World record wheat? Not in Norton
By MIKE CORN
NORTON -- It looked too perfect. And in a manner of speaking, it was.
At least for Norton.
Despite queries and e-mails circulating that suggest Norton was the site of a super quick harvest -- fast enough to qualify it for the Guiness Book of World Records -- that's just not the case.
The event did happen, however, nearly 900 miles to the north in Winkler, Canada.
The e-mails -- complete with photographs of the event -- have been subject of plenty of talk around the community, and prompted the Norton Daily Telegram to investigate its origin. Publisher Tom Dreiling also found the event had taken place but couldn't uncover how it came to be that Norton was listed as the site for the event.
Dreiling wrote of hearing about the e-mail from across the state. Similar queries have been made of The Hays Daily News.
The e-mail has been received by the Norton County Extension office. The receptionist there laughed that the message suggested it had taken place in Norton.
"That's pretty popular," said Susan Gilgenbach, a lifetime Norton resident and employee of the Ag Valley grain elevator. "It didn't happen here."
Gilgenbach said she first learned of the widely circulating e-mail when her brother, now living in Wichita, called her to see if there was any truth to the message. She, of course, wanted to see a copy.
Since then, word has spread around town, and the message has been fodder for considerable conversation at the grain elevator.
While Norton is a big wheat county, it's easy to see several problems with the photographs that accompanied the e-mail.
First, the wheat already had been swathed and laid down in windrows -- something that is not the practice here in Kansas.
Also, the field adjoins a four-lane highway, again something that excludes Norton, which is served by U.S. Highway 36. While much of that highway recently has been rebuilt, it still has only two lanes of traffic.
Finally, the field and adjoining area is flat -- as in tabletop flat. There's not much in Norton County that can be considered that flat.
"How that got to be Norton, Kansas, is beyond me," Gilgenbach said.
The event, in August 2006, attracted 105 combines to harvest 162 acres of wheat.
While the event was put together to set a world's record, it also was designed as a fundraising event for Children Camps International, a Winkler-based group that has camp ministries around the world.
The e-mail message was only partially right. "Proceeds of this crop is to be sent to a kids camp."
That part is right.
The part that says, "That's how we get it done in Kansas," however, is far from the truth.
"It's gotten people talking about it," Gilgenbach said of the e-mail. "It's been interesting hearing people talk."
Incidentally, with 105 combines, it took 11 minutes, 8 seconds to harvest the 162 acres of wheat. Nearly 10,000 people were on hand for the event, and yield was 65 bushels per acre.
By comparison, in 2006, Norton County averaged 27 bushels to the acre.