Red Dirt and Round Bales farm logo with barns, wheat, and a hay bale in warm orange and brown tones


Daily updates about agriculture and rural life in Oklahoma.

RDRB 118 -
The Towers Watching Oklahoma’s Weather

The Oklahoma Mesonet may not look flashy from the road, but its towers are among the most important pieces of infrastructure in rural Oklahoma. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken explains how a network of weather stations across all 77 counties helps Oklahomans understand what is happening in the air above them and the soil beneath them. Every five minutes, Mesonet stations gather information on temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, solar radiation, soil moisture, soil temperature, and other conditions that can shape decisions on the farm, ranch, road, fire line, or school bus route.

The episode also highlights why the Mesonet matters far beyond the forecast. For farmers and ranchers, it can help with spraying decisions, cattle comfort, soil conditions, and planning around dangerous heat, cold, wind, or rain. For emergency managers and fire officials, Mesonet tools support storm preparation, wildfire response, prescribed fire planning, and public safety. In a state where one county may be flooding while another is dry, the Mesonet gives Oklahoma a clearer, more local way to see itself.

For more than 30 years, the Oklahoma Mesonet has turned weather into decisions. This episode is a reminder that Oklahoma survives not by luck, but by watching closely, preparing early, and helping neighbors when conditions change.

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RDRB 117 - Oklahoma Cotton: From Plantations to Pivots

Cotton is one of those crops that cannot be separated from Oklahoma’s rural story. It brought income to farm families, helped build small towns, filled gin yards, and made Oklahoma a major cotton-producing state. But it also carried a heavy history: enslaved labor before the Civil War, tenant farming, sharecropping, family debt, exhausting hand labor, and hard choices during drought and depression.


In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deacon traces cotton from its early Oklahoma roots in the Choctaw Nation through its rise as a statewide cash crop. The story moves through wagons lined up at cotton gins, families dragging cotton sacks through the field, boll weevil damage, World War I demand, price collapse, the Great Depression, federal crop controls, and the shift from mule teams and hand labor to tractors, mechanical pickers, strippers, irrigation systems, and modern cotton production.


Today, Oklahoma cotton looks different than it did a century ago, but the crop still carries memory. It represents adaptation, risk, technology, markets, and the endurance of rural families. This episode offers a grounded look at how one crop shaped the land, the economy, and the lives of generations across Oklahoma.

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RDRB 116 - Oklahoma Wheat’s Hard 2026 Lesson

Oklahoma wheat producers know every crop tells a story, and the 2026 wheat crop has had plenty to say. This year brought dry conditions after planting, a crop that pushed ahead earlier than normal, and late rains that arrived just as combines were ready to roll. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken visits with Oklahoma Wheat Commission Executive Director Mike Schulte about what producers, elevators, and wheat industry partners are seeing across the state.


The conversation centers on the reality many farmers already know: yield potential was limited by drought stress, especially in western Oklahoma. Fields in southwest Oklahoma were ready to cut two to three weeks ahead of schedule, and while harvest moved quickly, rain delays still complicated the finish. Mike explains how this year’s crop compares to a more typical Oklahoma wheat harvest, when combines are often still running close to the Fourth of July.


Even with a tougher crop, there is still a market story worth watching. Mike discusses miller interest, wheat quality, global stocks, and the shift from production outpacing consumption to consumption outpacing production. It is a reminder that Oklahoma wheat may be grown close to home, but it feeds into a much larger world — one where wheat remains one of the most affordable and important sources of food.

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RDRB 115 -
Oklahoma Wheat Rides the River

Oklahoma may not touch an ocean, but that does not mean it is cut off from the world. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken tells the story of the Tulsa Port of Catoosa and the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System — a working inland waterway that gives Oklahoma commerce a path to the Mississippi River, Gulf ports and global markets. What looks like a quiet stretch of brown water is, in fact, one of the most important transportation routes for wheat, fertilizer, steel, machinery and other heavy freight moving in and out of the state.


The episode explains why the Port of Catoosa matters to farmers and rural communities. Oklahoma wheat does not stop at the edge of the field; it enters a supply chain of trucks, elevators, barges, rail cars, port workers and grain handlers. Fertilizer follows that same system in reverse, arriving by barge and moving inland to dealers, co-ops and farms across Oklahoma and the surrounding region. For producers watching margins, freight costs, diesel prices and input expenses, a barge may not be fast, but it can be a valuable and efficient option.


At its heart, this is a story about connection. The McClellan-Kerr system did not make Oklahoma coastal, but it gave the state a doorway — a way for inland wheat fields, rural workers and agricultural businesses to reach markets far beyond the prairie. Some roads are asphalt, some are rail, and some are made of water, locks, dams and towboats. The Port of Catoosa is Oklahoma commerce floating steady, one barge at a time.

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RDRB 114 - Oklahoma Turkeys: Why Poults Don’t Survive

A strutting tom turkey may be the bird most people notice, but the future of Oklahoma’s wild turkey flock starts much smaller. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken shares insight from Mark Turner Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Extension wildlife specialist, about the fragile first days of a turkey poult’s life. Turner explains that while nesting success is important, landowners may need to pay even closer attention to what happens after the eggs hatch.


The conversation focuses on brood survival and the kind of habitat young turkeys need to make it. Poults spend roughly their first two weeks on the ground before they can roost in trees, leaving them exposed to predators, rain, heat and poor conditions. During that time, they need insect-rich areas, overhead cover, bare ground for movement and plant structure that is tall enough to hide them but open enough for the hen to watch for danger.


For landowners, hunters, ranchers and rural Oklahomans who care about wildlife, this episode is a practical reminder that turkey management is not just about seeing more gobblers in the spring. It is about building useful country — grass, bugs, shade, cover and structure — that gives the smallest birds on the place a fighting chance.

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RDRB 113 - Wheat Variety Trials Reveal Drought Gaps

Oklahoma’s wheat crop moved fast this year, and in many fields, it moved under stress. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken takes listeners into a dry, hot and uneven harvest season with help from Amanda Silva Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Extension small grains specialist. Silva shares what she is seeing from OSU wheat plots and producer fields across the state, including yields ranging from extremely low numbers to much stronger fields where timely rain made the difference.


The conversation makes clear that this season was not just about drought. It was about stored soil moisture, planting date, variety selection and whether a field caught rain at the right point in the crop’s development. Silva explains that rainfall remained Oklahoma’s biggest yield-limiting factor, but she also points to the management lessons producers can take from a year like this: how varieties respond under pressure, how planting date can shift opportunity, and how far wheat can go on stored water before it simply runs out of room.


For producers, crop advisers and rural listeners, this episode is a reminder that even a disappointing wheat year leaves information behind. Every choice — harvest it, bale it, graze it, leave it — tells part of the story. And when the combines stop, the lessons remain in the stubble.

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RDRB 112 - How Combines Changed Oklahoma Wheat

In Oklahoma wheat country, harvest has always been a race against the weather. This episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales begins with the familiar summer sound of a combine moving through ripe wheat and uses that sound as a doorway into the history of harvest technology. Dave Deken walks listeners from the days of binders, wagons, threshing machines, horses, hired hands, and big harvest meals into the age of machines that could do several jobs in one pass across the field.

The combine changed Oklahoma wheat harvest because it gave farmers speed. A crop that once required cutting, gathering, hauling, threshing, cleaning, and moving grain again could suddenly be harvested much faster, helping farmers beat hail, rain, wind, and shattering losses. The episode also highlights the importance of custom harvesters, especially in Oklahoma wheat country, where crews followed the ripening crop from southern areas like Walters, Frederick, Altus, and Hollis northward across the Plains.

Today’s harvest is still built around timing, but the tools have changed. Modern combines may use GPS, auto steer, grain loss sensors, yield monitors, moisture readings, and field maps to help farmers understand what happened across every acre. The episode makes clear that technology has not replaced farmer instinct. It has given numbers to what many producers already knew from years of watching soil, weather, hillsides, low spots, and wheat heads in the wind.

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RDRB 111 - Sorghum Nitrogen Timing for Oklahoma Growers

Sorghum has earned its reputation as one of Oklahoma’s tougher crops, but toughness does not remove the need for good fertility decisions. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at sorghum nutrient management with Raedan Sharry Ph.D. of Oklahoma State University, focusing on how delayed nitrogen can help growers better match fertilizer timing with the crop’s real demand.


The conversation explains why delayed nitrogen works best when the field still has strong yield potential. A good stand, available moisture, and a realistic chance at higher grain yield can make later nitrogen more efficient, helping move fertility into bushels instead of excess biomass or environmental loss. But when sorghum is late-planted, drought-stressed, thin, or headed toward a lower yield range, earlier nitrogen may be the better choice because the plant may need fertility sooner to support tillering and early growth.


The episode also puts rainfall at the center of the decision. Nitrogen sitting on dry soil is not the same as nitrogen feeding the crop, especially when using sources such as urea that can be vulnerable to volatilization. For Oklahoma growers, the practical lesson is simple: delayed nitrogen is a tool, not a rule. The right call depends on yield potential, crop stage, nitrogen source, and the forecast.

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RDRB 110 - Oklahoma Wheat Roots: Cold, Faith, Grit

This episode begins on the road, with Dave Deken reflecting on thousands of miles traveled across Oklahoma while documenting the wheat crop for the Oklahoma Wheat Commission.
From Walters to central Oklahoma, north-central fields, and the Panhandle, the question becomes bigger than yield or harvest timing: why wheat in Oklahoma?
The answer starts with the unusual nature of hard red winter wheat, a crop planted in the fall that waits through cold, wind, and long nights before it is ready to make grain.


The episode explains vernalization in plain language—the process that allows winter wheat to move from growing leaves to producing a head of grain after exposure to cold.
But this is not just an agronomy lesson.
Dave connects the science of the crop to the history of Turkey Red wheat, Mennonite migration from the Russian Empire, Bernhard Warkentin’s role in Kansas wheat history, and the way railroads, mills, elevators, and farm families helped hard red winter wheat become part of the Plains.


As the story moves south into Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory, wheat becomes a symbol of endurance.
Settlers planted into uncertainty, drought followed the 1889 Land Run, and some families even borrowed seed wheat from railways to keep going.
By the time the drought broke in 1896, wheat had become more than a crop. It had become part of Oklahoma’s rhythm: plant in the fall, wait through winter, watch the spring, and cut in early summer.

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RDRB 109 - Route 66: Where Oklahoma Still Shines

Route 66 turns 100 in 2026, and Oklahoma has a central place in the story. This episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales looks at how a highway built for practical transportation became one of the most recognized roads in America. Dave Deken traces the road’s early purpose, its Oklahoma roots, and the way it connected farms, towns, markets, cafes, motels, repair shops, and filling stations across the state.


The episode also explores the deeper history carried by the Mother Road. During the Depression and Dust Bowl years, Route 66 became a path west for families forced to leave home. For Black travelers during segregation, the promise of the open road came with real danger and uncertainty, making safe places like the Threatt Filling Station near Luther especially important. The road’s story includes opportunity, hardship, exclusion, resilience, and preservation.


Today, Oklahoma’s Route 66 landmarks continue to draw travelers from across the country and around the world. Places like the Blue Whale of Catoosa, the Round Barn in Arcadia, and the Rock Cafe in Stroud remind us that rural history does not only live in museums. Sometimes it lives in old signs, restored barns, roadside cafes, cracked sidewalks, and towns that refused to be forgotten.

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RDRB 108 - Sorghum Fertility: More Yield, Less Guesswork

Forage sorghum has earned its place in Oklahoma agriculture because it can keep working when summer gets hard. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at why sorghum matters for Oklahoma producers, from grain and silage to forage sorghum hay for livestock operations. With Oklahoma sorghum acres expected to climb, the crop is becoming an increasingly important part of the state’s farm and ranch landscape.

The episode features Steve Phillips Ph.D. of Oklahoma State University, who shares research on nitrogen timing, forage yield, hay quality, and nitrate levels in forage sorghum. His work looks at a question many producers face after the first cutting: should they come back with more nitrogen to push regrowth, or hold back because of nitrate concerns? The research discussed in the episode found yield gains up to 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre while keeping nitrate levels below the concern threshold in those trials.


The larger lesson is that sorghum may be tough, but it still rewards careful management. Nitrogen timing, crop stress, rainfall patterns, and forage testing all play a role in whether hay is productive, safe, and useful for cattle. For producers trying to put more hay in the yard without creating feed problems later, this conversation offers a practical look at what field research can tell us—and what Oklahoma weather can still change.

Episode Resources

- Sorghum Oklahoma

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RDRB 107 - Combines Roll Through a Strange Harvest

Harvest is rolling across Oklahoma, but this wheat crop is anything but simple. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken visits with Pete Matheson of Matheson Farms near Billings about a strange, uneven harvest shaped by a dry March, early heat, thin stands, and fields that range from disappointing to surprisingly decent. Pete explains why he still goes “all in” on wheat every year, even when the weather doesn’t return the favor.

Dave also talks with Todd Hubbs Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Extension grain marketing specialist, about what a short hard red winter wheat crop means once the grain leaves the combine. Hubbs explains why local yields, Oklahoma basis, global wheat stocks, Black Sea production, European conditions, North Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and El Niño risk all matter when producers are watching wheat prices. The Oklahoma Wheat Commission keeps updated harvest and crop reports available for producers and industry listeners.

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RDRB 106 - Tracks That Built Oklahoma Towns

Railroads did more than move freight across Oklahoma — they helped decide where towns grew, how crops reached markets, and how rural communities connected with the rest of the country.

In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks back at the tracks, depots, grain elevators, and train lines that shaped Oklahoma before and after statehood. From the "KATY" and Santa Fe to the rise of wheat, coal, cattle, and oil, this episode tells the story of how railroads brought opportunity, pressure, movement, and lasting change to rural Oklahoma — while also acknowledging the cost to Native nations whose homelands were crossed and transformed.

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RDRB 105 - Stocking Rates: Don’t Spend Next Year’s Grass

How much grazing pressure is too much depends on the grass, the cattle, the season, and whether the pasture has enough time to recover.

In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken looks at grazing pressure with insight from Laura Goodman Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Extension specialist for rangeland ecology.
The conversation explains why stocking rate is not just a head count, why “take half, leave half” can be misunderstood, and how pasture walks, forage estimates, patch burning, and rest periods help ranchers make better grazing decisions.

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RDRB 104 - Oklahoma Wheat: Hope Versus Weather

In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken reflects on eight weeks of wheat tour stops across Oklahoma, from the Red River country to north-central Oklahoma and the Panhandle. The 2026 crop tells a hard story: USDA numbers point to a short crop, while field observations show thin stands, uneven rainfall, drought stress, disease pressure, and some acres already headed toward hay or grazing instead of the combine.
Dave looks at what this wheat crop is teaching about rain timing, planting date, variety maturity, residue, no-till ground, scouting, wind risk, and producer resilience. Along the way, he shares how Oklahoma farmers keep showing up, even when the sky does not hold up its end of the bargain.

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RDRB 103 - Why Oklahoma’s Panhandle Feels Different

Dave Deken heads west with his daughter Molly for a wheat-checking trip across the Oklahoma Panhandle. What starts with windshield time, field video, Slapout stories, Lake Optima, Guymon, Hooker, and a stop in Forgan for Hank the Cowdog turns into a deeper look at one of Oklahoma’s most fascinating regions.

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RDRB 102 - Building a Wheat Breeding Program

This episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales highlights Oklahoma's wheat economic importance and traces the state’s wheat-breeding history, from Joseph Dany’s early crosses that produced Triumph to OSU’s formal breeding work beginning in the mid-20th century.
Dr. Brett Carver explains how Oklahoma’s wheat varieties evolved to meet local needs, especially dual-purpose wheat for both grazing cattle and grain production, along with traits like acid-soil tolerance.

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RDRB 101 - Building a Wheat Breeding Program

Dave visits with Amanda Silva Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Extension small grains specialist, at the Lahoma Field Day about what this year’s crop is showing.
Silva says the crop is rough overall, but not uniformly bad. Some pockets still look better than expected, where timely rainfall lined up with planting date, variety maturity, and grain fill.
The episode gives producers a practical reminder: watch fields closely, especially early-maturing varieties, because Oklahoma wind and dry weather can turn wheat quickly and increase shattering losses.

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