By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

RANSOM -- With a 57-bushel-per-acre average, Weston Kraus is plenty happy with how the harvest is going.

Of course, it's the best harvest he's had in his relatively short career as a farmer.

"I started in 1999," he said. "I froze three times and was hailed out once."

On Monday, he was surveying a field of wheat overlooking the confluence of the Smoky Hill River and Hackberry Creek that was being cut with the aid of family members, most of whom were from Ransom.

Brother Casey was so enthralled with running the machine that he wrote his name in the dust on the John Deere combine. His brother-in-law, Tanner Lyle, Gorham, was on the other combine, mother, Kay Kraus, was on the grain cart, and father, Pat, was driving the truck. His wife, Holly, was home, getting meals ready.

It was a family outing of sorts, but it was all work.

Together, two fields that were being cut were averaging 57 bushels per acre, the first 65 bushels.

"Not too bad," he said.

Last year was good as well, he admits, but perhaps 10 bushels or so per acre less than what he's been seeing so far this year.

"I had to replant all of my acres last year," he said, the result of heavy rains that came after the wheat had been drilled.

"I think I had a 40- or 50-bushel average last year," he said.

Problems with replanting rang true again this year, especially in a field not far to the west of where he was cutting Monday.

There, yields were low and moisture was 18 percent -- well above what elevators desire. So much so, in fact, that elevators levy a dock, a penalty, against the wheat, reducing the price of the commodity.

"I'm afraid the weeds are going to take over if we don't take the dock," he said.

Some fields, he said, could be as much as two weeks from being ready, although farmers are spraying to kill weeds and the wheat -- sucker heads that have started growing up since the rains and contributing to the high moisture.

In addition to farming, Kraus and his wife also run a repair shop and parts store in Ransom, the old service station that had been owned by the Ransom Co-op before it was purchased by Garden City's cooperative.

"We didn't really want the responsibility, but driving to Hays to get repairs didn't seem right," he said.

So they bought the facility, renamed it Holly's and put a mechanic and parts man to work.

"It works good for the farm to have something close to take care of your needs," he said.