Day 35: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Sunday, July 7th, 2024

Lakin KS -> Lamar CO

78.4 Miles, 1,473 ft elevation

The day had a slow start. None of us seemed to be in a huge hurry to leave Inn that the Victory Baptist church booked for us. The sheets were warm and there was a small rainstorm we had to wait out until 10 am. They had a continental breakfast and I couldn't help but feel like the Key and Peele sketch as I eagerly loaded up my plate with waffles, muffins, and fruit.

The only person out the door early this morning was our driver, Sophia, who talked to a farmer the night before. He offered to give Sophia a tour of an industrial dairy farm. Here's what she had to say.

Hi JD’s blog! I went on a small adventure this morning on my rest day, which I’ll brief y’all on here:

Ed, a farmer from Lakin, very generously took me to see the well oiled machine of big agriculture. We visited a 32,000 acre farm with over 5,000 dairy cows. We started the tour in the feed lot, where the cow’s meals are mixed daily. What I’d previously mistaken as massive piles of sand, gravel, and other composites used for construction was in fact feed ingredients being shoveled in by huge excavators following a careful ingredient list. The feed is made daily because the introduction of oxygen heats up the grains and supplements, introducing bad bacteria to the gut microbiome of the cow. That’s also why the ingredients for the feed is stored under airtight tarps weighed down by stripped tires. Despite the thousands of acres of farmland we’ve passed by in Kansas, farmers here still import more grain and corn to keep up with the production of dairy and beef.

We then followed a feed truck leaving the lot and making its way along the avenue of dairy cow pens. The truck deposited a line of feed just outside the fences. The cows’ heads popped out. We eventually made our way to the automated milking facility. This facility runs 24/7. Every single dairy cow is milked twice a day, producing on average 57 lbs of dairy daily. It costs $3/$4 to feed a cow each day. 50 cows are milked at a time, across two aisles. They are trained to turn into their individual stalls. They have some sort of RFID tag embedded into their skin, such that the sensor atop each stall records her milk production each round. A worker then uses a sanitization gun to clean the udders before extraction. Then, a chassis with four suction cups is attached to her teats, and a vacuum pump begins extracting the milk. There is a small transparent cup where you see white, opaque milk streaming and swirling out. The process is efficient. As soon as the milk was extracted, the chassis fell automatically, the pen opened, and the next lot waiting in the queue entered the milking arena. In the next room over in this facility are two trucks with massive refrigeration units, chilling the milk. Each truck, labeled DFA (Dairy Farmers of America), will transport more than 6,000 gallons of milk.

I asked Ed what he’d change about the agriculture industry. He said: lots, but that’s not entirely feasible, we are forced to take small steps. When you’re working on this broad of a scale, especially with farming, you make one change, and it takes ten years to notice. Even then, you cross your fingers hoping there aren’t too many confounding variables. For dairy cows, change is experimentally much easier to see. You change the feed recipe, and three days later, you’ll notice a difference in production.

The visit gave me a tremendous respect for the farmers that bring food to our tables. Farming is like trying to hit a moving target, between harvesting, planting, taking care of livestock, regulations, supply and demand, reservoirs, and more. As the Spokes team knows, I absolutely love food and the full-stack behind it. I want to learn everything, from the soil microbiome to modern and ancient farming techniques to local grocery stores to restaurants. In America, we’re removed from what’s on our plate, in large part because of the industrialization of farming. Far fewer people farm today than say 50 years ago. We’ve lost our understanding of seasonality because we’ve opted for 365 days of crappy strawberries instead of one season of tomatoes, another season of squashes (see: Anthony Bourdain). There are loads of environmental criticism, very justly posited, about farming today, but I think before we begin improving this complex marionette maze, we need to begin on the ground level. Meet a few cows, visit a well, touch some soil. Thank you Ed for giving me the opportunity to do this. I wish I could stay in this little corner of Kansas and learn from you for a long while, but for now we’re on our way to Colorado.

Now back to JD's day:

After we finally got out the door we biked through the last stretch of Kansas. Stratus clouds hung oppressively low threatening us with rain. It was only fitting when they followed through with that threat and left us biking through the rain. Damn you Kansas weather!

The rain cell passed through just as fast as it came, and the sun came out for one of the most glorious sights I've seen in spokes so far: the welcome to Colorado sign!

We had lunch right across the border in a beautiful park. The only issue was the absurd abundance of flies that got on our food and in our van. The grass was heavenly and gave a nice place to nap.

After lunch we had to do a photo shoot with the sign.

Hank was the first to climb up and I was soon to follow. All the splinters we got were totally worth it!

We even put a Spokes 2024 sticker on the sign. If you are ever taking US Hwy 50 out of Kansas look for our sticker!

As we continued our ride into Colorado I realized that the mountains on many Colorado license plates are not representative of the entire state. I kept expecting to see a huge mountain range in the distance, but for the rest of the day into Lamar it was mostly the same flat farmland we biked through in Kansas.

Lamar Community College agreed to host us so we got to stay in a motel they transformed into dorms for the night. We were all right at home! They were even kind enough to let us use an industrial kitchen in the back of a bar one of the trustees owned. Sophia is always geeking-out about industrial kitchens, and helping cook dinner this night made me realize why.

Sophia decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches tonight with tomato soup and a banana pudding dessert. Cleo and I were sous chefs and my first assignment was to cook some bacon and look how much bacon I could cook at once on the flat top. This is two whole packages!!

Next I sautéed some mushrooms.

Finally we got the satisfaction of everything coming together.

Look how efficient it can be cooking in an industrial kitchen!

We couldn't sit in the bar, so we had dinner outside.

That night we cleaned up the kitchen and made sure everything was in order for the learning festival the next day at the library. There was a thunderstorm that rolled through as we finished cleaning up and some of us got a 2nd shower.

Everyone crammed into the van afterwards and blessed us with some very chaotic photos.

Overall it was a very good day because we got the satisfaction of crossing a state line. It's achievements like these that give us confidence and a boost of dopamine to keep biking. Lord knows we'll need it for the upcoming Rockies!