Archives for October 2021

Hedley residents are rolling out the welcome mat to host their 69th annual Cotton Festival on Friday and Saturday, October 8 and 9.

Last year’s festival was canceled due to the pandemic, but organizers are picking up where the 68th festival left off in 2019.

The Hedley Lioness Club will get things going Friday with a Chili & Stew Supper from 5 to 7 p.m., and storytelling will follow in the Lions Den.

Hedley’s One Act Plan and the Class of 2022 will host a Bingo and Auction with more than $4,000 in prizes and gift cards on Friday from 6 to 10 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. in the Senior Citizens building. All proceeds support the high school’s One Act Play.

Some of the great items available during the Bingo and Auction include two trips to Red River with a meal and ski or snowboard rentals for two days, a night at Comanche Casino in Duval, Okla., a stay at Hotel Turkey, a four-burner grill with a side grill, a 29-piece Craftsman tool set, haunted house passes in Amarillo, WTAMU game passes, Sod Poodles tickets, and passes several great attractions such as the Amarillo Little Theatre, the Panhandle Plains Museum, Western Bowl, the Don Harrington Discovery Center, Amp’d in Amarillo, and Cinergy. And more prizes will also be available.

Saturday’s events begin with the Hedley Fire Department’s Pancake Breakfast from 6:30 to 9:00 a.m., and the Rowe Cemetery Association will hold a bake sale starting at 10 a.m. in front of Moffitt Hardware. A car and tractor show will start on Main Street at 10 a.m. also.

The Kiddie Parade will start at 10:30 Saturday morning on Main Street.

At 11:00 a.m., the Senior Citizens will be serving hamburgers, and the Lions Club will host a catered BBQ dinner starting at 11:30.

The annual Community Parade will be held at 2 p.m., followed by the Hedley School Reunion at 4 p.m. in the school cafeteria.

Drawings for the many giveaways this year will be held at 6:00 p.m. while Johnny Woodard provides the music for the evening. Pulled pork and brisket sandwiches will be available in the Lions Den as well.

The First Baptist Church of Howardwick will celebrate its 50th year of worshiping together this this Saturday and Sunday.

The church was organized October 3, 1971, in the home of A.L. Bacon, and a charter was adopted two weeks later.

Special guests this weekend include Linda Stout, Genoa Goad, and G.A. Roach, each of whom have been involved and served the church in the past.

Plans call for singing, fellowship, reminiscing, and preaching. The celebration will be from 4 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 9, with worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday, October 10.

The public is invited to come and join in the celebration.

Cases of COVID-19 continue to subside in Donley County with the Clarendon Family Medical Center reporting 13 active cases this week.

The active count is down three from last week, although the clinic did report 14 new positive cases.

CFMC spokesperson Marsha Bruce said the total positive cases for September was 81 as of Tuesday.

At Clarendon CISD, nurse Debbie Thompson also reported lower numbers and said less than one percent of the school population is currently absent due to COVID-19. There is one active case among those absent, she said, with the rest being out due to quarantine for exposure.

Clarendon CISD performed 12 COVID-19 tests in the last week with no positives reported.
Thompson also said the school will be offering the flu shot to staff and students on October 15.

The Texas Tribune reports this week that 32.7 percent of Donley County residents are now fully vaccinated. That represents a total of 1,065 people, up from 1,053 one week ago. The Tribune says 1,267 percent of local residents, or 38.9 percent, have received the first of two vaccination shots.

The Moderna vaccine is available at no charge at the local clinic for everyone ages 18 and over. The Pfizer vaccine is available in Amarillo for children ages 12 and over.

The longtime goal to preserve both peanut quality and seed integrity is a step closer after Texas A&M AgriLife and the Texas Peanut Producers Board jointly unveiled a new $1 million-plus peanut sheller.

The sheller has a 1-ton per hour capacity, can process lots as small as 250 pounds and offers the rare ability to process identity-preserved peanuts. Also, with design modifications built in by Bratney Corp., the new peanut sheller can reduce split-seed losses to less than 10%.
The capacity the sheller can handle, combined with its exceptional ability to clean and sort seeds, makes it one of a kind, said Patrick J. Stover, Ph.D., vice chancellor of Texas A&M AgriLife, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research.

“With the technology we are unveiling today, Texas A&M AgriLife Foundation Seed can now work with both food companies and farmers in an identity-preserved production system that delivers specific peanuts to end users,” Stover said. “Now AgriLife-bred peanuts can specifically target improved nutritional traits, benefiting the consumer and also enhancing value for the farmer.”

Stover thanked industry partners Shelly Nutt, Texas Peanut Producers Board executive director, and Bob Parker, National Peanut Board president and CEO, for their support, saying,

“We are incredibly thankful for everything you both do for Texas peanuts and Texas A&M AgriLife.”

Because the peanut sheller will preserve both peanut quality and seed integrity, it creates an environment where peanut farmers can grow improved varieties and shellers can sell seed that is both genetically pure and of the highest quality.

“This is huge,” Nutt said. “Our board was created in 1969, and the reason the farmers wanted to self-assess is they wanted a research program that would look at what Texas needed. So, 50 years later, we’re seeing an accomplishment toward a goal our farmers have had all this time.”
This facility gives peanut farmers access to a pure, high-quality seed from varieties specifically suited for Texas’ unique environment, along with the Southwest growing region.

Texas peanuts, and the farmers and businesses that make up the peanut industry, are valuable to Texas agriculture. Texas is the fourth largest peanut-growing state in the nation, with nearly 170,000 acres planted by Texas peanut producers in 2021. In 2020, Texas produced 8% of the peanuts grown in the nation, with an average yield of 2,900 pounds per acre.

“This peanut shelling plant is vitally important to gain the respect of the seed industry and to make our varieties the industry standard in not only value-added traits but also in the quality,” Nutt said. “The Texas peanut industry really appreciates this, and we look forward to working with Texas A&M AgriLife and Texas A&M Foundation Seed for years to come.”

Assuring the purity of the peanut supply is critical to maintaining and growing markets both domestically and internationally, Parker said. He thanked the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for supporting the peanut seed program and to the peanut owners in Texas for such a substantial investment in this program.

“The ability to test single seeds of high oleic peanuts really exposed the problem we had with mixtures in our peanut seed system and the lack of purity in our peanuts,” he said.
Parker said while It’s been a long time coming, this is a good time for a facility like this to be brought online to address a growing market.

“The final assessment notice for 2021 just came in, and the U.S. broke the all-time record for per capita peanut consumption last year – 7.6 pounds – and built on that this year to around 7.9 pounds per capita,” he said.

Rick Vierling, director for the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Vernon and Texas A&M AgriLife Foundation Seed, said “if someone wants to do only high oleic peanuts – we can do that. Right now, it is very difficult for a larger operation to shell identity-preserved peanuts. However, since we operate at only 1 ton an hour, we can clean out and switch to different peanuts for a minimal cost.”

Another benefit of the new sheller, which will begin processing peanuts after harvest later this year, is it is capable of screening for a better quality of seed for production, Vierling said. The larger shellers are not designed to do that – and improved seed quality gives the producer a better stand and ultimately better yields.

“We are making huge strides here at Foundation Seed and this certainly will give us the impetus to continue our mission of serving Texas and adding value to the state economy,” Vierling said.