farming carries with it a commitment to specific, independent values. These values become a part of the community and include conservation, frugality, responsibility, honesty, dignity in work, neighborliness, self-reliance and concern and care for future generations.

While it’s rare indeed that one family farm may possess all of these attributes, together they have created a system of agriculture that has been a part of our rural culture since our state’s beginning.

Today, detractors of this profession are making it increasingly difficult for this vital industry to progress and prosper. That’s why it’s more important than ever to share information about our skills and attributes with those unfamiliar with our calling.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.