(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hello everyone and happy holidays.

Welcome to "SUNUP", I'm Lyndall Stout.

Joined today with Kurtis Hair, Seth Fish, and our SUNUP intern, Elizabeth Hoke.

We're so glad you're with us today.

And guys, it's great for all of us to be together.

- Yeah, it's a great time of year.

We get to look back up some of our favorite stories, take a little look at some bloopers.

It's really my favorite time of the year.

- Time to celebrate for sure.

And really, we had a lot of adventures in Ag this year, didn't we?

- Yes, it was a crazy year and this kind of just gives us an opportunity to take a look back at the year and get ready for next year.

- One of the things we enjoyed was going out to Chisholm Elementary and meeting some future producers or hosts of "SUNUP" - Or maybe future sunup reporters that takes our job.

- Exactly, let's take a look at that story.

- [Narrator] It's a special day at Chisholm Elementary School.

Second graders taking a break from class to learn about crops and animals from FFA members.

And if you look a little closer, a local news crew is also in the mix.

- This is CNC, which stands for each Chisolm News Crew.

And it's basically just a news crew inside our school where we just say what's going on.

- [Narrator] Fifth graders in Mrs. Sarah Dow's program run all aspects of production.

- My job is the reverend reporter where I go around the school and sometimes interview people and just go around the school and video.

- So what the anchors do is really just cover everything.

Like we say, the dates, we say quotes, we say lunch.

We just do the important for information for them.

And then the reporters could do all the fun stuff like the announcements and the breaking news and just everything like that at our school.

- [Narrator] Like any news operation, workdays begin with editorial meetings.

- A rovary reporter, they will first off in the morning, they'll come in here and talk about what we need to do and get done.

And then we will get our camera tech and we'll go outside and we'll move around this class or even the school, and then we can film there.

- [Narrator] Then it's out the door and on the scene, capturing video, gathering facts and interviews, and coordinating logistics, all on deadline.

Chisholm News Crew is an extracurricular activity that runs throughout the school year.

Students apply, interview, and audition.

Some arrive with public speaking and showmanship skills learned in 4-H, but all of them grow throughout the process.

- Yes, definitely, I've learned to like not be shy on the camera as much, and I've learned to like maintain eye contact and to just speak to the person you're speaking to and not look straight at the camera.

- [Narrator] Teamwork first and foremost.

- It's just really fun in all ways 'cause we all have our different parts and it just blends together so nicely.

- [Narrator] combined values make good television and good citizens.

- Well, one of the biggest things in my life right now is courage, because I have, like last year per se, I didn't have the courage to like step up and speak out.

But now this year, since I'm in CNC and 4-H, I can definitely project my voice and talk out loud.

- Well, just overall they have just become better speakers and more confident in themselves.

That's probably the first thing, but I feel like they've really learned how to accept constructive criticism.

At the beginning it was hard because they didn't like to be told how to do things, well, some of 'em probably didn't like to be told how to do things, and I would stop them abruptly and then we'd have to start over and start over and start over.

And they are very comfortable with me saying, stop at this point.

- [Narrator] Jessica Nichols is the Garfield County 4-H educator.

- Well, one of the big things in 4-H is learning how to public speak.

That's just a skill everyone needs.

And these kids are learning it in their school, getting to talk with their classmates, when they do interviews with other people across the school.

And in 4-H, it's the same way, whether we're teaching about our project or talking with a donor or just a community member, those are just skills that are gonna help those kids as they become adults and be successful in their life.

- [Narrator] What a foundation.

CNC means fun, responsibility, growing confidence along with a dash of humility, plus an inspiring teacher, already planting seeds for the future.

- When I grew up, I kind of just wanna do exactly this, be on TV and be an anchor.

- [Interviewer] And where do you think you'll wanna go to school?

- I think I wanna go to the University of Oklahoma and get my degree in broadcast journalism.

- [Interviewer] Well, that's okay as long as you do your master's at OSU.

- Okay.

(interviewer laughing) - And also I'm an OSU fan, go Pokes.

- [Interviewer] Hey, yeah.

- [Narrator] A wall of dark blue, rain filled clouds drift closer and closer, threatening to throw a roadblock up for today's wheat harvest.

This is what Marty and Crystal Williams have been dealing with for the past few weeks here on Frontier Farms in Noble County.

Get ready to fire up the combine and then boom, a slow rumble echoes in the distance.

The soft warm breeze turns cool and then the rain comes.

- With these little rains that have come through, it's made harvest windows very, very challenging, very, very small.

- Two days maximum we've cut in a row and then it rains and we're out for two days.

Then we've had another two days and then it rains.

So we've harvested really only a total of six days, probably in three little small incremental windows.

- [Kurtis] Normally Crystal is in the cab of the combine while Marty is in the field handling other details, their kids, Ava and Morgan are busy with summer activities and the dogs, well, not much has changed.

Dive bombing for field mice is still on the agenda.

But for the Williams', this harvest and this year has been anything but normal.

- So this year I was really heavy on on the amount of wheat that I planted because of the drought and then it didn't rain all winter, all through planting season.

So our wheat was very, very thin all year.

We thought maybe spring rains would bring it out of it and for the most part it kind of did.

It was gonna make a marginal crop, but it was so thin, now the weeds have come on.

- [Kurtis] Aside from the drought and untimely rains, there's a lot going on personally for this sixth generation farming family.

They just moved into their newly built home literally days ago.

Ava's off at church camp and Morgan is the one climbing in the cab of the combine because Crystal is about a week away from delivering the new addition to the Williams family.

- We have a baby coming, so that's been a pleasant surprise.

But I did actually try to combine the other day for two hours and my feet were swollen.

(laughing) I learned real quick these last two weeks, I need to rest.

- [Kurtis] With a baby on the way and thin wheat fields, Marty decided to shift his focus to summer crops and hired a custom crew to help take care of the majority of his wheat fields.

For this wheat near the house, Morgan and his co-pilot best friend, whose fiddling named Corbin are ready to pick up the slack.

- Our son is really talented with running equipment.

He has been since he was little and very safe, really safe, but he's just got a knack for it and he pays attention to what's going on.

- Well, you start it up, you put the back end on first and then it has to be on the very low, like not fast revving.

And then you start the header up and then you rev it up more and then you lower the header and start cutting wheat.

- It's been a challenging year for sure, but Marty and Crystal on their 19th year of marriage and when you have that much time under your belt, you sometimes look at these challenges as gifts because you never know how quickly things could change for the better.

Just takes a little time.

- It's no secret that from 2013 to 2018, farming went through really tough economic time.

During that time we had several challenges emotionally, spiritually, there were several times we thought we were gonna lose the farm and we always prayed that someday we could build a new home for our kids to enjoy and my wife to enjoy and me.

All of a sudden we were extremely blessed with a shift in crop growing conditions and prices and things of that nature.

Financially, things just came around and then we were fortunate enough to be able to build a home and get that process started and then all of a sudden, woo-hoo, we have a baby on the way.

I thought I was coaching my last little league team and now might not be.

- I didn't grow up farming.

I don't know as much as most people do, but I'm learning.

The 19 years we've been together, we've already experienced as a young farm family, so many trials and errors and learning to adapt.

- Every day I can wake up and drive by the farms that several great grandparents have farmed on and left from several generations and it's really cool that I get to do that.

- [Kurtis] If the rains hold out, harvest should be wrapped up not too long after their baby boy arrives, though Morgan still hasn't quite wrapped his head around having a baby brother.

- I honestly dunno what to do when he is here.

It's gonna be a lot of stuff.

- [Kurtis] It's just another challenge, but also a gift, in Noble County, I'm Kurtis Hare.

- Weather challenges aside with wheat harvest, when we were out at the farm, we saw something we'd never seen before.

- Yeah, I've never seen anything like that and honestly it was one of my favorite lines I've ever written was they were dive bombing for field mice and like I said, never seen that before.

- I thought it was a perfect opportunity to test out our new camera and the slow motion features too.

So we got some good shots of the bouncing dogs.

- Another exciting story was the rodeo team, which Elizabeth helped us with and that was your "SUNUP" debut on camera, that is.

You do a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but you got to spend some time with OSU's rodeo team?

- Yeah, it was really fun to be able to do that as my first story.

I really had fun interviewing everybody and just getting to film everything and put it all together.

It was a really fun experience and I actually got to go out to the rodeo the first night and experience what it was like, so that was really cool.

- Always a great event, so let's take a look at that story.

- [Elizabeth] The time is finally here.

Every drop of sweat in the practice pin has led to this very moment.

(feet shuffling) The most anticipated rodeo event in Stillwater is about to take place, but there's still a little more practicing to do.

- In my personal opinion, it's one of my favorite rodeos probably ever.

I was blessed with the chance to win that my freshman year and it's a really cool experience.

- [Elizabeth] Kade Williams has a unique perspective on the Cowboy Stampede.

Although this is only his second year on the rodeo team, he's already won once.

Since then, The Cowboy Stampede is pretty special to him.

- I feel like it's one of the more crowd involved rodeos.

It's heavily marketed to students too.

So there'll be like a student section at a rodeo, which I think is a really cool thing.

And it's like your home rodeo.

- I'm excited 'cause it's my first experience.

I'm pretty pumped to see what it's about.

- [Reporter] This is Kirsten Hampton's first year at the college rodeo scene.

After transferring to OSU from Purdue.

She says she's excited to rope for the first time at the event.

- I know that we have some pretty cool things that we're gonna do this year to try to get the crowd involved and I'm excited to see what the crowd does when we do those events.

- It's a lot of work and it's a little different than the typical rodeos that we travel to because the students not only are practicing and preparing for competition, but they also participate in putting the rodeo on and a lot of the production too.

- I think that its such a good show and it really shows us what cowboys are and so to have everybody show up and support, especially from the university, that says a lot about what we are as OSU and I know a ton of people that aren't from from around here at all and they come down just to watch because it's such a good event.

I don't know that I've ever been to a rodeo where everyone talks so highly about tickets being sold out and everybody being there to support.

So that will be new for me and I'm excited to see that.

- These students put a lot of time and effort into this event.

From long days practicing in the heat to pulling all-nighters to study, the dedication these students have for their sport is unmatched.

You can guarantee if you drive by after dark, there will be someone out in that arena doing whatever it takes to win.

- Like us ropers, we'll rope the dummy until the sun goes down, like so we're here a lot.

- I think the students do a great job of producing this rodeo and we've had a really good rodeo for our team the last few years.

So I always look forward to that.

I think they take full advantage of having a home rodeo and getting an opportunity to perform in front of their friends and family and do a really good job.

I think you'd want to come out and watch 'cause we've got a really great team.

The students are working hard to prepare and I think they're really gonna show up and show out for our rodeo.

- It's one of those things, you can't really explain it as well as you can just feel it.

You just feel the energy at the arena.

The crowd's very involved.

Stillwater is cowboy town and it's just a super cool place to get to go compete.

- [Interviewer] So you guys ready to win?

- Oh yeah, we're gonna bring it home this year.

(laughing) (horse neighing) (upbeat music) - You may have heard the Christmas carol, "Here We Come Awassailing" and wondered what is wassail?

Let's find out.

Depending upon the time, occasion, and situation, wassail has had several different but related meanings.

Originally, wassail was an old English salutation made to toast to someone's health.

It was probably borrowed from an earlier Norse phrase "ves heil" which was used as a form of greeting or recognition such as be in good health or be fortunate.

However, the term wassail would evolve to encompass not only a salutation, but an added beverage as well.

During pre-Christian times in southeastern England, farmers would meet in their orchards and share a communal bowl of cider.

They would also pour cider on the apple trees while shouting to scare away evil spirits in the hope that the next season's crop would be bountiful.

In other words, the farmers would wassail the trees.

Over time, the ceremony would also involve singing, dancing, and bonfires.

By the Middle Ages, wassailing had become associated with Christmas.

In some regions of Britain, groups of the poor would visit the homes of the wealthy during the holiday where the owners would allow them to sip from a communal bowl of spiced wine or the poor would bring their own bowls and ask that they be filled.

Unfortunately, on some occasions, the crowds would become intoxicated and rowdy, leading wassailing to become associated with drunken carousing.

By the 19th century, wassailing would evolve into its final milder form.

During this time period, many Christmas traditions that we recognize today, such as Christmas trees and Christmas cards were just starting to gain popularity.

By the 1830s, music publishers were starting to release books filled with Christmas songs, many of which were about wassailing.

So wassailing, the act of enjoying the holiday through revelry had become the subject of Christmas carols.

And caroling, the act of singing about the holiday could be seen as an act of wassailing itself.

So eat, drink, and be merry.

For more information, please visit sunup.okstate.edu or food.okstate.edu, Happy Holidays.

- To the casual observer, the small spring at the center of this painting may seem inconsequential, but it is the reason the legendary King Ranch in Texas exists.

- The story is that Captain King came from Brownsville all the way to Corpus Christi and the only freshwater he found was what became Sanger Trulia Creek, which is on the ranch.

And really the main source is this Seep Springs that is right on the ranch.

- [Reporter] The work is one of 34 currently on display at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in the exhibit King Ranch, A legacy in Art.

- [Narrator] Noe Perez is the artist.

- And I'm primarily a landscape painter, and I have to go on location and do small format, six by eight, eight by tens of the land.

And you're rushed because the light is changing, all of the conditions are changing, so you have about an hour and a half tops to do something, and they're not necessarily finished works.

They're really research to capture colors or light values and that sort of thing.

- [Narrator] That's what it took along with thousands of digital photos for Perez to paint these many scenes back at his studio depicting such diverse settings.

- We see coastal lands, we see brush country.

There's really quite a variety in that within those 825,000 acres.

- [Narrator] Bob Kinnan was a longtime employee who is now a consulting historian for the ranch.

- And the landscapes are beautiful for people to see, but they have great meaning for the family and for the people of King Ranch because all of these subjects that we depicted in Noe's art are historically significant to us.

- [Narrator] The paintings took two years and are now featured in a new book.

- [Noe] And to me, these oaks are just beautiful.

I just love painting these things.

- [Narrator] Perez drew inspiration from his deep love of the land.

- Their whole livelihood really is about stewardship.

They do all sorts of things to make sure that grasslands, wildlife, and of course their livestock really have the best conditions to thrive in.

So these ranches are really exemplar stewards of how to handle that land.

- [Narrator] Sam Fuhlendorf is a professor and researcher of Rangeland Ecology & Management at Oklahoma State University.

He's also a native Texan.

- What we really focus on is the land and the passion that ranchers have for land.

Both these ranchers and the ones that are here in Oklahoma are basically unsurpassed by any other profession in the world.

This is what they do, is they live on the land, they work with the land, and their relationship with the land is not just as a commodity, it's actually a part of their way of life.

- And these paintings that fortunately, we're able to share with the state of Texas and now the state of Oklahoma, they're just a tribute to who we are and what our history is.

This is not only a tribute to King Ranch, it's a tribute to ranching in general, and no better place to depict that than this beautiful museum.

- There's a beauty to be found there that few can appreciate.

And I hope to kind of highlight that a little bit through these paintings.

- Not only highlighting, but bringing to life the glory of nature, all of it humbly connected to a chance water source that became a lifeblood for many generations to follow.

The subject matter of the exhibit, of course, really spoke to us, but it was great for all of us to get to go out on a field trip of sorts to the museum.

- Yeah, it's not something we get to do a lot and usually we're kind of splitting off.

It's me and Seth going out and doing something, or me and Elizabeth going or me and you, or just me or just Seth, so it's really great when the whole SUNUP crew can go out on something like that.

- Especially to somewhere as cool as the National Cowboy Heritage Museum.

- For sure.

We'll have more SUNUP favorites for you in just a moment, but first a word from our Vice president and Dean, Dr. Jayson Lusk.

- As we wind down the year and celebrate the holiday season, I wanna send out a special thank you to Oklahoma farmers and ranchers and everyone who watches SUNUP.

Thank you for the hard work that you do raising food and livestock and taking care of our land.

Being a farmer is a lot of hard work and we have a lot of volatile weather conditions in Oklahoma and we're proud of the opportunity we have in OSU agriculture to provide education and research to help you make better decisions for your farm and for your land.

Thanks for sending your kids and grandkids to Oklahoma State University.

We have the privilege of trying to educate them and help them become a productive member of society.

On behalf of OSU Agriculture, we wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year.

(upbeat music) - And last but not least today, guys, Seth, you recently traveled to the tiny community of Bessie.

- Yes, I absolutely love doing that story.

I'm from western Oklahoma, so any chance I get to go back out there is always good for me and it'll probably end up being one of the last things that I worked on at SUNUP, so it's always gonna have a special place with me.

- Yeah, and you're off to... Where are you gonna be gonna work now?

- So I'm going to be going into the podcast editing industry, so I'll be editing podcast, so stay tuned and maybe listening in the future.

- For sure.

Let's take a look at that story from Bessie.

(car engine roaring) - So we are at the Marvin Klemme Research Range out here in Bessie, Oklahoma, where I currently have some cattle on trial at.

The research that I'm interested in right now and what we're doing out here is in the last few years we've had this big increase in dairy, beef calves entering the feedlot system, but there's been a little work in their post weaning management.

So right now out here we have 150 head.

- [Farmer] 75 of them are dairy beef, crossbred steers, and then 75 are just native straight beef cattle.

- Dairy industry has had a lot of economic issues that have pushed them to adopt some different reproductive technologies, so that they can get full blood replacement heifers out of their very best cows.

When we put these beef on dairy calves directly on feed at a very light body weight, we're seeing them be on feed for nearly a year, over 300 days, which gives them a lot of time to have some different digestive problems.

We're seeing issues with liver abscesses.

We are hoping that putting these cattle through a stalker phase, on forage based diets, we'll shorten the time on feed, and hopefully decrease some of those issues just because they won't be in feed yards for as long a period of time.

They'll be bigger, they'll be more mature, better able to handle the stresses that they see through the production phase.

So, we feel, you know, all the advantages of a stocker program in the beef industry should apply to these beef on dairy crosses.

- We're seeing how they do on pasture, and their gain, and then we're supplementing them with some DDG cubes, and we'll be getting them off here in a couple weeks and seeing how they do.

And then, alongside of them, we also have some calves up in Buffalo, Oklahoma, at Buffalo Feeders, that we will eventually be able to compare the two together because those calves went straight two feet up in Buffalo, where these guys have been grazing the lovely grass that's out here.

- Dairy genetics within these cattle gives us some advantages in carcass quality, but they're very light muscled.

The beef portion or the beef sires add both muscularity, increased performance, increased gain, and increased efficiency to those dairy genetics.

You know, we'll have a very good high quality product, and that beef cross just increases the efficiency and performance of those animals.

- [Farmer] These dairy beef calves are performing about the same as the native beef calves, maybe just a little bit less.

The beef calves are still gonna outperform them in some aspects.

But what we've seen is that these dairy beef crosses are really complimenting that beef side and letting that dairy side behind, so that way they're doing better in the feedlot.

I would say that they're pretty even and I think that we'll get some really cool data from these guys.

- And that'll do it for our special edition of SUNUP.

We wanna thank all of you for being with us today and say one last farewell to our good friend, Seth.

- Yes, I loved every second of working here at SUNUP, and I made some lifelong friends and some connections that I'll have for a lifetime.

So, thank you to all of the viewers, and thank you to everybody at OSU.

- Well, we certainly wish you well.

And from all of us here at SUNUP, we wish you a very- - [All] Happy holidays!

- No one knows what the nose knows.

Speak beak.

(Lyndall snorts) - From a healthy baby boy, Ridge, Ridge, Reese Williams.

(laughs) With the start of OQBN sales this month, we thought it would be a great time to look back at when we met one of the youngest producers we've ever met.

(car door thudding) - Oh.

I knew that was gonna happen.

We almost had it.

♪ Birthday to you ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ Happy birthday, Kurtis ♪ Happy birthday to you - Questions arise.

You will always can contact your account educator.

Is that good?

- Hello, and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Kurtis Hair.

So, how do you know if you're gonna have a crop this year for your pecan orchard?

Well, OSU extension pecan and fruit and nut specialist, Becky Carol, tells us more.

- Is it really that simple?

You just leave it and wait until it's ready to graze?

- Oh, there is a little management.

- Okay.

- That we need to do there.

- Okay.

Sorry.

Let me ask that again.

- Okay.

- You have horses that can be chronic or intermittent carriers?

(laughs) - Hey, buddy.

- I love cats.

He's like, "Get me in the frame!"

(laughs) - We'll have to start over on that.

Sorry.

- Okay.

That's okay.

- I stumbled.

- We get emotional.

(all laugh) (gentle instrumental music)