They say time flies when you’re having fun. That certainly seems to be the case as I reflect on these past 6 ½ years as your Extension Agent for family and consumer sciences. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Ellis County and the Hays community– and for the past year as part of the Cottonwood Extension District– but the time has come to say farewell. I will be retiring on May 31 after 39 years as a K-State Research and Extension agent in four counties in northwest and southwest Kansas.

As I sit in my office for the last full week and reflect on all I’ve done over the years, it’s the people and events of Extension work that come to mind. It’s all of YOU who have captured a place in my heart.
Thank you for allowing me to become involved with you and your lives. I hope that your interaction with K-State Research and Extension and the Cottonwood Extension District has made some small difference for you– made things easier, less confusing, more empowering. I thought for my final column I’d share some of my favorite phone calls, office visits and situations of these past years as an Extension agent and tell you about my retirement project for the future.

The first special situation that comes to mind is the call from a local mother who wanted to know if she could mail a bowl of potato salad to her daughter across the country. It seems the daughter was expecting a baby and craving her mother’s potato salad– and despite having Mom’s recipe, nothing she made tasted quite the same. We finally nixed the potato salad shipment due to the food safety concerns with a perishable food and a pregnant woman, but it was an interesting discussion and one that helped me see again the strength of family bonds.

Then there was the lady who called for instructions on how to can bear meat. It was the height of the Y2K scare and she said she planned to sustain her family on canned bear meat from her husband’s fall hunting trip. No, the family had never eaten canned bear meat before, and yes, I was able to provide the canning instructions, but I never heard whether the hunting expedition and the canning session were successful. Thankfully for all of us, the century rolled over without incident.

I also remember the first day at one of my county fairs. An irritated mom demanded that her son’s arts & crafts entry be judged by a different judge. It seems she didn’t like the red ribbon the entry had received. I gently tried to explain that we hire the judges for their expertise and while we may not always agree with the outcome, that day it was the judge’s opinion which counted. About five days later the same Mom came to my office to apologize. She said there had been a death in the family and she was not at her best at fair time. Over the years I’ve learned that none of us are at our best at fair time– and given about five days, most people and situations regain a more balanced perspective.

My time as an Extension agent has been full of interesting and wonderful experiences– from taking a leave of absence from my first county to travel to the Philippines as a 4-H exchange delegate, to judging countless foods exhibits and cooking contests, to watching technology change from manual typewriters and duplicating machines to wi-fi and the internet cloud, to teaching more Extension educational programs than I can ever count, including a nutrition class presented through three different language interpreters in the same room at the same time one day in Garden City.

In order to give back for a career I’ve loved, I have compiled a “best of the best” collection which includes 90 recipes and 80 news columns from 39 years in Extension. It is available in downloadable PDF Portfolio format for a free-will donation to the Kansas 4-H Foundation at www.kansas4hfoundation.org/beechrecipes. All proceeds will benefit the Kansas 4-H Foundation and the four counties where I worked (Hodgeman, Stevens, Finney, and Ellis.) I receive nothing but satisfaction from this project- 100% of the proceeds will support Extension and 4-H programs in Kansas.

I’ve loved getting to know all the individuals and families involved in Extension programs across Kansas, and I thank everyone for the friendship and support you’ve given to me and my family over the years. Good luck and many blessings to all of you! Thanks, and farewell!

Linda K. Beech is Cottonwood District Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.

By JOHN P. TRETBAR

Wichita oil man Wayne Woolsey and his wife Kay will give $10 million to Wichita State University to build a new home for the Barton School of Business, and another $2 million to support field camps and other programs in Petroleum Geology. The WSU Foundation says this is the single largest cash donation in university history. The Board of Regents approved naming the new building “Wayne and Kay Woolsey Hall.”

In its weekly rig count, Baker Hughes noted three more active rigs in New Mexico, two more in Texas, but noted that losses elsewhere held the total nationwide to 1,046, up one gas rig. Independent Oil & Gas Service reports the count was unchanged in eastern Kansas with 16 active rigs, and 25 active oil and gas drilling rigs west of Wichita, down one. Drilling is underway at one site in Russell County. Operators were moving in completion tools to five leases in Barton County and six in Ellis County.

Operators filed 35 permits for drilling at new locations last week, 587 so far this year. There are 19 east of Wichita and 16 in western Kansas, including two new permits in Barton County and one in Stafford County.
Independent Oil & Gas Service reported just six new well completions across Kansas, three east and three west of Wichita, including one dry hole in Barton County, and one completion about to make the list in Ellis County. So far this year, operators in Kansas have reported 575 newly-completed wells.

With the explosive growth in the Permian Basin comes a huge windfall for the State of New Mexico. Land leases to the oil and gas industry generated more state income over the last year than in the last six. According to The Carlsbad Current Argus, this year’s oil and gas lease sales on State Trust land surpassed the one-year record in May. Fiscal year 2018 still has one monthly lease sale to go, and has already generated a record $102.2 million total for state coffers, according to the newspaper.

North Dakota’s top energy regulator blames the weather for a monthly drop in the state’s crude oil production to 1.16 million barrels per day in March. Director Lynn Helms of the Department of Natural Resources also said the state’s natural-gas flaring rate was unchanged from February to March: 258 million cubic feet per day of natural gas burned off at oil well sites. That’s an 89% capture percentage, which meets the current target. Lawmakers have established goals and offered incentives to increase the capture rates and reduce flaring in North Dakota.

The International Energy Agency opened discussions with major oil-producing nations about collapsing output from Venezuela, home to the world’s biggest petroleum reserves. President Nicolas Maduro’s victory in widely-criticized elections brought on more U.S. sanctions against the nation’s already-crippled energy industry. On Friday, two days before the Venezuelan election, the administration announced sanctions against a powerful governing party politician and his family. The Treasury Department also for the first time formally accused President Maduro of profiting from illegal narcotics shipments. And on Monday, the administration announced an executive order banning U.S. citizens from being involved in the sales of that country’s accounts receivables related to oil and other assets.

If European nations are to continue buying oil from Iran, they’ll need to consider how they’ll insure those oil tankers. By November, U.S. sanctions will likely prevent members of the International Group from insuring the global tanker fleet if they’re hauling cargo to or from Iran. In the past, some carriers and countries have set up their own sovereign insurance funds to cover shipments that run afoul of sanctions.
The production-cut deal between OPEC and its allies should hold in its current form until December 2018, but one analyst suggests the risk of compliance slippage has materially increased with our decision to withdraw from the nuclear accord with Iran. Ending sanctions waivers could help ease the addition of new cartel production next year, according to the Web site Rig Zone, citing analysis from BMI Research.

Russia’s Finance Ministry is predicting the country will post a budget surplus in 2018 for the first time in seven years, thanks to the oil-price rally and a five fold increase in oil and gas revenues. Oil and gas exports account for around 40 percent of Russia’s federal budget revenues.

A dramatic increase in natural gas production helped the US become a net exporter last year. Forbes reports US natural gas exports nearly quadrupled to almost 1.94 billion cubic feet per day. More than half of that went to Mexico, South Korea and China.

Bloomberg reports Europe will vie with China for U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas, as new export facilities come online here. Imports from the two are roughly equal now. But China is trying to replace its coal consumption, and Europe is hoping to replace its own declining domestic gas production. European imports climbed 20% last year, while China’s consumption jumped 42%.

Gotta wonder just what the members of the House who are seeking re-election are going to say through the screen door on your porch to convince you that they deserve another two years in the Statehouse.

Because if you look at the big-picture stuff, well, it’s a little thin on anything that is much of a vote-mover.

The 2018 Legislature passed a budget, it offered up what lawmakers hope is a “fix” for the state’s unconstitutional school finance plan, and…oh yes, they passed the bill that will let bars and restaurants—and maybe the local pancake house?—sell alcoholic drinks at 6 a.m., giving you a three-hour head-start over the current 9 a.m. kick-off to a day’s drinking.

But there was a passel of narrow-interest measures that will appeal to some through the primary and into the general election.

Like…for the first time, making possession of a gun a felony if the gun owner has within five years been convicted of domestic violence, stalking and violence toward children.

That’s a major gun control law, and the National Rifle Association was pretty quiet about it because, well, it is aimed at gun owners who have been convicted of domestic violence…not exactly the members that any organization would brag about…

And lawmakers also passed the telemedicine act, which will expand that health-care service into rural areas, where doctors are sparse and where specialists are even more sparse. Wouldn’t that be nice if you had a health problem that your general practitioner recognizes, but would like a specialist to look at?

The law, which specifically says it does not authorize delivery of any abortion services via telemedicine (largely prescription of abortifacients), contains the hotly debated non-severability clause that says if the abortion provision is held invalid or unconstitutional, the entire bill will be struck down–essentially ending tele-health regulation in the state. But…the law until antiabortion forces try to dismantle it in court…sounds like something most voters would commend…

Candidates probably won’t be talking-up last year’s repeal of the Gov. Sam Brownback-era income tax cuts that slashed revenue and spurred budget paring that was reflected in everything from failure to improve roads and bridges to less money for public schools to higher tuition when you send the kids off to college. Tricky that campaigning, not knowing whether the person behind the door has an LLC and is having to re-learn how to file Kansas income taxes after the four-year non-wage income tax holiday or is one of those Kansans who paid taxes all along and saw their tax bill rise this year.

Maybe…they holler through the door that the state budget appears to be stable again, schools, social services, roads, law enforcement and such are starting to see their budgets rise a dab to provide voters the services they expect.

Or…maybe they say that by not passing a major tax cut bill this year, when—or if—they return to the Statehouse next year they will know how much that federal income tax trickle-down will yield in state revenues and find some use for it that will make most voters happy. How about a cut in the sales tax on groceries, maybe giving every Kansan a taste of that trickle-down by raising the state’s standard deduction, or maybe spending that unexpected cash on social services to the state’s poor.

Could be the campaigns this summer will be about a couple nice things, and some mistakes not made.

But it’s hard to campaign on not making mistakes, isn’t it?

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