Released: February 17, 2005

Valley Falls Couple to Be Named Master Farmer, Farm Homemaker

VALLEY FALLS, Kan. – Daryl Sales thinks he’s been lucky – in the parents he got, in the friends he made at college, and even in the blind date that his second cousin bungled 18 years ago.

Linda Sales thinks she’s been in the right spot at the right time – for much the same reasons.

Even so, their accomplishments together are why the couple will be recognized as a 2004 Kansas Master Farmer and Master Farm Homemaker during ceremonies in Manhattan March 11. Friends can attend the celebration banquet for $20 per person, making reservations at 785-532-5820 by Feb. 25.

Sponsors of the six annual “masters” couple awards are Kansas State University Research and Extension and the Kansas Farmer magazine. The Jefferson County Extension Council nominated the Sales. By winning, the couple will become lifetime members in an association that dates back to 1927.

Daryl’s father, 88-year-old Wendel Sales, is still a silent partner, driving out to the farm every day. Wendel used the money he saved in the army during World War II to buy the family’s first tractor, plow and 120 acres. He’d taken that to 700 acres by the time improvements in terraces and grass waterways helped Daryl become 1979’s state 4-H award winner in Conservation of Natural Resources.

The farm now is 1,750 acres of diversified crop land and pasture with modern cattle-working facilities. It’s mostly devoted to raising premium breeding stock from 200 head of registered Angus cows. And, it continues to win conservation awards, as Daryl maintains the family’s traditions.

Daryl already was steeped in those traditions when he became valedictorian of Valley Falls High School’s class of ‘79 – while remaining active in music, sports and 4-H, plus thinking about crop-share farming the year he’d enter college. About 25 miles away, Linda was growing up in rural Hoyt, where she studied the piano, learned to love gardening and canning, and served as a church organist through high school – as well as became the salutatorian of Royal Valley’s High School’s class of ‘82.

But then Daryl went to K-State, where he majored in agronomy, sang in the Men’s Glee Club and earned a slot on the university’s Crops Judging Team. He also pledged the Farmhouse Fraternity, where he met Mark and Greg Gardiner.

Daryl now gets premium prices for his Angus bulls under contract with the Gardiner Angus Ranch, which he considers to be the “premiere Angus ranch in the country.” He gets premium prices for his breeding heifers by selling them to Gardiner customers.

Linda went further west to Marymount College in Salina. She earned a cum laude with her nursing major and immediately passed her state exams. She then secured a job at Topeka’s Saint Francis Health Center, where she has worked the past 18 years.

She was living in a Topeka apartment when Daryl’s second cousin tried to set up a blind date for him with Linda’s roommate. The roommate said she already had a boyfriend. Linda piped up, “I don’t!”

A bit embarrassed by his cousin’s maneuvering, Daryl put off calling Linda for three months. Then, however, the rural northeast Kansas boy and the rural northeast Kansas girl ... the valedictorian and the salutatorian ... the singer and the accompanist ... the farmer and the nurse finally met.

“He opened the car door for me and won me over,” Linda said. The couple married in 1988.

At first, Linda worked her way up into nursing management at St. Francis. She also started what has become the farm’s computerized record keeping.

At the same time, Daryl started a farm expansion program that added 80 to 200 acres at two-year intervals until late in the 1990s. He also bought his first registered Angus bulls. After that, he started the slow, data-crunching process of improving a 100-unit crossbred cowherd into a commercial Angus herd and then a prime herd of registered Angus breeding stock. He adopted no-till planting and tried various crop and grazing rotations with wheat, grain sorghum, corn, soybeans, alfalfa and red clover.

Linda dropped back to half-time floor work at St. Francis 12 years ago. She and Daryl had found an open adoption program that over time brought them two newborn babies. First came Justin, now an athlete and an A-student seventh grader. Next was Justin’s natural sister, Amanda, who as a fourth grader is aspiring to be the state spelling champion. Linda worked evenings until Justin started school, so the children never needed outside care.

Today, the Sales family attends St. Mary’s Church together, often garden or farm together, and sometimes cook together. Daryl helps coach softball teams, leads the Prosperity 4-H Club and serves on the Jefferson County Extension Council – above and beyond supporting the local Rotary Club, various farm organizations and county water boards. Linda is active at the children’s school, has served as an assistant Brownie Scout leader, has worked with her church’s religious education program, and is in her second year as a 4-H cooking project leader.

Linda’s also been teaching the children to play the piano for three years. And, she’s only slightly ironic when she tells people that “Daryl has had the pleasure of helping Justin learn to play trumpet.”

“If we have a successful family life, it goes back to our background of living in rural areas where duties, responsibilities and hard work were a way of life,” she said. “Because our families worked together, they were closely knit – with higher education expected.”

In their home, built across the road from the original Sales house, Linda has a large kitchen upstairs and a big part-time canning kitchen in her basement – an arrangement she learned to like from her mother, Phyllis Waller. Outside, the children have a big playhouse-sandpile-swing set built by her father, John Waller, who now is fostering Justin’s 4-H award-winning interest in woodworking.

“It has been a marvel to see how the family has grown in so many ways over the years,” Linda said. “Probably the most rewarding, however, is seeing Justin mature and gradually, naturally step in and take over the duties and chores of his Grandfather Wendel. Watching Wendel pass on his knowledge and love of farming to his grandchildren is truly gratifying.”

Daryl is just as pleased that Amanda was champion in the 4-H Bucket Calf Consultation in her second year of competing at the Jefferson County Fair. At the end, Amanda was tied with another 4-H’er, but somehow knew how many stomachs that cattle have and what pinkeye is.

So, the traditions go on. Linda has her entire family excited about cooking, baking and canning. Both children are earning reading awards at school. Plus, in addition to using 2,000 feet of pipe to improve the working area around the farm’s artificial insemination facility, Daryl converted more than 100 acres to grassland and added two miles of cross fencing to aid in rotation grazing, conserving natural resources.

... and, to them, just a matter of having been amazingly lucky in family, friends and rural community.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

Story by:
Kathleen Ward
kward@oznet.ksu.edu
K-State Research& Extension News