First generation farmers Geoff and Jenny Burgess of Burgess Hill Farms may have grown up more than 4,000 miles apart, but their passions for agriculture closed the distance. Geoff came to Sterling from England in 2000 on an agricultural exchange program and ended up doing custom harvest for about three years. Four years after meeting at a local restaurant where Jenny waitressed, Jenny and Geoff decided to unite their dreams of farming by getting married and starting their own farm.
“We both grew up on hobby farms and enjoyed that life as kids,” said Jenny. “We wanted our children to grow up in the same atmosphere as we did with the same livelihood of working hard and seeing the outcome.”
“When an opportunity presented itself, we picked it up and ran with it,” said Geoff.
Being first generation farmers, however, presents a unique set of challenges as the Burgess’s don’t have the capital that fourth or fifth generation farmers have.
“Everything is operating loans,” said Jenny. “When it comes to marketing our grain, we can’t afford for those markets to bounce back up because we’ve got bills to pay and we don’t have those cash reserves or that capital built up where we can hold on to that grain.”
Despite the challenges they face, Jenny says her and Goeff enjoy being able to take care of their crop, watch it grow, and see the potential in the crop they’ve grown.
“It’s always exciting to go out to the field and say ‘I grew that’ and I think that’s one thing we both agree on,” said Jenny. “We’re doing it and people said we couldn’t. Hopefully our children will be able to do it as well.”
Dillan and Jessica, the Burgess’s kids, are still pretty young at ages nine and almost three, but they still play an important part on the family farm. At this point, the kids mainly watch how hard their mom and dad work but their son, Dillan is starting to take on a few responsibilities such as helping mom with meals or turning a wrench in the shop for dad. Jessica is still too small to really help out but she adds her two cents just the same.
“She likes to boss us around. She rides in the tractor and tells dad if he’s doing something wrong,” said Jenny, laughing. Between working on the farm and being a mother, Jenny has her hands and heart full, but she also finds time to advocate for agriculture, mainly through posting pictures, which she feels are a window to everyday life on the farm. She also uses her blog and involvement with AgChat and Kansas Farm Bureau to spread truths about Ag and emphasizes the importance of using simplicity when talking to consumers to help them make connections.
“Us farmers a lot of times use words like ‘no-till’ and people just don’t understand that,” said Jenny. “You kind of have to make things simple so they can understand.”
Clearly Jenny and her husband have a passion for farming, but where does wheat come in? Wheat works well on the Burgess farm because it fits with their broadleaf and grass crop rotation of wheat, milo, beans and corn. Also, both Jenny and Geoff grew up with wheat, but Geoff remarks that wheat farming in England is a little different than Kansas.
“Wheat farming in England is a lot more intensive. The growing season is a little longer with smaller acreage of about 400 to 450 acres for the whole farm, but with more bushels per acre,” said Geoff. “We tend to limit our yield here, with heat during fill. We have a five to six week fill period here and it gets pretty hot, where there it takes about eight to twelve weeks and it doesn’t get very hot at all.
Although, there were concerns earlier in the year due to dryness and a late freeze, Jenny’s prediction of a good Kansas wheat harvest this year is turning out to be accurate. Harvest started Friday, June 17, was slowed down by showers that evening and picked up again Monday afternoon. Jenny reports test weights up to 63.5 pounds per bushel and yields around 55 bushels per acre.
“It’s significantly better than last year,” said Jenny. “It’s about waist high compared to last year’s ankle to calf high crop.”